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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
For Matisse, the act of drawing became virtually an obsession. 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, however, the process of drawing became central to his art, and served as the catalyst for changes in the evolution of his painterly aesthetic. By the time Matisse executed the present work in 1935, he had synthesized his fondness for lavish interior subjects like those painted in Nice with the simplified grandeur of his drawings; color and drawing were at once united.
Matisse had now reached the very summit of his skills as an innovative and expressive draughtsman. He was working simultaneously in two different techniques. He made pure line drawings in pen and ink, unshaded and bare, in which erasure and revision were not possible. He also drew, as seen here, with pieces of charcoal, working and reworking the lines with a stump (estompe, a thick paper stick used to blend the charcoal strokes), so that the final image appears to emerge from a shadowy network of pentimenti, partly erased and redone lines. The charcoal drawings were the artist's most important tool in preparing for his paintings, especially those with complex compositions. The pen-and-ink line drawings are most often entirely independent works, representing the subject distilled to its very essence.
In his 1939 text Notes of a Painter of his Drawing, Matisse explained that the "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 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). Elderfield has stated that the charcoal drawings "are realized in their own terms, and without exception show Matisse's stunning mastery of this especially sensual medium. The tonal gradations are extraordinarily subtle, yet appear to have been realized very spontaneously, and the keen sense of interchange between linear figure and ground adds tautness and intensity to their compositions... At their best, they are emotionally as well as technically rich and show us a more mortal Matisse than his pure line drawings do" (ibid., pp. 118-119).
For Matisse, the act of drawing became virtually an obsession. 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, however, the process of drawing became central to his art, and served as the catalyst for changes in the evolution of his painterly aesthetic. By the time Matisse executed the present work in 1935, he had synthesized his fondness for lavish interior subjects like those painted in Nice with the simplified grandeur of his drawings; color and drawing were at once united.
Matisse had now reached the very summit of his skills as an innovative and expressive draughtsman. He was working simultaneously in two different techniques. He made pure line drawings in pen and ink, unshaded and bare, in which erasure and revision were not possible. He also drew, as seen here, with pieces of charcoal, working and reworking the lines with a stump (estompe, a thick paper stick used to blend the charcoal strokes), so that the final image appears to emerge from a shadowy network of pentimenti, partly erased and redone lines. The charcoal drawings were the artist's most important tool in preparing for his paintings, especially those with complex compositions. The pen-and-ink line drawings are most often entirely independent works, representing the subject distilled to its very essence.
In his 1939 text Notes of a Painter of his Drawing, Matisse explained that the "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 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). Elderfield has stated that the charcoal drawings "are realized in their own terms, and without exception show Matisse's stunning mastery of this especially sensual medium. The tonal gradations are extraordinarily subtle, yet appear to have been realized very spontaneously, and the keen sense of interchange between linear figure and ground adds tautness and intensity to their compositions... At their best, they are emotionally as well as technically rich and show us a more mortal Matisse than his pure line drawings do" (ibid., pp. 118-119).