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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Wanda de Guébriant.
The present drawing depicts a woman named Monique Bourgeois whom Matisse met in Vence in 1942. Bourgeois was in Vence to finish her nursing studies and took care of Matisse during one of his illnesses soon after they became acquainted. They met again in Vence at the end of 1943, around the time when the present work was executed. Monique would often visit Matisse, and in admiration of her features, Matisse asked her to pose for him. Her likeness can be found in four known paintings, as well as in drawings such as the present work.
As Louis Aragon recounted, 'Then one day Monique B. came to tell her great friend Matisse, before anyone else, that she was taking the veil. She became Sister Jacques-Marie' (L. Aragon, Henri Matisse, New York, 1972). She joined the order of the Dominican nuns, who had nursed her in the convalescent home. As Sister Jacques-Marie, she was instrumental to Matisse being chosen to create the decorative scheme for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, and also in the realization of the project.
Monique is a captivating portrait of this young woman. Her serene, oval-shaped face looks out at an oblique angle and her arms and the pleats of the blouse create a series of curves contrasted by the detail of her bracelet and the chair in the background. Of his portraiture Matisse said, 'My models are the principal theme in my work. I depend entirely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature. When I take on a new model, I intuit the pose that will best suit her from her unself-conscious attitudes of repose, and then I become slave of that pose. My plastic signs probably express their souls, which interests me subconsciously, or what else is there? Their forms are not always perfect, but they are always expressive. The emotional interest aroused in me by them does not appear particularly in the representation of their bodies, but often rather in the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper, which form its complete orchestration, its architecture' (quoted in J. Flam, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 328).
The present drawing depicts a woman named Monique Bourgeois whom Matisse met in Vence in 1942. Bourgeois was in Vence to finish her nursing studies and took care of Matisse during one of his illnesses soon after they became acquainted. They met again in Vence at the end of 1943, around the time when the present work was executed. Monique would often visit Matisse, and in admiration of her features, Matisse asked her to pose for him. Her likeness can be found in four known paintings, as well as in drawings such as the present work.
As Louis Aragon recounted, 'Then one day Monique B. came to tell her great friend Matisse, before anyone else, that she was taking the veil. She became Sister Jacques-Marie' (L. Aragon, Henri Matisse, New York, 1972). She joined the order of the Dominican nuns, who had nursed her in the convalescent home. As Sister Jacques-Marie, she was instrumental to Matisse being chosen to create the decorative scheme for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, and also in the realization of the project.
Monique is a captivating portrait of this young woman. Her serene, oval-shaped face looks out at an oblique angle and her arms and the pleats of the blouse create a series of curves contrasted by the detail of her bracelet and the chair in the background. Of his portraiture Matisse said, 'My models are the principal theme in my work. I depend entirely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature. When I take on a new model, I intuit the pose that will best suit her from her unself-conscious attitudes of repose, and then I become slave of that pose. My plastic signs probably express their souls, which interests me subconsciously, or what else is there? Their forms are not always perfect, but they are always expressive. The emotional interest aroused in me by them does not appear particularly in the representation of their bodies, but often rather in the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper, which form its complete orchestration, its architecture' (quoted in J. Flam, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 328).