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Lot Essay
Wanda de Gubriant has confirmed the authenticity of this drawing.
Although Matisse drew in pen and black ink throughout his career, he executed very few broadly-rendered ink drawings after his Fauve period until the 1930s, when he turned to brush and black ink to create a series of drawings that equal the achievement of his richly-shaded charcoal drawings of the same period. Whereas the Fauve drawings are composed of a network of lines, spots and scribbles of ink that create the effect of abrupt contrasts of light and shade, the later brush and ink drawings possess a classical discipline and a refined sense of overall design. The artist fills the entire sheet in grand, gestural strokes of the brush; "figure and ground interact in a give-and-take of space that keeps them resolute in their flatness and luminous in their exhilarating openness. This is truly a kind of painting by reduced means." (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 128)
Although Matisse drew in pen and black ink throughout his career, he executed very few broadly-rendered ink drawings after his Fauve period until the 1930s, when he turned to brush and black ink to create a series of drawings that equal the achievement of his richly-shaded charcoal drawings of the same period. Whereas the Fauve drawings are composed of a network of lines, spots and scribbles of ink that create the effect of abrupt contrasts of light and shade, the later brush and ink drawings possess a classical discipline and a refined sense of overall design. The artist fills the entire sheet in grand, gestural strokes of the brush; "figure and ground interact in a give-and-take of space that keeps them resolute in their flatness and luminous in their exhilarating openness. This is truly a kind of painting by reduced means." (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 128)