Hotel Corridor, ca. 1907 – 1908

About the Work

The key to Room 12 is in the lock on the outside of the door. Someone is leaving the hotel in a hurry; a shoe can still be seen on the stairs. Strips of red carpet run down the landing like two intersecting highways. Anyone dashing along the carpet to escape the strange grey smoke emerging from the narrow corridor will fall into the black hole in the foreground. Auguste Chabaud belonged to the artistic circle around Henri Matisse. The hotel corridor in his painting is a symbol of the empty and yet hectic big city - an eerie place where people are in danger of getting lost.