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Lot Essay
A photo-certificate from Wanda de Guébriant dated Paris, 8 February 1984 accompanies this drawing, which is recorded as no. T 48 in the artist's archives.
In April 1930 Albert Skira, the Swiss publisher who was bringing out his first art books, made a contract with Matisse to provide thirty etchings for an edition of Jean de La Fontaine's 1669 novel, Les Amours de Psyché et Cupidon.
In order to provide a suitably exotic setting for this recounting of Hellenistic myth, Matisse turned not to the antique cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, but instead to the Orientalist tradition in French painting, which he had embraced first hand during his trips to Morocco in 1912-1913. Matisse wrote to Tériade in 1929: "I do Odalisques in order to do nudes. But how does one do the nude without it being artificial? And then, because I know that they exist. I was in Morocco. I have seen them" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 86). While painting in Nice during the late 1910s and the 1920s Matisse created a makeshift studio theatre of patterned textiles and Moorish screens, and posed his models in harem costume. By mingling his rich sense of fantasy and recollections of Morocco Matisse arrived at a luxuriantly decorative style that is persuasively truthful and real, even if it evokes an exotic world far removed from the reality of modern Western living.
Matisse had already prepared a few preliminary drawings, including the present work, for La Fontaine's book when Skira decided that an edition of Stéphane Mallarmé's poems would be a better choice of subject for commercial reasons. Under the same terms as the La Fontaine contract Matisse proceeded with the Mallarmé illustrations, and the book was published in October 1932.
Numerous of the Mallarmé illustrations also depict female nudes singly or in groups, but are less specific in their settings than the present drawing, reflecting the timeless aspect of the poet's imagery. Matisse's drawings of the late 1920s and 1930s proclaim the mastery of his linear technique. "Compared to the ink drawings of the early 1920s, the new ink drawings tend, by and large, to eschew shading, and when it appears, it usually does so to produce areas of decorative pattern rather than to model in the round. Line alone gives weight to figures and participates in the ornamentation provided by the similarly arabesque treatment of the setting" (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse, London, 1984, p. 91).
In April 1930 Albert Skira, the Swiss publisher who was bringing out his first art books, made a contract with Matisse to provide thirty etchings for an edition of Jean de La Fontaine's 1669 novel, Les Amours de Psyché et Cupidon.
In order to provide a suitably exotic setting for this recounting of Hellenistic myth, Matisse turned not to the antique cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, but instead to the Orientalist tradition in French painting, which he had embraced first hand during his trips to Morocco in 1912-1913. Matisse wrote to Tériade in 1929: "I do Odalisques in order to do nudes. But how does one do the nude without it being artificial? And then, because I know that they exist. I was in Morocco. I have seen them" (quoted in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 86). While painting in Nice during the late 1910s and the 1920s Matisse created a makeshift studio theatre of patterned textiles and Moorish screens, and posed his models in harem costume. By mingling his rich sense of fantasy and recollections of Morocco Matisse arrived at a luxuriantly decorative style that is persuasively truthful and real, even if it evokes an exotic world far removed from the reality of modern Western living.
Matisse had already prepared a few preliminary drawings, including the present work, for La Fontaine's book when Skira decided that an edition of Stéphane Mallarmé's poems would be a better choice of subject for commercial reasons. Under the same terms as the La Fontaine contract Matisse proceeded with the Mallarmé illustrations, and the book was published in October 1932.
Numerous of the Mallarmé illustrations also depict female nudes singly or in groups, but are less specific in their settings than the present drawing, reflecting the timeless aspect of the poet's imagery. Matisse's drawings of the late 1920s and 1930s proclaim the mastery of his linear technique. "Compared to the ink drawings of the early 1920s, the new ink drawings tend, by and large, to eschew shading, and when it appears, it usually does so to produce areas of decorative pattern rather than to model in the round. Line alone gives weight to figures and participates in the ornamentation provided by the similarly arabesque treatment of the setting" (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse, London, 1984, p. 91).