CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/7/2026

The influence of Henri Matisse’s “Femme au chapeau”

Now considered an icon of the French Fauvist movement, this 1905 portrait of Henri Matisse’s wife, Amélie, is at the center of the exhibition Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: 1905 to Today, opening next week at SFMOMA. When Matisse first presented the painting at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, “shortly after applying the final dabs of paint in the early fall of 1905, the canvas was received with laughs and jeers from visitors, confusion and skepticism from critics, but also with admiration for its innovation,” curators Janet Bishop and Maria Castro write in the catalog. “The American expatriate collector Leo Stein encompassed both sides of the argument, calling the painting ‘the nastiest smear of paint [he] had ever seen,’ and then going on to purchase the work, with his sister Gertrude Stein, on the last day of the exhibition.” Lovers of this painting will delight in this sumptuous, clothbound exhibition catalog which positions “Femme au chapeau” in dialogue with Matisse’s artistic influences and contemporaries, as well as the many generations of painters and sculptors who have taken off from this work.