The light, pleasant and relaxed style of "Tea"
contrasts with works of Matisse's previous period, with their more strident
scenes and powerful colours.
The Hermitage Museum's Henry Matisse collection, known as the best in the world, has been boosted by the addition of another work, "Tea", on loan from the Los Angeles County Art Museum.
"Tea" has been placed in splendid solitude in hall No 333, alone in the room but for a large photograph of Matisse.
Certainly "Tea" is not as impressive as Matisse's "Dance" or his "Red Room," where shocking reds grab and hold one's attention by the sheer intensiveness of their hues.
But it does not aim for that powerful effect. Painted in 1919, in the relative tranquillity of the immediate post-World War I period, it accentuated quiet domestic pleasures.
In that its emphasis was typical of French art of that time, which was exhausted by the war.
"Tea" features an orchard in a Paris' suburb, which was purchased by Matisse a few years before, his daughter Margarite (right), a model Antoinette Arnu (left) and Lily the dog.
All the three are looking in one direction, as if seeing someone who is behind the scene.
There is some conjecture in Russian artistic literature, that the entering person might have been Sergei Dyagilev, famous Russian art and theater figure, or Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer and conductor. Both visited Matisse in 1919.
The picture is light, pleasant and relaxed and contrasts with the works of his previous period, with their more strident scenes and powerful colours.
Albert Kostenevich, the Hermitage's chief art critic, believes the picture never got the public attention it deserved. Russian artistic literary publications make no mention of it.
Prior to its acquisition by the Los Angeles museum in 1974, the picture was only once exhibited, in Paris and Venice in 1919-20.
Despite that it was highly appreciated by art critics. Among them was British critic Roger Frei, whom Mr Kostenevich said wrote: "If I could express my personal priorities, I would point to "Tea" as one of the top examples of Matisse's might -- where the play of big and simple arabesques, light on dark and dark on light, is contrasting with surprising joyfulness, and where a common scene of a regular life reaches almost monumental grandeur without any rhetorical falseness."
"Tea" has arrived in St Petersburg under an exchange program. The Hermitage recently loaned two Kandinsky works to the Los Angeles' museum.
Kandinsky's "Composition No 6" and a draft for the "Composition No 5" were exhibited there this summer in an exhibition of his compositions drawn from a variety of collections.