DESIGNER'S NOTES

A bright and colourful Fox & Chave silk habotai scarf featuring an element of the work Pineapple and Anemones (1940) by the French artist and printmaker Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Matisse played a central role in the birth and development of Fauvism, a movement distinguished by wild, expressive use of colour and brushwork rather than realistic detail.

Around 1905, Matisse, along with André Derain and others, exhibited works with bold non-natural colours, flattened space, and energetic, visible strokes. These works heralded a new art where colour itself, its contrasts, harmonies, and emotional resonance, became a primary expressive tool.

Over the following decades, Matisse continued to push painting forward through compositions such as The Red Studio (1911), Goldfish (1912), and later still life works including Pineapple and Anemones (1940), an oil-on-canvas work in which he arranges a pineapple and vivid anemone flowers against lush foliage and coloured surfaces. Here he shows his mature painting style: the forms are simplified, colour vibrant and autonomous, and the composition emphasises decorative rhythm and emotional warmth rather than illusionistic depth.

Painting allowed Matisse decades of experimentation in colour, line, form, and spatial flattening. These oils and canvases provide a through-line from his early Fauvist breakthroughs to his later artistic maturity and his later cut-outs. 

COLOURS

STYLING

A Fox & Chave habotai silk scarf can be worn with the classic knot style or a pussycat bow. You can even create a shawl effect by knotting two scarves together behind your neck and allowing them to drape over your shoulders. More scarf styling ideas are available in this wonderful How to Tie a Scarf book.