Objective Critique

“Bathers with a Turtle” by Henri Matisse is an expressionist oil on canvas painting showing three women intrigued by a turtle that is at the bottom of the painting. Matisse separates the background into three parts using cool colors, the bottom green, the middle blue, and the top a darker tone of blue. Since the brown turtle and the women have warmer colors with pink and light brownish tones they pop out more to create a sense of space. In the Painting “Bathers with a Turtle”, Matisse places emphasis on the turtle by having its color be a reddish brown color to contrast with the blues and greens of the background, and also the skin tones of the bathers. Matisse also has done a nice job spacing the bathers apart to create balance in the painting, as well as a compositional structure of a circle.