Last updated: · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin
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Henri Matisse painted two versions of The Dance (1909–1910) for the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. Five nude figures hold hands in a ring on a hill, against just three colours — blue sky, green hill, terracotta-red bodies. Matisse reduced the human figure to its barest expressive essentials; one dancer’s hand has slipped loose from the ring, the chain broken at the front. The Hermitage version (St Petersburg) is one of the founding images of modern art. DeckArts The Dance diptych (~$230) on warm white. Ships from Berlin.
Henri Matisse’s The Dance (La Danse, 1909–1910) is one of the founding images of modern art — a radical reduction of the human figure, colour, and composition to their barest expressive essentials. Five nude figures join hands in a ring and dance on the crest of a hill, rendered in only three colours: the blue of the sky, the green of the hill, and the terracotta-red of the bodies. There is no detail, no modelling, no perspective, no background incident — only the pure rhythm of the dancing figures, the pure colour of the three flat fields, and the pure energy of the circular movement. The Dance is the moment modern painting discovered that it could express everything by depicting almost nothing. At the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. DeckArts Berlin from ~$230.
The Painting: Five Dancers, Three Colours
The Dance depicts five nude female figures holding hands in a circular ring, dancing on the top of a hill or mound. The figures are rendered in a flat terracotta-red (a warm brick-red that suggests sun-warmed skin without any naturalistic flesh tone); the hill is a flat green; the sky is a flat deep blue. There are only these three colours in the entire composition — no shading, no detail, no modelling of the bodies beyond the barest contour lines that define their dancing forms.
The composition’s energy comes entirely from the rhythm of the figures: the ring of dancers is caught in mid-movement, their bodies stretched, leaning, and straining with the centrifugal force of the circular dance. The figure at the lower left lunges forward, almost falling; the figures at the top are pulled back by the momentum; the whole ring seems to spin with a wild, ecstatic, almost primal energy. Matisse has reduced the human figure to its barest essentials — a few curving contour lines defining each dancing body — and yet the figures are intensely, unmistakably alive and in motion. The Dance is a demonstration that pure rhythm and pure colour, without any naturalistic detail, can express the full energy of human movement and joy. See: State Hermitage Museum.
The Shchukin Commission: A Staircase in Moscow
The Dance was commissioned by Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936), a wealthy Russian textile merchant and one of the most important and most adventurous art collectors of the early 20th century. Shchukin assembled an extraordinary collection of modern French art — he owned dozens of works by Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Cézanne, Monet, and other modern masters, displayed in his Moscow mansion (the Trubetskoy Palace), which he opened to the public on Sundays. Shchukin’s collection was one of the most important early collections of modern art anywhere in the world, and his patronage was crucial to Matisse’s career.
In 1909, Shchukin commissioned Matisse to paint two large decorative panels for the staircase of his Moscow mansion: The Dance and its companion, Music. The two panels were designed to be seen as the visitor ascended the grand staircase — The Dance on the first level (energy, movement, the body) and Music on the second (a group of seated and standing musicians, stillness, sound). The two panels together formed a programme on the theme of the elemental human activities of dance and music. The Dance was completed in 1910 and installed in Shchukin’s Moscow staircase, where it remained until the Russian Revolution. After the Revolution, Shchukin’s collection was nationalised by the Soviet state; The Dance eventually entered the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where it remains. The most radical modern painting of its moment hung in a Moscow merchant’s staircase and was nationalised by a revolution. See: The Russian Collectors of Modern Art.
Two Versions: The Paris Study and the Hermitage Final
There are two principal painted versions of The Dance. The first version (1909, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York) was a preliminary version, painted in lighter, paler colours (a pale pink for the figures, softer tones throughout) — a study or first realisation of the composition. The second, final version (1910, now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg) is the one Matisse delivered to Shchukin: more intense, more saturated, with the figures in the vivid terracotta-red, the hill in deep green, and the sky in deep blue. The final version is bolder, more primal, and more chromatically intense than the first.
