The Dance

The story of The Dance

Five figures the color of terracotta hold hands in a ring on a green hill under a blue sky, and that is the entire painting. Matisse made it in 1910 for the staircase of a Moscow collector's house, and it is now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. There is no shading, no landscape detail, no faces to speak of. The energy comes from the ring itself, which is not quite closed: the two figures at the front are reaching for each other and have not yet caught hold. It was mocked when it was shown and is now one of the founding images of modern art.

On a wall, The Dance is pure color. The three flat tones, brick red, emerald green, and cobalt blue, are as saturated as a flag, so the painting is a bright spot in any room and looks best against white or pale gray where the colors can vibrate. It suits a kitchen, a kids' room, a studio, a stairwell, or a hallway, and it fits mid-century, Scandinavian, and color-confident modern interiors. Our source image supports the Mini at 12.2 × 8 in, so this one is a small-wall piece: hang it above a desk, over a light switch cluster in a hallway, or as the color note in a gallery wall of black-and-white prints.

Its companion, Music, was painted for the same staircase and uses the same three colors with the figures sitting still. Le Bonheur de Vivre has the same ring of dancers in the far distance five years earlier, and Derain's Mountains at Collioure is the Fauvist landscape from the summer that started it all. More from Henri Matisse.

We print from a public-domain photograph of the Hermitage canvas in our own studio, matching the three colors to the museum reference rather than to the brighter versions that circulate online.