Matisse’s The Dance: Five Colours, No Shadow, Nationalised by the Soviet Union, and Why It’s the Good Armchair of Classical Art

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) painted The Dance (La Danse, 1910, oil on canvas, 260 × 391 cm) for Sergei Shchukin, a Russian textile magnate and the most significant private collector of French modern art in the early 20th century. It is now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Five nude figures hold hands in a circle at the top of a hill; the background is flat green (the hill) and flat blue (the sky); the figures are flat pink-red. No atmospheric depth, no shadow, no modelling. The most Fauvist and the most joyful of Matisse’s major works. DeckArts Berlin from ~$230. View Matisse The Dance at DeckArts →

The Painting: Five Figures, Three Colours, No Shadow

The Dance’s composition is one of the most formally specific achievements of 20th-century painting in its radical simplification. The entire painting is made from three pure flat colour zones and five undifferentiated human forms.

Five nude figures holding hands in a circle dance. They are not individualised — no specific faces, no specific body type variations, no distinguishing personal characteristics. They are bodies in motion, reduced to a generalised human form. Four of the five figures are complete (or nearly complete) in the composition; the fifth (at the lower left) has let go and is reaching to close the chain. This gap — the near-miss between the fifth figure’s hand and the chain’s end — is the compositional tension that makes the painting feel alive: the dance is not completed; the circle is almost but not quite closed.

Three flat colour zones. Flat warm pink-red (figures), flat Prussian green (hill, lower third of canvas), flat Prussian blue (sky, upper two-thirds). No atmospheric gradation in any zone, no modelling, no shadow on the ground, no cast shadows from the figures. As flat as a Japanese woodblock print and as bold as a sign.

No shadow. The painting’s most radical formal decision. Academic and Impressionist painting use light-shadow to create three-dimensional form in a two-dimensional plane. Matisse eliminates shadow entirely: no shadows on the ground, no spatial recession, no internal light-dark modelling on the figures. The result is a painting that is entirely surface, entirely flat, entirely present — not a window into a three-dimensional space but a coloured event on a flat plane.

Shchukin and the Soviet Nationalisation

Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) was a Moscow textile merchant and the most adventurous private collector of modern French art in the early 20th century. Between approximately 1898 and 1914, Shchukin purchased over 250 works by Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Monet, displaying them in his Moscow mansion (the Trubetskoy Palace), which he opened to the public on Sundays.

Shchukin commissioned Matisse to paint two large-scale decorative panels for the staircase of the Trubetskoy Palace in 1909: The Dance and Music (both 1910). Shchukin wrote that he wanted something “joyful and exciting” for the staircase wall, and Matisse produced The Dance as the answer.

In October–November 1917, following the Russian Revolution, Shchukin’s collection was nationalised by the Soviet government. Shchukin left Russia with his family, never returned, and died in Paris in 1936. He was legally unable to claim any compensation for his collection. The Dance and the rest of the Shchukin collection were distributed between the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. A full-scale exhibition of the reconstituted Shchukin collection was mounted in Paris in 2016 — the first time it had been seen together since the Revolution. The Guardian covered the 2016 Shchukin exhibition in detail.

Matisse’s Biography: The Good Armchair

Henri Matisse was born on 31 December 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, northern France. He trained initially as a lawyer, working as a court administrator in Saint-Quentin until 1889, when he began painting during a convalescence from appendicitis. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1895, studied under Gustave Moreau, and died on 3 November 1954 in Nice, aged 84, still working.

Matisse’s most quoted statement: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter — an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.” (Notes of a Painter, 1908.) The Dance is the fullest realisation of this programme: pure colour, pure movement, pure joyful surface. Nothing troubling; nothing requiring interpretive effort. The near-miss circle is inexhaustible not because it is complex but because it is pure.

Fauvism: Colour as Pure Expression

Fauvism (from the French fauve — “wild beast”, a label given by critic Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d’Automne) is the use of non-representational colour (colour expressing emotional states rather than describing actual object colours), flat colour zones without tonal modelling, and simplified bold forms. The green of the hill in The Dance is not the green of any specific grass; it is the green of feeling-of-hill. The blue of the sky is not the blue of any specific sky; it is the blue of feeling-of-sky.