The progression between the two versions shows Matisse intensifying the painting’s essential qualities: the colours become more saturated and more non-naturalistic; the energy of the dance becomes more violent and more ecstatic; the reduction to pure rhythm and pure colour becomes more complete. The first version (MoMA) is the discovery of the composition; the second version (Hermitage) is its full, intensified realisation. The Dance reproduced by DeckArts follows the bolder Hermitage colour programme: the vivid terracotta figures, the deep green hill, the deep blue sky. See: Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Broken Ring: The Hand That Slipped
The most specific and most frequently overlooked detail of The Dance: the ring of dancers is broken. At the front of the composition (lower centre-left), the two leading dancers’ hands have come apart — the hand of the lunging foreground figure and the hand of the figure reaching toward it do not quite meet; the chain of the dance is broken at this point. The gap between the two hands is the painting’s specific point of tension: the whole ecstatic circular momentum of the dance is concentrated in this broken link, where the figures strain to reconnect the ring.
The interpretive significance of the broken ring is debated, but the detail is unmistakably deliberate and unmistakably central: Matisse placed the break at the very front of the composition, at the point of maximum movement, where the lunging foreground dancer strains forward. The broken ring gives the dance its specific dynamic tension — it is not a serene, closed, perfect circle but an open, straining, almost-breaking ring caught at the moment of maximum centrifugal force. The dance is held together by effort, not by stable closure; the figures are straining to maintain the ring against the force that is pulling it apart. This specific detail — the broken link at the front — is what gives The Dance its particular energy and its particular emotional resonance: the joy of the dance is also the effort of holding the circle together. See: View The Dance at DeckArts →
Three Colours: The Radical Reduction
The most radical quality of The Dance is its reduction to three colours. In 1910, the idea that a major painting could be made of only three flat, unmodulated colour fields — blue, green, and terracotta-red — with no shading, no detail, no naturalistic representation, was genuinely revolutionary. The dominant academic tradition demanded modelling, detail, perspective, and naturalistic colour; even the Impressionists, who had broken with academic convention, retained naturalistic light and broken colour. Matisse’s reduction to three flat colours was a decisive break: it asserted that colour itself, used flat and pure and non-naturalistically, was sufficient to carry a painting’s full expressive content.
Matisse’s specific colour choices: the blue is the blue of the sky, but a deeper, more saturated blue than any real sky; the green is the green of the hill, but a flatter, more uniform green than any real grass; the terracotta-red of the bodies is not any real flesh tone but an expressive colour — the warm, earthy, sun-and-blood red that conveys the heat and vitality of the dancing bodies. The colours are chosen for their expressive and decorative power, not for their naturalistic accuracy. This is the central principle of Matisse’s art: colour is expression. He wrote that he sought “an art of balance, of purity and serenity” — and that this could be achieved through the expressive power of pure colour and simplified form. The Dance is the supreme demonstration of this principle. See: The Move Toward Abstraction.
Matisse and Fauvism: The Wild Beasts
Matisse was the leader of Fauvism, the first avant-garde movement of the 20th century. The name “Fauvism” (from the French fauves, “wild beasts”) was coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who, at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris, saw a room full of the violently coloured, non-naturalistic paintings of Matisse and his circle (André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and others) surrounding a conventional classical sculpture, and exclaimed: “Donatello parmi les fauves!” — “Donatello among the wild beasts!” The name stuck.
Fauvism’s programme: the use of intense, non-naturalistic, expressive colour — colour liberated from its descriptive function and used purely for its emotional and decorative power. The Fauves used pure, unmixed, vivid colours straight from the tube, applied in flat areas or bold strokes, with no concern for naturalistic accuracy. Fauvism was a brief movement (its most intense phase was approximately 1905–1908), but it was the decisive first step toward the colour-liberation of 20th-century modern art. The Dance (1909–1910), though painted just after the most intense Fauve phase, is the supreme realisation of the Fauve principle: colour as pure expression. Matisse went on to a long career (he lived until 1954) as one of the two giants of 20th-century art (with Picasso), but The Dance remains his single most iconic and most influential image. See: Munch and the Roots of Expressionism.
