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拍品专文
In 1935, inspired by the presence of his principal model, Lydia Delectorskaya, Matisse executed a series of drawings in pen and ink on white paper, rendered with a line as fine and unerring as that which he employed in his etchings. Known as the nu couché series—featuring the female model reclining amid sumptuously patterned textiles in the artist’s studio—this group inaugurated a larger series of studio nudes in various poses that Matisse continued into 1936-1937, including the present drawing, Nu dans un intérieur. Described by John Elderfield as “among the greatest achievements of his draughtsmanship,” these nudes saw the artist break new ground in his graphic oeuvre, as he captured, with an instinctive line, the sensuous forms of his models in perfect accord with their surroundings. “Some of the individual sheets are breathtaking in their assurance and audacity,” Elderfield continued, “and almost without exception, they realise what the comparable, late 1920s ink drawings did not: decorative assimilation of the figure into the decorated unity of the sheet” (The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, p. 113).
Pictured standing against a richly patterned wall hanging, the nude holds the viewer’s gaze in a pose both alluring and demure, as she lifts a blanket to partly obscure her form. The curve of her bent left leg and the arc of her breasts echo the rich patterning against which she is framed. Using the device of the mirror on the right side of the composition, Matisse opens the space and renders two views of his model, creating a drawing within a drawing. As Elderfield wrote, "In the great mid-1930s drawing, [line drawing] magically finds affinity with linear Eastern decorations and patterned fabrics, with arabesque ornament and latticework screens...The drawing itself is a latticework, an all-over patterned fabric" (ibid., p. 114).
In his 1930s drawings, Matisse expunged all other formal attributes, leaving behind the traditions of tonal modelling to create his compositions with solely the fine, singular line of the pen upon the paper. In the present work, the volume of the figure’s body is indicated through a singular undulant line and the negative space of the white sheet. The refined yet assured lines are echoed in the swirling array of the wall patterns, transforming this sheet into a visual paean to beauty and femininity. Matisse’s quest to capture the essence of physical form in his 1930s drawings laid the groundwork for the radical simplification he later achieved in his painted paper cut-outs, such as Nu bleu (The Museum of Modern Art, 1952), where the abstracted seated female figure is rendered in pure, monochromatic swaths of color.
Pictured standing against a richly patterned wall hanging, the nude holds the viewer’s gaze in a pose both alluring and demure, as she lifts a blanket to partly obscure her form. The curve of her bent left leg and the arc of her breasts echo the rich patterning against which she is framed. Using the device of the mirror on the right side of the composition, Matisse opens the space and renders two views of his model, creating a drawing within a drawing. As Elderfield wrote, "In the great mid-1930s drawing, [line drawing] magically finds affinity with linear Eastern decorations and patterned fabrics, with arabesque ornament and latticework screens...The drawing itself is a latticework, an all-over patterned fabric" (ibid., p. 114).
In his 1930s drawings, Matisse expunged all other formal attributes, leaving behind the traditions of tonal modelling to create his compositions with solely the fine, singular line of the pen upon the paper. In the present work, the volume of the figure’s body is indicated through a singular undulant line and the negative space of the white sheet. The refined yet assured lines are echoed in the swirling array of the wall patterns, transforming this sheet into a visual paean to beauty and femininity. Matisse’s quest to capture the essence of physical form in his 1930s drawings laid the groundwork for the radical simplification he later achieved in his painted paper cut-outs, such as Nu bleu (The Museum of Modern Art, 1952), where the abstracted seated female figure is rendered in pure, monochromatic swaths of color.