Fauvism lasted approximately 1905–1907 as a coherent group before its members diverged: Braque toward Cubism with Picasso, Derain toward a more classical mode, Matisse toward the deeply personal colour programme that produced The Dance (1910), the Moroccan paintings (1912–1913), the Red Studio (1911), and the late cut-outs of the 1940s–1950s. As The Guardian’s Matisse coverage notes, the late cut-outs (Jazz, 1947; Blue Nudes series, 1952) are the fullest realisation of the flat-colour programme that begins with The Dance.

Two Versions: Hermitage and MoMA

Version 1 (1910, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg): The commissioned version for Shchukin. 260 × 391 cm, most saturated in colour (warmest pink-red figures, deepest blue sky), most compositionally resolved. This is the version reproduced by DeckArts.

Version 2 (1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dance [I]): A preparatory study. Slightly smaller, with cooler, less saturated colours. The MoMA version shows Matisse’s compositional process, with specific differences from the Hermitage version including the gap-figure’s reaching hand position and the exact curvature of the circle. See the MoMA collection page for the preparatory version.

The Dance on a Skateboard Diptych

The DeckArts Matisse The Dance diptych (~$230, ~45 cm wide) presents two vertical crops of the Hermitage version’s central composition: the left deck (the reaching figure and two connected dancers) and the right deck (three connected dancers at the composition’s right). The three flat colour zones create a specific visual event in which the primary colours are unusually pure and unusually flat by comparison with any other work in the DeckArts range.

On warm white under 2700K warm LED: The flat green + flat blue create two cool zones from which the warm pink-red figures advance as the composition’s warm primary event. The neutral white ground does not compete with the three flat colour zones. The most Japandi-adjacent classical art installation using warm figure tones rather than cool botanical tones.

On navy under 2700K warm LED: The flat blue sky merges with the navy wall; the warm pink-red figures and the flat green hill advance from the combined cool field. Three flat colour events (warm red, flat green, merging flat blue-into-navy) from a cool dark ground: the most dramatically colourful installation.

Matisse The Dance — Diptych (~$230)

Nationalised by Soviet Union 1917 · “good armchair” programme · five figures three flat colours no shadow · Hermitage St Petersburg · UV archival 100+ years · Canadian maple

View product →

Room-by-Room Installation Guide

Dining room primary wall (the most contextually specific): Diptych (~$230) on warm white above or beside the dining table at 155–165 cm centre. The Dance above the dinner table: Matisse’s “good armchair” programme — pure rest and pleasure above the gathered social space. Five nude figures dancing in a circle above the people gathered at the table: the most joyful and the most specifically social art installation in the DeckArts range. See: Wall Art for a Dining Room 2026.

Living room above console (secondary accent): Diptych (~$230) on warm white above a white oak console in the living room. Quiet, flat, joyful as a secondary wall accent beside a bolder primary sofa-wall statement. The contrast: bold primary (Night Watch triptych on forest green sofa wall) + quiet flat celebration (The Dance diptych on warm white console wall). See: Wall Art Above a Console Table 2026.

Contemporary living room primary (warm white): Triptych (~$310) on warm white above compact sofa (90–110 cm). The most “good armchair” living room: warm white walls + The Dance triptych above compact sofa + 2700K warm LED + minimal white oak furniture + one organic ceramic. No drama, no confrontation, no darkness. Pure joyful surface.

FAQ

What does Matisse’s The Dance represent?

Five nude figures holding hands in a circle dance on a hilltop, painted in three pure flat colours (warm pink-red, flat green, flat blue) with no shadow and no modelling. Matisse explicitly designed his art as a rest from effort: “like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue” (Notes of a Painter, 1908). The gap in the circle of hands — the near-miss of the chain — makes the dance feel alive. Commissioned by Sergei Shchukin for the staircase of his Moscow mansion; nationalised by the Soviet government in 1917. Hermitage Museum St Petersburg. DeckArts diptych from ~$230.

Where is Matisse’s The Dance?

The commissioned version (1910, 260×391 cm) is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. The preparatory version (Dance [I], 1909) is in MoMA New York. Both entered their current collections through or following the nationalisation of Shchukin’s collection by the Soviet government in 1917. DeckArts reproduces the Hermitage version. hermitagemuseum.org. DeckArts from ~$230.

