Provenance

Taft B.

American, 1908 - 1976

Explore Selected Works

A woman wearing a pale blue and gray patterned top and turquoise skirt stretches out in an armchair in this stylized, almost square painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of mostly flat color, especially in the background, so some details are difficult to make out. The woman is centered in the composition, and her legs stretch to our left. She has upswept dark brown hair, peach-colored skin, and her eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn with dark gray lines. Her blousy top is vertically patterned with lead-gray leaves down the front and elongated dots on the sleeves. Each sleeve also has a carrot-orange band on the upper arm. Her skirt is spearmint green, and she wears bone-white pumps. She sits in a canary-yellow armchair with red down the front of the arms and along the bottom, where the wood frame would be. One foot stretches to rest on a matching footstool, while her other leg is curled under her. The denim-blue floor tilts toward us and is covered with thin white lines in a chevron pattern. In the lower right is a red table with a bright yellow vase covered with swipes of brown and green. The vase is filled with elongated, abstract mauve-pink and mint-green shapes on slender white stems. The back wall of the room has an aqua-green cabinet to our left, which holds a silver urn and dishes of round objects. There is also a cantaloupe-orange footstool and other pieces of small furniture there, below paintings on the white wall. Above the woman is a white door with panels outlined in gray, and a section of black wall to our right has more paintings. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Henri Matisse 40.”
Henri Matisse, Woman Seated in an Armchair, 1940, oil on canvas, Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.1

Woman Seated in an Armchair

Henri Matisse · 1940 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1989.31.1

Alexander Calder, The Acrobats, 1929, wire, Gift of Lenore S. Greenberg in honor of her parents, Rita and Taft Schreiber, 2025.16.1

The Acrobats

Alexander Calder · 1929 · wire ·  Accession ID  2025.16.1