"As Picasso began to occupy the territory of Cézanne, Matisse seemed to be moving closer to the legacy of van Gogh and Gauguin... pushed to find a new and different way of dealing with the fluidity and dynamism... in Cézanne... by turning even more intensely toward the decorative. During most of 1908... Matisse continued to work with flat forms and to explore the inherent ambiguities of the pictorial field—especially... the sensation of limitless space and to have... the background become... more important than the figures it contained. Since childhood he had loved textiles, and he had an acute understanding of the possible symbolic uses for decorative patterns—as in van Gogh's portraits of Madame Roulin as "La Berceuse," in which the floral pattern... becomes a metaphor for her vitality and fertility. Matisse's use of decorative patterning also provided... another way of holding emotion at arm's length while maintaining its intensity. It allowed... a pictorial space... sufficiently open and imaginative to incorporate a... range of contrasting visual rhythms... to evoke different... perceptual sensations. Such a fluid and open space enabled him to invest everyday subjects with... spirituality."