# Apples

- By: Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
- Date: 1916
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 116.5 × 89.5 cm (45 7/8 × 35 3/16 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: Gift of Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/64001)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/b2bc0fc2-8d17-1fcd-8cae-8626421c11ef/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

When the 45-year-old Henri Matisse was rejected from military service at the outbreak of World War I, a friend encouraged him to contribute to the war effort the best way he could: by continuing to paint well. This led to a productive period of compositional and material experimentation that Matisse hoped would sustain the tradition of French painting in the face of a cultural and national threat.

Matisse painted this still-life composition twice—in the abstract work seen here and also in a more traditionally representational version. A hidden light source bathes the scene in warm tones, which are offset by a swath of green. Luminous black consumes the background, reflecting Matisse’s challenge to himself to use black as a “color of light, not darkness.”

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0