M.S. Rau’s Matisse on View at SFMOMA

Henri Matisse is celebrated as one of the most daring colorists in the history of Western art. His radical reimagining of color and form in the early 20th century helped ignite an artistic revolution that changed painting forever—and it all began in a single, extraordinary summer.

A landmark exhibition, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, brings that revolution into vivid focus. Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal offers an unprecedented examination of one of the most consequential paintings in the museum's collection and traces its far-reaching impact across more than 120 years of art history.

M.S. Rau is honored to have our extraordinary Matisse oil painting, Un beau matin d'été (1905), selected for inclusion in this historic exhibition, on view at SFMOMA from May 16 through September 13, 2026.

Important Exhibition

This ambitious exhibition is the first to tell the complete story of Matisse's iconic Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), the portrait of his wife, Amélie, that scandalized audiences at its debut in 1905. The presentation explores not only the painting itself but the broader Fauvist upheaval it came to represent.

At the heart of the exhibition is a restaging of Gallery VII of the 1905 Salon d'Automne, the room that inspired critic Louis Vauxcelles to brand Matisse and his colleagues les Fauves—"the Wild Beasts." SFMOMA has reunited the greatest number of works from that legendary display in over a century, including paintings by André Derain, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, Charles Camoin and Henri Manguin.

The exhibition further traces how artists across generations have responded to Femme au chapeau, from Matisse's contemporaries to Bay Area Figurative painters like Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, as well as contemporary artists such as Hilary Harkness, Rachel Harrison and David Hockney.

From New Orleans to San Francisco

M.S. Rau is proud to have Un beau matin d'été (1905) selected for this historic exhibition. Its importance goes beyond its striking composition—a sun-drenched street scene in the French Riviera. It was painted during the same transformative summer of 1905 that produced the famed Femme au chapeau at the center of SFMOMA's show.

Just weeks before the fateful autumn Salon that would transform modern art, Matisse and André Derain spent an intense period working together in Collioure, a fishing port on the southern coast of France. Over the course of approximately fourteen weeks, Matisse produced just fifteen extraordinary oils, as well as many more watercolors and drawings, inspired by the brilliant Mediterranean light, and the remarkable Un beau matin d'été was one of them.

The word "café" is visible in the upper left corner, anchoring the composition in the daily life of the village. Figures emerge as bold silhouettes against a riot of purples, reds, blues, greens and yellows—colors chosen not to replicate the observed world but to express the sensation of a luminous Mediterranean morning.

The trees glow in magenta and crimson, the ground shimmers in cobalt and gold and the entire canvas vibrates with chromatic intensity.

This painting is a firsthand document of the artistic breakthrough the exhibition seeks to illuminate: the liberation of color from description that Matisse and his colleagues championed. Importantly, SFMOMA is not the first major institution that has requested Un beau matin d’été; in 2005, the centennial of Fauvism, the painting was showcased at the Musée d'art moderne de Céret and the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in the acclaimed exhibition, Matisse-Derain: Collioure 1905, un été fauve.

Why You Should Make the Trip

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, located in the heart of the city's SoMa district, is one of the foremost institutions for modern and contemporary art in the United States. SFMOMA's connection to Femme au chapeau is itself a remarkable chapter in art history: the painting entered the museum's collection in 1991 as a bequest of Elise S. Haas, who had purchased it from Sarah Stein in 1948.

Under the terms of its bequest, Femme au chapeau cannot travel—making SFMOMA the exclusive venue for this exhibition and the only place in the world to experience the full story of this revolutionary painting and its impact on art history.

Whether you are a devoted scholar of early modernism or simply drawn to the transformative power of color, Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal offers a rare opportunity to witness the painting that helped launch a movement, alongside related masterpieces such as M.S. Rau's Un beau matin d'été.

Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal runs May 16 through September 13, 2026, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, located at 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California.

Works Cited

“Henri Matisse Biography.” M.S. Rau, https://rauantiques.com/blogs/artists-bio/henri-matisse-bio.

“Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal.” SFMOMA, https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/matisse-femme-au-chapeau/.

“Un beau matin d'été by Henri Matisse.” M.S. Rau, https://rauantiques.com/products/un-beau-matin-dete-by-henri-matisse.

“Femme au chapeau.” SFMOMA Collection, https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/91.161/.

“Wild Color, Radical Vision: Understanding Fauvist Art.” M.S. Rau, https://rauantiques.com/blogs/canvases-carats-and-curiosities/wild-color-radical-vision-understanding-fauvist-art.

“What’s the Difference Between Watercolor and Gouache?” M.S. Rau, https://rauantiques.com/blogs/canvases-carats-and-curiosities/what-s-the-difference-between-watercolor-and-gouache.

“Interior of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California 01.” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_San_Francisco_Museum_of_Modern_Art,_California_01.jpg.