A picture perfect riot of colour
Be bold and let artist Matisse’s vivid palette light up your home
MATISSE was a collector of treasures. He filled his home and studio with beautiful things that inspired him and appeared in many of his paintings.
The artist would shift and rearrange his objects ‘ until I found myself brought up short by something about the ensemble that delighted me’. In the new exhibition Matisse In The Studio, which opens at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, today , an enormous photograph shows the art - ist at his home, Villa Le Reve in Vence, on the French Riviera.
He sits at his desk , on top of which are several vases and a champagne bottle filled with flowers. Beneath his feet are rugs, pattern atop pattern. No pared-back interiors for the great man. He revelled in the decorative: vivid colours, eye - catching textiles and intricate antiques.
Go to this exhibition and you’ll want to return home via the florist with armloads of blooms.
Somehow Matisse made a space appear both dizzyingly intimate and expansive. Which is a lesson for those of us who live in small flats and houses.
Exuberant colours and patterns can, as designer Nina Campbell puts it, make a modest space seem ‘jewel-like and brighter.’
Her new collection of fab - rics, Les Reves, available from August 29, is influenced by Matisse’ spa let te, which she describes as ‘colourful, but not brash ’, with a richness that still manages to be soft.
Campbell looked to his paintings, featuring vases off peonies, poppies and red and striped tablecloths plus photographs of the artist in his studio.
The results are a joyful jug print, Collioure (£75 per metre, osborne and little.
com) which is especially Matisse-like in the red and pale blue colour way and brims with painterly, handdrawn shapes.
Campbell has picked out one of the jug patterns for the simple, curvy diamond print Beau Rivage (£65 per roll of wallpaper). You could combine both, layering prints, without making yourself go cross-eyed.
The jeweller Solange Azagury- Partridge, who also designs interiors, is another advocate for pattern. ‘It allows your eye to travel around the room and actually makes it look bigger,’ she says.
Her country home in Bru - ton, Somerset is a carnival of prints. One room is dedicated to paisley, another to chinoiserie and entire walls are covered in fabric, most of which she buys on eBay.
Those who like rootling through antique shops can relate to the thrill Matisse felt when he found the 19thcentury Venetian chair that looks like a shell and has fish-like creatures for arms.
‘When I found it in an antique shop, a few weeks ago, I was bowled over . I’m obsessed with it,’ he said. He drew it again and again.
There are all sorts of ways to add personality to your home. ‘Some things that are inspirational can be quite junky,’ says Campbell. She mounted a set of fish knives with prettily pat - terned handles in P erspex to hang in the restaurant at the Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge, London.
Interesting coffee pots or vases will perk up a room. Dress up a dowdy stove top with T om Dixon ’s shiny brew coffee maker and milk pan (£ 135 and £ 85,
tomdixon.net). Or fill a colourful F olklore jug with flowers (£ 45, shop. royalacademy.org).
FOR fans of Matisse’s bold cut- outs, a tech - nique he devel - oped in what he termed his ‘ second life’, look to designer Genevieve Ben - nett who laser-cuts leather for her arresting handsculpted artworks.
‘Camelia’ was inspired by the carved wood designs by Grinling Gibbons for Hampton Court P alace (prices and colours vary, genevieve bennett.com).
King & McGaw repro - duces a wide range of Mat - isse’s art and exhibition posters as silk-screen prints. The Velvets has the vibrancy of a tropical garden (£260, kingandmcgaw.com). n MATISSE In The Studio is at the Royal Academy of Arts until November 12, royalacademy.org.uk