Exceptionally powerful paintings followed, among them the Pink Nude of 1935 and Music of 1939. In his Matisse monograph Alfred Barr illustrates sequential photographs of these, as well as of the Barnes mural, enabling us to glimpse something ofthe long process that Matisse’s “art of balance' demands. In 1941 he had to have a major intestinal operation; he recovered very quickly but was left much weakened and partly bed- ridden. He worked as much as he could, and in between working he prepared for work. Work cures everything', he wrote to a friend as late as September 1953-by which time, performed by a man in his seventies and early eighties, it had yielded a remarkable harvest. "A flowering after fifty years of effort' he called it.