The bright red goldfish are surrogates for the artist himself, gazing at the world through his thick eyeglass.
Confined within the miniaturized pond of their bowl, the goldfish, restlessly contemplate the reclining nude.
On tabletop, nature is miniaturized and transformed into proxies: the bowl for the pond, the flowers for foliage, the sculpture for a real woman.
The nude at the right, posed to reveal full breasts and hips, possess in fact only faint, remembered sensuality: it is only a terra cotta statuette, outlined without erotic insistence.
Goldfish and Sculpture by Henri Matisse