Henri Matisse: From Law Clerk to Modern Master
Henri Matisse (1869–1954) came to art late and by accident. He was born in northern France and trained as a lawyer, working as a law clerk in his early 20s. At the age of 21, recovering from an illness (appendicitis), he was given a box of paints by his mother to occupy him during his convalescence — and discovered his vocation. He described the experience as a revelation: “From the moment I held the box of colours in my hands, I knew this was my life.” He abandoned the law and moved to Paris to study art.
Matisse’s career spanned the entire revolution of modern art: he led Fauvism (1905–1908); produced his great decorative paintings including The Dance (1909–1910); developed through decades of painting, sculpture, and drawing; and, in his final years — when illness confined him to a wheelchair and bed — invented an entirely new art form, the cut-out (gouaches découpées), in which he “drew with scissors,” cutting shapes from painted paper and arranging them into compositions of pure colour and form. The late cut-outs (including the famous Blue Nudes and the Jazz series) are among his most beloved works — made by a man in his 80s who could no longer stand at an easel, who reinvented his art rather than stop. Matisse died in 1954, aged 84, recognised as one of the two supreme artists of the 20th century. The law clerk who picked up a box of paints at 21 became, with Picasso, the defining artist of modern art. See: Hokusai: The Other Late-Life Reinventor.
The Dance for Home Decor
The Dance diptych (~$230) is the most joyful, most energetic, and most modern classical art in the DeckArts range. Its specific home decor qualities:
The joyful, energetic register. The Dance is the supreme image of joy, energy, and movement in modern art — the ecstatic ring of dancers, the wild centrifugal momentum, the pure vivid colour. For a home, a room, or a person whose register is joyful, energetic, celebratory, or life-affirming, The Dance is the most specifically appropriate art at DeckArts. It is not contemplative, dark, or intellectual; it is pure joy and movement.
The three-colour palette. The blue, green, and terracotta-red of The Dance form a bold, warm-cool-balanced, vivid palette that works in many interiors: the terracotta figures provide a warm chromatic event, the blue sky a cool one, the green hill a natural middle. On warm white, the three flat colours advance at maximum clarity and energy.
Best positions: A living room (the joyful, social, gathering-space primary); a staircase (the original Shchukin context — The Dance was made for a staircase); a child’s playroom or a family room (the energetic, joyful register for a space of play and activity); a dance studio, yoga room, or exercise space (the ring of dancers above the space of movement); a kitchen or dining room (the celebratory, social register). The Dance diptych (~$230) or single panels for a narrower wall. View The Dance at DeckArts →
Wall Colour and Positions
Warm white (the canonical The Dance wall colour): Warm white allows the three vivid flat colours of The Dance — blue, green, terracotta-red — to advance at maximum clarity and energy. The most appropriate wall colour for the painting’s bold modern palette. F&B All White, Pointing, or Wimborne White.
Pale sage green or pale blue (for a tonal relationship): A pale sage green wall relates to the green hill of The Dance; a pale blue relates to the blue sky. A tonal wall colour that picks up one of the painting’s three colours creates a specific, considered relationship between the art and the wall.
2700K warm LED: The warm directed light activates the terracotta-red bodies (the painting’s warm chromatic event) at maximum advance, balancing the cool blue sky. The Dance under warm directed light: the warm, joyful, energetic register fully activated. See: What Colour Walls Go With Maple Wood Art?
Four Complete The Dance Programmes
Programme 1: The Joyful Living Room (~$230)
Warm white living room + The Dance diptych (~$230) above the sofa at 155–165 cm + warm directed 2700K spot + a warm, social, colourful furnishing programme. The ecstatic ring of dancers above the gathering space. “Five dancers, three colours, the broken ring at the front. Made for a Moscow staircase; nationalised by a revolution.” Total art: ~$230.
