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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
During the late 1930s, Matisse worked mainly on a series of dual-figure compositions in which he placed two female models in interior settings he created in his Nice studio, which the artist decorated with the large leaves of philadendron plants and assorted household accessories. The first of these pictures is the one Matisse titled Deux personnages féminins et le chien, which he began on 21 November 1937. This easel painting went through successive stages which Matisse's studio assistant and chief model Lydia Delectorskaya documented in photographs (op. cit., pp. 254-261). Matisse pronounced the canvas finished on 3 March 1938, and sent it to Paris to be photographed for inclusion in the magazine Verve. Following return shipment of the painting to Nice, Matisse resumed work on it, which included making major alterations to the harmonization of colors, before declaring it complete and definitive on 25 May 1938 (fig. 1), more than six months after he began it.
The drawing Femme assise dans un fauteuil is a related study made on 15 February 1938, at around the half-way point in Matisse's progress on the painting. This sheet shows an alternate version for the left hand figure, seated on and leaning against the back of a chair, here seen with her head facing the viewer rather toward her companion on the right side, as it does in the painting. Lydia served as his model, and in a less elaborate drawing done the next day, Matisse posed her nude in a similarly seated position (ibid., p. 255). The artist, however, does not appear to have introduced at any point this revised pose into his painting.
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 colour 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 colour 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).
(fig. 1) Henri Matisse, Le jardin d'hiver (Deux personnages féminins et le chien), Nice, May 1938. Private collection.
Barcode: 29175895
During the late 1930s, Matisse worked mainly on a series of dual-figure compositions in which he placed two female models in interior settings he created in his Nice studio, which the artist decorated with the large leaves of philadendron plants and assorted household accessories. The first of these pictures is the one Matisse titled Deux personnages féminins et le chien, which he began on 21 November 1937. This easel painting went through successive stages which Matisse's studio assistant and chief model Lydia Delectorskaya documented in photographs (op. cit., pp. 254-261). Matisse pronounced the canvas finished on 3 March 1938, and sent it to Paris to be photographed for inclusion in the magazine Verve. Following return shipment of the painting to Nice, Matisse resumed work on it, which included making major alterations to the harmonization of colors, before declaring it complete and definitive on 25 May 1938 (fig. 1), more than six months after he began it.
The drawing Femme assise dans un fauteuil is a related study made on 15 February 1938, at around the half-way point in Matisse's progress on the painting. This sheet shows an alternate version for the left hand figure, seated on and leaning against the back of a chair, here seen with her head facing the viewer rather toward her companion on the right side, as it does in the painting. Lydia served as his model, and in a less elaborate drawing done the next day, Matisse posed her nude in a similarly seated position (ibid., p. 255). The artist, however, does not appear to have introduced at any point this revised pose into his painting.
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 colour 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 colour 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).
(fig. 1) Henri Matisse, Le jardin d'hiver (Deux personnages féminins et le chien), Nice, May 1938. Private collection.
Barcode: 29175895