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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Initially trained as a lawyer, Matisse began his formal artistic studies in Paris in 1891 under the tutelage of William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julien, and Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-arts. His early works were executed in a traditional Academic manner; however, a trip to Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904 to visit his good friend Paul Signac opened the painter's eyes to the warm light and rich, saturated colors of the south of France. Following this visit, Matisse began to experiment with bolder palettes, and vowed to return to the south of France the following year to further explore the effects of shimmering light on landscape.
The practical rather than doctrinaire approach to the aims of Neo-Impressionism that Signac adopted at Saint-Tropez made him an important catalyst in progressive painting for years to come. Matisse had eagerly read Signac's treatise D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme when it was published in installments in 1898. When he stayed with Signac at Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904, Matisse began painting works such as the present Paysage, St. Tropez, which anticipate the radical Fauve works that he would create the following year at Collioure. Most notable is Luxe, calme et volupté (fig. 1), which was interpreted by critics and fellow artists alike as Matisse's formal declaration of Divisionist allegiance when it was exhibited in the spring of 1905. According to Elizabeth Cross, “The major Fauve, Henri Matisse, spent the summer of 1904 working with Cross and Signac in Saint-Tropez. This was the turning point in Matisse’s art. Inspired, he embraced both Neo-Impressionism’s theoretical stand on the division of colours into optically charged complementary hues and the Mediterranean group’s recreated Arcadian, pastoral idyll. Matisse’s now legendary painting, Luxury, Calm and Pleasure, 1904, was the result” (“Late Neo-Impressionism,” Radiance, The Neo-Impressionists, exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012, p. 113).
The present work is related to a pencil drawing of the same subject which Matisse executed in 1904 (fig. 2). The painting is constructed in exactly the same manner as the pencil drawing, with the same horizon line, an identical house and cluster of trees in the center of the composition, the same tree branch entering the frame at upper right, and a similarly angled wall bisecting the lower edge from the right side. The only difference is that in the pencil drawing, Matisse has inserted himself into the composition by drawing his left foot perched atop the wall, his left hand holding his sketchbook. John Klein has written about the drawing: "Partial and marginalized also is the artist's presence in Landscape, Saint-Tropez. In a strange composition, he has shown a landscape, a landscape that he is drawing, one that also contains the image of him drawing. Fragments of his body are part of his view, as is the drawing pad he addresses" (Matisse Portraits, New Haven, 2001, p. 60).
Initially trained as a lawyer, Matisse began his formal artistic studies in Paris in 1891 under the tutelage of William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julien, and Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-arts. His early works were executed in a traditional Academic manner; however, a trip to Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904 to visit his good friend Paul Signac opened the painter's eyes to the warm light and rich, saturated colors of the south of France. Following this visit, Matisse began to experiment with bolder palettes, and vowed to return to the south of France the following year to further explore the effects of shimmering light on landscape.
The practical rather than doctrinaire approach to the aims of Neo-Impressionism that Signac adopted at Saint-Tropez made him an important catalyst in progressive painting for years to come. Matisse had eagerly read Signac's treatise D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme when it was published in installments in 1898. When he stayed with Signac at Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904, Matisse began painting works such as the present Paysage, St. Tropez, which anticipate the radical Fauve works that he would create the following year at Collioure. Most notable is Luxe, calme et volupté (fig. 1), which was interpreted by critics and fellow artists alike as Matisse's formal declaration of Divisionist allegiance when it was exhibited in the spring of 1905. According to Elizabeth Cross, “The major Fauve, Henri Matisse, spent the summer of 1904 working with Cross and Signac in Saint-Tropez. This was the turning point in Matisse’s art. Inspired, he embraced both Neo-Impressionism’s theoretical stand on the division of colours into optically charged complementary hues and the Mediterranean group’s recreated Arcadian, pastoral idyll. Matisse’s now legendary painting, Luxury, Calm and Pleasure, 1904, was the result” (“Late Neo-Impressionism,” Radiance, The Neo-Impressionists, exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012, p. 113).
The present work is related to a pencil drawing of the same subject which Matisse executed in 1904 (fig. 2). The painting is constructed in exactly the same manner as the pencil drawing, with the same horizon line, an identical house and cluster of trees in the center of the composition, the same tree branch entering the frame at upper right, and a similarly angled wall bisecting the lower edge from the right side. The only difference is that in the pencil drawing, Matisse has inserted himself into the composition by drawing his left foot perched atop the wall, his left hand holding his sketchbook. John Klein has written about the drawing: "Partial and marginalized also is the artist's presence in Landscape, Saint-Tropez. In a strange composition, he has shown a landscape, a landscape that he is drawing, one that also contains the image of him drawing. Fragments of his body are part of his view, as is the drawing pad he addresses" (Matisse Portraits, New Haven, 2001, p. 60).