Programme 2: The Staircase (the original context) (~$230)
Warm white staircase wall + The Dance diptych (~$230) on the staircase wall, positioned to be seen on the ascent (the original Shchukin context). The Dance was made for a staircase; hanging it on a staircase restores its original architectural purpose. Total art: ~$230.
Programme 3: The Movement Room (~$230)
Warm white yoga room, dance studio, or exercise space + The Dance diptych (~$230) on the primary wall at 155–165 cm + 2700K directed spot. The ring of dancers above the space of movement: the most semantically specific art for a room of physical movement and energy. Total art: ~$230. See: Wall Art for a Home Gym 2026.
Programme 4: The Modern Colour Pair (~$370)
Warm white walls + The Dance diptych (~$230, Matisse, joyful Fauve colour) + The Scream single (~$140, Munch, expressive intensity) in two different rooms or on two facing walls. Two foundational modern programmes: the joy of pure colour and movement + the anxiety of pure expression. The two emotional poles of early modern art. Total art: ~$370.
FAQ
What is Matisse’s The Dance about?
The Dance (La Danse, 1909–1910) depicts five nude figures holding hands in a ring, dancing on a hill, rendered in only three flat colours — blue sky, green hill, terracotta-red bodies — with no detail, modelling, or perspective. It is one of the founding images of modern art: a radical demonstration that pure rhythm and pure colour, without naturalistic detail, can express the full energy of human movement and joy. It was commissioned by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin for the staircase of his Moscow mansion (with a companion panel, Music). Matisse painted two versions: a paler first version (1909, MoMA New York) and the bold, saturated final version (1910, Hermitage St Petersburg). A key detail: the ring of dancers is broken at the front, where two hands have come apart — the dance is held together by straining effort, not stable closure. The Dance embodies Matisse’s central principle that colour is expression. At the State Hermitage Museum. DeckArts The Dance diptych from ~$230.
Who was Henri Matisse?
Henri Matisse (1869–1954): French artist; with Picasso, one of the two supreme artists of the 20th century. He trained as a lawyer and discovered art at 21, when his mother gave him a box of paints during a convalescence (“From the moment I held the box of colours, I knew this was my life”). He led Fauvism (from the French fauves, “wild beasts,” coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d’Automne) — the first 20th-century avant-garde movement, using intense non-naturalistic expressive colour. He painted The Dance (1909–1910) for Sergei Shchukin. In his final years, confined to a wheelchair by illness, he invented the cut-out (gouaches découpées), “drawing with scissors” (the Blue Nudes, Jazz). He died in 1954, aged 84. DeckArts The Dance diptych from ~$230. See: The Dance at DeckArts.
Article Summary
Henri Matisse’s The Dance (La Danse, 1909–1910) is one of the founding images of modern art: five nude figures holding hands in a ring, dancing on a hill, rendered in only three flat colours (blue sky, green hill, terracotta-red bodies) with no detail, modelling, or perspective — a radical demonstration that pure rhythm and pure colour can express the full energy of human movement and joy. Six specific facts: (1) Commissioned by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin for the staircase of his Moscow mansion (with a companion panel, Music); after the Russian Revolution, Shchukin’s collection was nationalised and The Dance entered the Hermitage; (2) Two versions exist: a paler first version (1909, MoMA New York) and the bold saturated final (1910, Hermitage St Petersburg); (3) The ring of dancers is broken at the front, where two hands have come apart — the dance is held together by straining effort, the painting’s central tension; (4) Only three colours, chosen for expressive not naturalistic power — Matisse’s principle that colour is expression; (5) Matisse led Fauvism (“wild beasts,” coined by Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d’Automne); (6) Matisse trained as a lawyer and discovered art at 21 with a box of paints during a convalescence; in his final years he invented the cut-out, “drawing with scissors.” DeckArts The Dance diptych (~$230): the most joyful, energetic, modern art at DeckArts, on warm white. Best for a living room, staircase (the original context), movement room, or family space. Ships from Berlin. 30-day return.
About the Author
Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.
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