A Glimpse of Notre Dame in the Late Afternoon

From a high window the towers of Notre-Dame loom across the Seine in the hazy light of late afternoon, the cathedral and quay laid in with loose, dark, summary strokes. Matisse painted this early view before his color exploded into Fauvism, and already the scene is more about mood and structure than topographical detail. Now in Buffalo, A Glimpse of Notre Dame shows the future master of color in a sober, searching phase - the great Paris landmark dissolved into a few moody planes, an experiment on the road to the radical freedom soon to come.