Henri Matisse's Great Leap Forward

Bathers by a River, 1909–10, 1913, 1916–17
The show examines how the artist often began a picture with something like a realistic scene, then distilled it repeatedly. This is what happened with his magnificent Bathers by a River. When he started the large wall painting in 1909, it was a panorama of voluptuous women in bright colors. When he finished it seven years later, the women were angular and anonymous, the setting radically flattened, and the river had become a vertical black band, with a stark white snake shooting upward along it like a bent poker.

• Article: Great Leap Forward