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拍品專文
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In 1920, at the age of fifty-one and with his reputation as a leader of the avant-garde firmly established, Matisse intentionally turned away from his earlier work and set about to find a new artistic direction. "My idea is to push further and deeper into true painting," he explained to his wife, Amélie (quoted in H. Spurling, Matisse the Master, A Life of Henri Matisse, The Conquest of Color, 1909-1954, New York, 2007, vol. II, p. 223). His work during the post-World War I period reflected a relaxation and softening of his approach, a "return to order" that can be compared with the neoclassicism of Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky during this time.
Bords de la Seine à Vétheuil was painted during one of Matisse's excursions to the outskirts of Paris, as he toured the countryside with his son, Pierre. Vétheuil, a sleepy, agrarian hamlet located about forty miles northwest of Paris, attracted artists such as Henri Rousseau and Claude Monet, who painted the Seine from a similar vantage point to the present work (fig. 1; Wildenstein, no. 597). Monet lived in Vétheuil from 1878 to 1881, and the years that he spent there represent a watershed moment in his artistic development that influenced Matisse greatly. Following his move to Vétheuil, Monet entirely abandoned the contemporary themes that had dominated his earlier oeuvre, and began to focus instead on capturing fugitive aspects of nature. Carole McNamara has written: "The acknowledged painter of contemporary life who settled in Vétheuil in 1878 departed from that town in 1881, as from a chrysalis, renewed and redirected. He was no longer the painter of modernity who 'preferred an English garden to a corner of the forest,' as Zola had described him. Monet settled farther downriver at Giverny and, through his series paintings, created a whole new understanding of landscape painting. Many of those later innovations derived their impetus from the paintings executed [at Vétheuil]" (C. Stuckey et al., Monet at Vétheuil, The Turning Point, exh. cat., University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 1998, p. 86).
As Matisse pursued a more naturalistic means of expression in the present painting, Jack Flam notes, "these landscapes must be seen as experiments not only in styles but in the kinds of reactions that one can have to a place or motif. Matisse has painted very different kinds of reaction to very similar motifs, ranging from the lyrical to the violent, the descriptive to the evocative... Now, having become a great modernist, he turned again to the complex visual stimulation of landscapes to free himself of old habits and let the masters of nineteenth-century French landscape painting guide him back to the appearance of the real world from which his work had become progressively removed" (Matisse, The Man and His Art, 1869-1918, London, 1986, pp. 461-462).
(fig. 1) Claude Monet, Au Bords de la Seine, près de Vétheuil, 1880. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
In 1920, at the age of fifty-one and with his reputation as a leader of the avant-garde firmly established, Matisse intentionally turned away from his earlier work and set about to find a new artistic direction. "My idea is to push further and deeper into true painting," he explained to his wife, Amélie (quoted in H. Spurling, Matisse the Master, A Life of Henri Matisse, The Conquest of Color, 1909-1954, New York, 2007, vol. II, p. 223). His work during the post-World War I period reflected a relaxation and softening of his approach, a "return to order" that can be compared with the neoclassicism of Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky during this time.
Bords de la Seine à Vétheuil was painted during one of Matisse's excursions to the outskirts of Paris, as he toured the countryside with his son, Pierre. Vétheuil, a sleepy, agrarian hamlet located about forty miles northwest of Paris, attracted artists such as Henri Rousseau and Claude Monet, who painted the Seine from a similar vantage point to the present work (fig. 1; Wildenstein, no. 597). Monet lived in Vétheuil from 1878 to 1881, and the years that he spent there represent a watershed moment in his artistic development that influenced Matisse greatly. Following his move to Vétheuil, Monet entirely abandoned the contemporary themes that had dominated his earlier oeuvre, and began to focus instead on capturing fugitive aspects of nature. Carole McNamara has written: "The acknowledged painter of contemporary life who settled in Vétheuil in 1878 departed from that town in 1881, as from a chrysalis, renewed and redirected. He was no longer the painter of modernity who 'preferred an English garden to a corner of the forest,' as Zola had described him. Monet settled farther downriver at Giverny and, through his series paintings, created a whole new understanding of landscape painting. Many of those later innovations derived their impetus from the paintings executed [at Vétheuil]" (C. Stuckey et al., Monet at Vétheuil, The Turning Point, exh. cat., University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 1998, p. 86).
As Matisse pursued a more naturalistic means of expression in the present painting, Jack Flam notes, "these landscapes must be seen as experiments not only in styles but in the kinds of reactions that one can have to a place or motif. Matisse has painted very different kinds of reaction to very similar motifs, ranging from the lyrical to the violent, the descriptive to the evocative... Now, having become a great modernist, he turned again to the complex visual stimulation of landscapes to free himself of old habits and let the masters of nineteenth-century French landscape painting guide him back to the appearance of the real world from which his work had become progressively removed" (Matisse, The Man and His Art, 1869-1918, London, 1986, pp. 461-462).
(fig. 1) Claude Monet, Au Bords de la Seine, près de Vétheuil, 1880. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.