Lot Essay
Following a trip to Tahiti and then to the United States, Matisse returned to France to begin designs for a mural commissioned by Dr. Albert Barnes. As a result of his absorption in this commission, he did almost no new easel paintings. When he resumed painting in late 1933, the principal subject of Matisse's canvases was the female nude.
Nu au peignor presents to the viewer a stolid female figure seated on a chair in what is presumably the artist's studio. Behind her to the left is a white mantel, and on the right a turquoise folding screen and a yellow ottoman. The model rests her hands on her thighs and locks her right foot behind her left calf. Lost in thought, she has none of the foreboding, confrontational quality often found in Matisse's nudes. In many respects, the painting is a study in balancing a composition through the rhythms of a limited palette. Soft blue, Naples yellow, terracotta, turquoise and black are all evenly distributed across the canvas, the focal point of which is the rich matrix of fleshtones. The daydreaming figure, whose body extends slightly beyond the frame of the canvas, can be seen as a surrogate for the viewer, whose reverie and quiet contemplation are urgently provoked by the painter.
The essential significance of Matisse's formula of 'tranquility' lies in this: that the picture should transport the observer out of everyday reality, out of real life, into an abstract self- sufficient world. The observer must merely contemplate -- he must think of nothing, remember nothing, he must be wafted into an abstract world of color and form, extinguishing all senses but the visual. This principle is, in essence, an 'escape from reality.' This is the 'tranquility' that Matisse gives in his art. In his fantastic decorative world he calms the soul of modern man, gives him forgetfulness of the social dangers of modern life, whispers to him of eternal well-being. (A. Romm, Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 302)
Nu au peignor presents to the viewer a stolid female figure seated on a chair in what is presumably the artist's studio. Behind her to the left is a white mantel, and on the right a turquoise folding screen and a yellow ottoman. The model rests her hands on her thighs and locks her right foot behind her left calf. Lost in thought, she has none of the foreboding, confrontational quality often found in Matisse's nudes. In many respects, the painting is a study in balancing a composition through the rhythms of a limited palette. Soft blue, Naples yellow, terracotta, turquoise and black are all evenly distributed across the canvas, the focal point of which is the rich matrix of fleshtones. The daydreaming figure, whose body extends slightly beyond the frame of the canvas, can be seen as a surrogate for the viewer, whose reverie and quiet contemplation are urgently provoked by the painter.
The essential significance of Matisse's formula of 'tranquility' lies in this: that the picture should transport the observer out of everyday reality, out of real life, into an abstract self- sufficient world. The observer must merely contemplate -- he must think of nothing, remember nothing, he must be wafted into an abstract world of color and form, extinguishing all senses but the visual. This principle is, in essence, an 'escape from reality.' This is the 'tranquility' that Matisse gives in his art. In his fantastic decorative world he calms the soul of modern man, gives him forgetfulness of the social dangers of modern life, whispers to him of eternal well-being. (A. Romm, Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 302)