The colorful, painterly, uplifting, and often joyous works of Henri Matisse are critical in the history of modern art. Throughout his many years as a painter, the celebrated artist kept returning to one particular subject—the windowed interior. Henri Matisse: Rooms with a View explores in depth, for the first time, the full significance of the window in Matisse’s thinking about interior and exterior space.

Matisse studied and rearranged his rooms constantly; when he lived in hotels and small apartments his living quarters usually doubled as his studio. In a continuous engagement with these spaces he produced not only singular masterpieces but also developed a theme as rich as the traditional landscape or portrait. In each new phase of his art and with every change of residence, Matisse reinvented the theme of the window.