Henri matisse biography breve coffee

Painting by Henri Matisse

Arab Coffeehouse^[a] (French name: Le café Maure), is an oil-on-canvas painting by French visual artist Henri Matisse.

Produced in 1913, Arab Coffeehouse was part of a series of goldfish paintings that Matisse produced in the 1910s and 1920s.

Background

In 1912, Matisse visited Tangier, Morocco, where he noted how the locals would be fascinated for hours by goldfish swimming in bowls.^[2] Matisse was noted to admire the lifestyle of the Moroccans.^[2] Like other 20th-century cosmopolitan Parisian artists, Matisse "valued Islamic art for its ornamental exuberance and anti-illusionistic qualities".^[4]

Shortly after returning from Morocco to his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Matisse produced a series of nine paintings between the spring and early summer of 1912.^[2] That series included some works featuring goldfish, such as Goldfish.

The animal would become a frequently-recu