Henri Matisse has become increasingly confident and venturesome, both as an artist and as a man.

Over the past two years he has undertaken expeditions to Brittany, met the veteran Impressionist Pissarro, and discovered the series of Impressionist masterpieces in the Caillebotte Collection.

His colors become (for a while) lighter in hue and at the same time more intense.

He takes his first major step toward stylistic liberation and creates a minor scandal at the Salon with La Desserte ("The Dinner Table"; 1897; Niarchos Collection, Athens), in which he combines a Renoir kind of luminosity with a firmly classical composition in deep red and green.