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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
After completing the Vence Chapel commission in 1951, Matisse continued to conceive decorative projects in stained glass and tile relief. He divided his time between drawing in charcoal, brush and black ink, and using scissors to create cut-outs from hand-coloured papers. 'Paintings seem to be finished for me now,' he wrote to his daughter Marguerite Duthuit. 'I’m for decoration—there I give everything I can—I put into it all the acquisitions of my life' (quoted in H. Spurling, Matisse the Master, New York, 2005, p. 428).
In his drawings Matisse turned to the figure, more often to portraiture. Matisse’s subjects in this phase may appear female, male, or androgynous; individual character vies with essence for the total effect.
John Elderfield has called these late portrait drawings 'haunting and highly memorable works of art–such bare, exposed things. They illuminate, as does the late work in particular, with a very steady light, spreading to fill the sheet with an even radiance. And for all their power as images, their drawing is indeed curiously unobtrusive: the fewest and swiftest of lines and the glowing sign is there' (The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., London, 1984, p. 134).
Executed in 1952, Nu aux fleurs is a perfect expression of the Bonheur de vivre that Matisse persisted in portraying until the end of his life. The female figure is drawn with swift lines of charcoal typical of this final, prolific phase of the artist's career, and is reminiscent of the neat edges of his cut-outs. In her hands, the figure holds a bunch of flowers, a joyful recurrent theme in Matisse’s œuvre, as well as a possible reference to the religious symbolism of his last masterpiece, the Vence Chapel.
After completing the Vence Chapel commission in 1951, Matisse continued to conceive decorative projects in stained glass and tile relief. He divided his time between drawing in charcoal, brush and black ink, and using scissors to create cut-outs from hand-coloured papers. 'Paintings seem to be finished for me now,' he wrote to his daughter Marguerite Duthuit. 'I’m for decoration—there I give everything I can—I put into it all the acquisitions of my life' (quoted in H. Spurling, Matisse the Master, New York, 2005, p. 428).
In his drawings Matisse turned to the figure, more often to portraiture. Matisse’s subjects in this phase may appear female, male, or androgynous; individual character vies with essence for the total effect.
John Elderfield has called these late portrait drawings 'haunting and highly memorable works of art–such bare, exposed things. They illuminate, as does the late work in particular, with a very steady light, spreading to fill the sheet with an even radiance. And for all their power as images, their drawing is indeed curiously unobtrusive: the fewest and swiftest of lines and the glowing sign is there' (The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., London, 1984, p. 134).
Executed in 1952, Nu aux fleurs is a perfect expression of the Bonheur de vivre that Matisse persisted in portraying until the end of his life. The female figure is drawn with swift lines of charcoal typical of this final, prolific phase of the artist's career, and is reminiscent of the neat edges of his cut-outs. In her hands, the figure holds a bunch of flowers, a joyful recurrent theme in Matisse’s œuvre, as well as a possible reference to the religious symbolism of his last masterpiece, the Vence Chapel.