Henriette, robe jaune

The present portrait of Henriette Darricarrère, one of Henri Matisse’s favorite models, was painted in 1923, when they both spent the majority of their days in the artist’s studio in Nice. Covering the walls with richly colored fabrics, his paintings from this period are characteristically vibrant and ornate, contrasting with the elegant and mysterious Henriette, whose gaze he often chose to veil by stylizing her eyes into almond-shaped specks of black, giving her the fixed, eternal grace of an ancient Greek Kore. Some patterns carry over from one work to the next, testifying to the specific backdrop against which these paintings were created. Here, one such work is the Odalisque couchée aux magnolias, painted the same year as Henriette, robe jaune, previously in the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection and the record-price for the artist, sold by Christie’s in 2018, in which Henriette reclines as an odalisque against the yellow and green striped chaise-longue that provides the background to the present jewel-size portrait, anchoring them both in the celebrated first Nice-period.
Rare in its intimate scale and directness, the present work allows the viewer to hone in on Matisse’s skill as a painter. The fresh dollops of white pigment on Henriette’s lemon-yellow blouse, the ruby-red of her small and sensual mouth, mirrored in her bracelet, and peachy impasto on her face are all executed with the fine balance of economy and rich sensuousness that Matisse uniquely employed. Tightly enclosed within the canvas, with her head ever so slightly tilted to the left and assuredly folded arms, she looks back with the charming authority of a unique and distinctive icon—the artist’s muse.