St. Louisans might not realize it, but one of the most important paintings of the early Twentieth Century is right here at the St. Louis Art Museum. Henri Matisse’s 1907-9 Bathers with a Turtle set a new standard in modern art in the decade before World War I, in a period of artistic exploration and growth in the Frenchman’s career.

The exhibition, Matisse and the Sea brings together our own famous work with others by the artist and shows how the influence of his time by the seashore and the arrival of African art, particularly masks, aided in the development of Modern art.

Like other artists such as Paul Gauguin, who a generation before had traveled to the South Pacific, Matisse likewise sought inspiration in Tahiti, a French territory.

Of course, the sea had long been a subject of French artists, including the Impressionists such as Claude Monet. Those artists, however, had been strictly representational artists, and now Matisse was paving the way for what would eventually become abstract art, even if his own works in the exhibition still showed the natural world.

Rounding out the exhibit are some of Matisse’s famous cut-outs, which due to their fragility rarely travel, we see how the artist has further pushed the realm of modernity. The exhibit is an excellent companion to think about how Modernism was affecting St. Louis architecture at the same time as Matisse’s painting was changing Western art.