Is Matisse’s The Dance a Fauvist painting?

Yes, it is the fullest realisation of the Fauvist colour programme: three pure flat colour zones (warm pink-red + flat green + flat blue) with no shadow, no tonal modelling, and no atmospheric depth. Fauvism (1905–1907, Louis Vauxcelles’ term from the 1905 Salon d’Automne) uses non-representational colour — colour expressing feeling rather than describing actual object colour. The green of the hill is not the green of any specific grass; it is the green of feeling-of-hill. The Guardian’s Matisse coverage. DeckArts from ~$230.

Related Guides

• Wall Art for a Dining Room 2026
• Eclectic Home Decor Ideas 2026
• Contemporary Wall Art Trends 2026
• Wall Art Above a Console Table 2026
• Wall Art Gifts for Art Lovers 2026

Article Summary

Matisse The Dance expanded: La Danse 1910, 260×391 cm, Hermitage Museum St Petersburg. Commission: Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936, Moscow textile merchant, 250+ works French modernism 1898–1914 including Matisse/Picasso/Gauguin/Cézanne/Monet, Trubetskoy Palace Moscow opened to public Sundays, commissioned The Dance + Music 1910 for staircase, “joyful and exciting”); Soviet nationalisation October–November 1917; Shchukin left Russia never returned, died Paris 1936, legally unable to claim compensation; distributed Hermitage + Pushkin Museum; 2016 Paris exhibition first time together since Revolution (Guardian October 2016). Composition: five nude figures holding hands circle dance hilltop; not individualised; fifth figure lower left = let go, reaching to close chain = compositional gap tension = alive not static; three flat colour zones: flat warm pink-red figures + flat Prussian green hill lower third + flat Prussian blue sky upper two-thirds; no atmospheric gradation/modelling/shadow = as flat as Japanese woodblock print; no shadow = most radical formal decision (eliminates academic/Impressionist three-dimensionality illusion; entirely surface/flat/present; not window into three-dimensional space). Matisse biography: born 31 December 1869 Le Cateau-Cambrésis France; lawyer’s training, court administrator Saint-Quentin until 1889; painting during appendicitis convalescence; École des Beaux-Arts 1895, Gustave Moreau; died 3 November 1954 Nice aged 84 still working; “good armchair” (Notes of a Painter 1908: art of balance/purity/serenity devoid of troubling subject…like good armchair to rest from physical fatigue); The Dance = fullest realisation: pure colour/movement/surface, nothing troubling/depressing/requiring interpretive effort, inexhaustible through purity not complexity. Fauvism: fauve “wild beast” Louis Vauxcelles 1905 Salon d’Automne; non-representational colour (expressing feeling not actual object colour); flat colour zones no tonal modelling; simplified bold forms; 1905–1907 coherent group; green of hill = feeling-of-hill not specific grass; blue of sky = feeling-of-sky; Braque → Cubism; Derain → classical; Matisse → personal post-Fauvist programme (Dance/Moroccan paintings/Red Studio/late cut-outs Jazz 1947/Blue Nudes 1952); Guardian Matisse notes late cut-outs = fullest flat-colour realisation beginning with The Dance. Two versions: V1 1910 Hermitage (commissioned, 260×391 cm, most saturated, warmest pink-red, deepest blue, most resolved, DeckArts reproduces); V2 1909 MoMA New York Dance [I] (preparatory study, smaller, cooler less saturated, shows process, specific compositional differences). On deck diptych: warm white 2700K (flat green + blue = two cool zones, warm pink-red advances as warm primary, neutral ground no competition, most Japandi-adjacent warm-figure classical art); navy 2700K (flat blue merges with navy, warm red + green advance from combined cool, three flat colour events warm-from-cool, most dramatically colourful). Installation: dining room (above/beside dining table, good armchair social programme, five dancers above gathered social space, most joyful/social DeckArts installation); living room console secondary (contrast with bold dark sofa wall primary, quiet flat celebration on warm white); contemporary living room primary warm white (triptych ~$310 above compact sofa, no drama/darkness, pure joyful surface). Hermitage + Guardian Shchukin 2016 + Guardian Matisse + MoMA. DeckArts from ~$230. Canadian maple. UV archival 100+ years. Berlin. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.