Woman in a Hat by Henri Matisse

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Femme au Chapeau, or Woman with a Hat, by Henri Matisse caused consternation when it was first seen at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris. The portrait of his wife Amélie, with a face blotched with green, pink and yellow under a hairdo in brick red and cobalt blue, as well as a giant purple hat of her own making, with multi coloured feathers, became the centre of a passionate controversy. It drew the largest but mostly unfavourable attention and the “bright palette and loose and seemingly haphazard application” was deemed infantile and dismissed as madness by audience members and the media alike. One reviewer famously declared, “A pot of paint has just been thrown in the public’s face.”

Woman with a Hat, however, marked a pivotal moment in Matisse’s career, as it captured the attention of American collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein, who acquired the work on the last day of the exhibition and changed the fortunes of the struggling artist as well as that of his wife.