living room · Moderne
The Matisse Salon
A curved room panelled in warm wood, built around one painting the size of the wall.
Nelson A. Rockefeller apartment, New York · Wallace K. Harrison and Jean-Michel Frank
Layout
Everything faces the fireplace, and the fireplace faces the painting above it. Two sit to its left, a to its right, and a low lacquered coffee table in the foreground. Two matching armchairs, and the rest of the room can be loose.
Colour
Warm all over: orange-brown wood, upholstery, on the sofa, on the lamps and tables. The painting brings the only strong colours, black, green, red and lilac. The painting's lilac comes back in the rug underfoot.
Materials
Curved walls panelled in , floor to ceiling, under a gilt cornice. Wrapped in one wood, the room reads as one warm box. Gilt, cream fabric and mustard silk are all the same temperature. Wood, gilt and silk sit together because none of them is cold.
Pattern & texture
The wood grain is the ground. The only pattern is a in and fawn, loose and like the painting above it.
Light
Low and warm: a on the left and a table lamp with a white shade on the right, both throwing light up the panelling. The painting is lit from the ceiling.
Styling
Over the fireplace, a that fills the wall from cornice to mantel. Size one artwork to the wall, not the wall to the artwork. In the grate, a pair of . Carved figures on round gilt side tables stand at either side.