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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Portrait de Marguerite dates from circa 1906 or 1907 and is an intimate, radiant likeness of Henri Matisse's daughter, created during a decade which is considered to have been the apogee for his drawings and indeed for the draughtsmanship of any artist of his generation. It was during the 1900s that Matisse explored various ways of rendering the world, tying in with his Pointillist and then his Fauve painting styles. In Portrait de Marguerite, Matisse has taken the intensity and concentration that marked his use of colour in his Fauve pictures, and has translated it to his assured sense of line. Marguerite's face has been captured using a group of flicking, darting lines that show only the most essential details and outlines. These lines seldom touch each other; each is surrounded by the lightness of the sheet which Matisse has left in bold reserve, perhaps following the example of Paul Cézanne, who died in 1906 and was then given posthumous retrospectives which captured the imagination of a new generation of artists. Matisse has pushed the use of the sheet to a new, bold extreme, channelling its luminosity, which is disrupted only by those economic, elegant lines.
Marguerite was Matisse's first child, the issue of his relationship with Camille Joblaud. When Matisse married Amélie some years later, she became a second mother for Marguerite, who became an indispensable part of the household and indeed the studio. Marguerite was a strong character, as would later be proven by her involvement in the French Resistance during the Second World War. However, she had also been ill several times; a few years before Matisse drew Portrait de Marguerite, she had been given an emergency tracheotomy that left her with a scar on her neck which she usually covered with a choker; in this picture, Matisse has replaced it with the linking loops of a necklace. This picture may date from the period of a second illness, when Marguerite stayed with Matisse and Amélie in Collioure, in the South of France, from November 1906 to September 1907 in order to recuperate.
During her stay, Matisse created several celebrated images of his daughter. In its deliberate economy of means, Portrait de Marguerite recalls a drawing now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York which shows her reading. That drawing, dated to circa 1906, related in turn to an oil painting now in the collection of the Musée de Grenoble. Unlike those pictures, Portrait de Marguerite shows Matisse's daughter looking directly at the artist, recalling the frontality of another oil likeness that is dated to circa 1906 or 1907, showing her with her hair up and with a choker. That image, which Matisse gave in an exchange of paintings to his friend and rival Pablo Picasso, was rendered with an equivalent restraint to Portrait de Marguerite, revealing his desire to capture a directness in his work. This directness was in part a reaction to his own children's drawings, which had impressed Matisse as they channelled a more subjective way of viewing and representing the world.
Looking at Portrait de Marguerite, it is clear why, in 1907, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire would describe Matisse as 'an artist who, I believe, combines in himself France's most appealing qualities: the power of her simplicity and the sweetness of her clarity. There is no simple relationship between painting and literature, and I have made every effort to avoid confusion on that subject. Yet Matisse aims for plastic expression the way a poet aims for lyrical expression' (Guillaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902-1918, ed. L.C. Breunig, London, 1972).
Portrait de Marguerite dates from circa 1906 or 1907 and is an intimate, radiant likeness of Henri Matisse's daughter, created during a decade which is considered to have been the apogee for his drawings and indeed for the draughtsmanship of any artist of his generation. It was during the 1900s that Matisse explored various ways of rendering the world, tying in with his Pointillist and then his Fauve painting styles. In Portrait de Marguerite, Matisse has taken the intensity and concentration that marked his use of colour in his Fauve pictures, and has translated it to his assured sense of line. Marguerite's face has been captured using a group of flicking, darting lines that show only the most essential details and outlines. These lines seldom touch each other; each is surrounded by the lightness of the sheet which Matisse has left in bold reserve, perhaps following the example of Paul Cézanne, who died in 1906 and was then given posthumous retrospectives which captured the imagination of a new generation of artists. Matisse has pushed the use of the sheet to a new, bold extreme, channelling its luminosity, which is disrupted only by those economic, elegant lines.
Marguerite was Matisse's first child, the issue of his relationship with Camille Joblaud. When Matisse married Amélie some years later, she became a second mother for Marguerite, who became an indispensable part of the household and indeed the studio. Marguerite was a strong character, as would later be proven by her involvement in the French Resistance during the Second World War. However, she had also been ill several times; a few years before Matisse drew Portrait de Marguerite, she had been given an emergency tracheotomy that left her with a scar on her neck which she usually covered with a choker; in this picture, Matisse has replaced it with the linking loops of a necklace. This picture may date from the period of a second illness, when Marguerite stayed with Matisse and Amélie in Collioure, in the South of France, from November 1906 to September 1907 in order to recuperate.
During her stay, Matisse created several celebrated images of his daughter. In its deliberate economy of means, Portrait de Marguerite recalls a drawing now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York which shows her reading. That drawing, dated to circa 1906, related in turn to an oil painting now in the collection of the Musée de Grenoble. Unlike those pictures, Portrait de Marguerite shows Matisse's daughter looking directly at the artist, recalling the frontality of another oil likeness that is dated to circa 1906 or 1907, showing her with her hair up and with a choker. That image, which Matisse gave in an exchange of paintings to his friend and rival Pablo Picasso, was rendered with an equivalent restraint to Portrait de Marguerite, revealing his desire to capture a directness in his work. This directness was in part a reaction to his own children's drawings, which had impressed Matisse as they channelled a more subjective way of viewing and representing the world.
Looking at Portrait de Marguerite, it is clear why, in 1907, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire would describe Matisse as 'an artist who, I believe, combines in himself France's most appealing qualities: the power of her simplicity and the sweetness of her clarity. There is no simple relationship between painting and literature, and I have made every effort to avoid confusion on that subject. Yet Matisse aims for plastic expression the way a poet aims for lyrical expression' (Guillaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902-1918, ed. L.C. Breunig, London, 1972).