"Although ' was the most unnerving painting Picasso had done, Three Women... was more directly challenging to Matisse. ...The early version... that Matisse saw... encroached on territory Matisse had thought was his. The subject and style... owed much to Cézanne... The underlying subject... was also one that Matisse had been working with... in which process—the coming into being of things—was emphasized over stability. ...[I]ts outward-spiraling composition of three figures that seem to emerge from the bowels of the earth ...was a more resonant evocation of primal beginnings than had been Matisse's... Le Bonheur de vivre or Le Luxe... Three Women... contained a bold imbrication of the figures within their background—a motif Matisse had employed in his Fauve paintings, such as Woman in a Japanese Robe Beside the Sea... But whereas Matisse's merging... was based on... optical sensations, Picasso was developing a... symbolic language. ...also something Matisse had been involved with... especially in his... treatment of mythological themes. Picasso's Three Women seemed to combine references to a standard mythological theme... the Three Graces [previously classically painted by Botticelli, Raphael and Rubens], with a more generalized "birth of the world" imagery that went to the heart of the that had haunted both... along with... Derain, Vlaminck, and Braque... In response to Three Women, Matisse painted '..."