The Snail (L'escargot) is a collage by Henri Matisse.The work was created from summer 1952 to early 1953. It is pigmented with gouache on paper, cut and pasted onto a base layer of white paper measuring 9'43⁄4" × 9' 5" (287 × 288 cm). The piece is in the Stedelijk museum collection in Amsterdam.It consists of a number of colored shapes arranged in a spiral pattern, as suggested by the title. Matisse first drew the snail, then used the colored paper to interpret it.