Conversation, painted in the artist's country house in the summer of 1909, is one of the important works Matisse produced during the highly productive period 1908-13. Only slightly smaller than The Red Room, the images are simplified, minimalized. The central figures of Matisse and his wife Amelie are schematic, while still retaining a portrait likeness. Most importantly, whilst depicting a moment in real life, Matisse "captures the truer and more profound meaning behind it, which serves the artist as a point of departure for a more consistent interpretation of reality," as he himself wrote in 1908. We enter into the blue world of the Conversation, sink deep into the atmosphere of color. The blue color does not represent solidity; this is not the color of the carpet or the color of the wall. Filling a large part of the painting space, the blue bears the concept of space through the force of the associations it gives rise to. It is cold; it is... (hhttp://art-matisse.com/1910_22.html)