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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Prior to 1935, drawings held a subsidiary role in Matisse's work, serving as a means of solving compositional problems that the artist encountered in his works on canvas. From 1935 onward, the act of drawing became virtually an obsession; it had become central to his art, and served as the catalyst for changes in the evolution of his painterly aesthetic. Matisse liked to paint in the mornings, and draw in the afternoons, laying down the framework for the next day's work. John Elderfield has noted, "Painting and drawing were separated activities, and line and color functioned separately. This led Matisse to shift his attention, around 1937, to charcoal drawing, where line coalesced from areas of tonal shading...This, it seems, could help bring back line and areas of color more closely together..." (The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 118).
In the present portrait, Matisse has deftly employed charcoal to create varying textures and densities of black and white, setting these gradations off the luminosity of the sheet. Of this combination of incisive lines with blended areas of shadow and tone, Pierre Schneider has written, "[Matisse's] other method was just as original...It consisted in rubbing out or blurring a drawing done in charcoal or pencil, using a stump, rag, eraser, or even a thumb. Over the indistinct forms of the erased drawing, the artist then made a new sketch. Successive states were thus superimposed, one on top of the other, each one partly covering over the previous sketch. The blurred traces of the erased drawings were a kind of foundation, a soil in which new forms could be rooted and from which they could draw strength–before being replaced, in turn, by a new form or sign" (Henri Matisse, London, 1984, pp. 578-579). The ability to view the artist’s working procedures is a valuable quality found in these types of rapidly drawn charcoal works. One of the end effects of this process is a wonderful sense of movement embodied in the model.
In his 1939 text Notes of a Painter on his Drawing, Matisse explained, "charcoal or stump drawing...allows me to consider simultaneously the character of the model, her human expression, the quality of surrounding light, the atmosphere and all that can only be expressed by drawing." He went on to describe his approach to the model: "The emotional interest they inspire in me is not particularly apparent in the representation of their bodies, but often rather by the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper and which forms its orchestration, its architecture" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 130-132). Matisse further explained, "I have always seen drawing not as the exercise of a particular skill, but above all as a means of expression of ultimate feelings and states of mind, but a means that is condensed in order to give more simplicity and spontaneity to the expression which should be conveyed directly to the spirit of the spectator" (op. cit., 1984, p. 11). This spontaneity is apparent in the heavily worked surface and the sculptural lines that comprise Tête de femme.
Prior to 1935, drawings held a subsidiary role in Matisse's work, serving as a means of solving compositional problems that the artist encountered in his works on canvas. From 1935 onward, the act of drawing became virtually an obsession; it had become central to his art, and served as the catalyst for changes in the evolution of his painterly aesthetic. Matisse liked to paint in the mornings, and draw in the afternoons, laying down the framework for the next day's work. John Elderfield has noted, "Painting and drawing were separated activities, and line and color functioned separately. This led Matisse to shift his attention, around 1937, to charcoal drawing, where line coalesced from areas of tonal shading...This, it seems, could help bring back line and areas of color more closely together..." (The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 118).
In the present portrait, Matisse has deftly employed charcoal to create varying textures and densities of black and white, setting these gradations off the luminosity of the sheet. Of this combination of incisive lines with blended areas of shadow and tone, Pierre Schneider has written, "[Matisse's] other method was just as original...It consisted in rubbing out or blurring a drawing done in charcoal or pencil, using a stump, rag, eraser, or even a thumb. Over the indistinct forms of the erased drawing, the artist then made a new sketch. Successive states were thus superimposed, one on top of the other, each one partly covering over the previous sketch. The blurred traces of the erased drawings were a kind of foundation, a soil in which new forms could be rooted and from which they could draw strength–before being replaced, in turn, by a new form or sign" (Henri Matisse, London, 1984, pp. 578-579). The ability to view the artist’s working procedures is a valuable quality found in these types of rapidly drawn charcoal works. One of the end effects of this process is a wonderful sense of movement embodied in the model.
In his 1939 text Notes of a Painter on his Drawing, Matisse explained, "charcoal or stump drawing...allows me to consider simultaneously the character of the model, her human expression, the quality of surrounding light, the atmosphere and all that can only be expressed by drawing." He went on to describe his approach to the model: "The emotional interest they inspire in me is not particularly apparent in the representation of their bodies, but often rather by the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper and which forms its orchestration, its architecture" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 130-132). Matisse further explained, "I have always seen drawing not as the exercise of a particular skill, but above all as a means of expression of ultimate feelings and states of mind, but a means that is condensed in order to give more simplicity and spontaneity to the expression which should be conveyed directly to the spirit of the spectator" (op. cit., 1984, p. 11). This spontaneity is apparent in the heavily worked surface and the sculptural lines that comprise Tête de femme.