Which artist painted "Woman with a Hat"?

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (1869 – 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.

"Woman with a Hat" ("La femme au chapeau") is a painting by Henri Matisse. An oil on canvas painting that depicts a half-length portrait of Matisse's wife, Amelie. She is wearing an elaborate outfit with classic attributes of the French bourgeoisie with a gloved arm holding a fan and an elaborate hat perched on her head.

It was at the centre of the controversy that led to the christening of Fauvism the first modern art movement of the 20th century. The term fauve ("wild beast"), coined by an art critic, became forever associated with the artists who exhibited their brightly colored canvases in 1905 at the Salon d'Automne of the Grand Palais.

"Woman with a Hat" marked a stylistic change from the regulated brushstrokes of Matisse's earlier work to a more expressive individual style. His use of non-naturalistic colours and loose brushwork contributed to an "unfinished" quality. This appeared shocking to the viewers of the day.

It was bought by the Stein family after its initial showing despite the work being characterized by Leo Stein as "the nastiest smear of paint I had ever seen". In 1990 Elise S. Haas bequeathed the "Woman with a Hat" ("Femme au chapeau") to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.