"Conversation"

Henri Matisse - Oil On Canvas - 177 x 217 cm - 1912
This painting portrays Matisse and his wife, facing each other in a blue room, and was created specifically for the collection of Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin, where it hung in his house until it was sized during the Russian Revolution of 1917, and later donated to the public. In the painting, Matisse wears the fashionable pajamas, which were introduced from India, where they were the traditional garb of tea-planters. Matisse found them so comfortable that he would paint in them, making them his working clothes. It now hangs in the collection of the Hermitage, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.