Some people think The Miliners, painted in 1919, is a significant work. It too, contains family portraits: my mother, William’s mother, his sisters Sophie, Bessie, and Minna, along with Katie. Hats were at one time an important finish to a woman’s costume. She wasn’t considered completely dressed without a hat, which might include such decor as large ostrich feathers, curled or uncurled. It was a decade later that I learned Matisse painted his wife, who had been a milliner, in such a hat, with an uncurled ostrich feather drooping onto her black hair.
—Theresa Bernstein, The Journal
