The Conversation, a painting by Henri Matisse dating from 1908 to 1912, depicts the artist and his wife facing each other before a background of intense blue.

Matisse painted The Conversation at a time when he had abandoned the open, spontaneous brushwork of his Fauve period in favor of a flatter and more decorative style.

Art historian Hilary Spurling has described this "stern encounter" as "portray[ing] the profound underlying shape or mechanism of a relationship laid down for both parties on the day, soon after they first met in 1897, when Matisse warned his future wife that, dearly as he loved her, he would always love painting more.

They had recently been introduced to Europe from India, where they were worn by tea planters, and Matisse habitually thereafter wore pajamas as his studio working clothes.

[1] Spurling, Hilary (11 August 2005), "Matisse's Pajamas", The New York Review of Books, 52 (13): 33–36, retrieved 17 April 2017