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Lot Essay
Henri Matisse's Mère et enfant is a charcoal drawing on paper signed by the artist in 1951. This picture, which comes from the collection of Gérald Cramer, therefore dates from the same year as the inauguration of the famous chapel that he decorated in Vence, the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence. Perhaps it was because of that religious commission, which Matisse undertook despite being a distinctly non-practising Catholic, that the artist was drawn to the theme of the mother and child. Certainly, during the creation of the Chapel, Matisse explored a number of variations of the motif of the Madonna and the Christ-child. While the final version shows Mary standing up, holding the infant Jesus in a manner that prefigures his crucifixion, other earlier studies showed more naturalistic images of mothers holding children (the final model for the Madonna was the teenaged daughter of his former model Henriette Darricarrère; cf. H. Spurling, Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954, London, 2005, p. 456.
The subject of the mother and child recalls some of Matisse's earlier images of pairs of figures before a window, such as those created largely during the second half of the 1940s such as the poetically-named Le silence habité des maisons. At the same time, the notion of this being an image of the Madonna and her son is reinforced by the way that Matisse has so painstakingly worked the surface of the picture: alongside the line drawing that Matisse employed to create the main structure of the composition, he deliberately introduced tonal variations, primarily leaving these areas of grey on the woman's clothes, body and face. By contrast, the baby is left largely in reserve apart from an arm and some shadow, meaning that it appears luminous, perhaps evoking the status of her child as the Christian saviour.
Mère et enfant comes from the collection of Gérald Cramer, the Geneva-based art dealer and publisher who died in 1991. Cramer managed to combine his two métiers by creating a number of highly-prized artist's books as well as other publications. In 1958, only a few years after Matisse's death, Cramer held an exhibition of some of his works on paper in his gallery in Geneva. Cramer had already been a purchaser of works by Matisse during the artist's lifetime, including a cast of the bronze, Nu couché, 2me état from 1927, which was purchased from the dealer by the Tate Gallery, London.
The subject of the mother and child recalls some of Matisse's earlier images of pairs of figures before a window, such as those created largely during the second half of the 1940s such as the poetically-named Le silence habité des maisons. At the same time, the notion of this being an image of the Madonna and her son is reinforced by the way that Matisse has so painstakingly worked the surface of the picture: alongside the line drawing that Matisse employed to create the main structure of the composition, he deliberately introduced tonal variations, primarily leaving these areas of grey on the woman's clothes, body and face. By contrast, the baby is left largely in reserve apart from an arm and some shadow, meaning that it appears luminous, perhaps evoking the status of her child as the Christian saviour.
Mère et enfant comes from the collection of Gérald Cramer, the Geneva-based art dealer and publisher who died in 1991. Cramer managed to combine his two métiers by creating a number of highly-prized artist's books as well as other publications. In 1958, only a few years after Matisse's death, Cramer held an exhibition of some of his works on paper in his gallery in Geneva. Cramer had already been a purchaser of works by Matisse during the artist's lifetime, including a cast of the bronze, Nu couché, 2me état from 1927, which was purchased from the dealer by the Tate Gallery, London.