.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Filled with a vibrant energy and vivid play of color, Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) is a testament to the continued vitality and spirit of innovation that marked Henri Matisse’s painterly output during the late 1930s. Completed in several sessions between the middle of February and early March 1937, the painting reveals the artist’s renewed focus on analyzing the relationship between line and color in his practice at this time. Constructing his scene in a complex interplay of broad passages of bright, unmodulated pigments and sinuous, fine contours, Matisse explores a new direction in his artmaking, which would have an important impact on his oeuvre over the following decade.
In the five years between 1929 and 1934, Matisse had done very little easel painting—he had devoted more than two years of intensive work to La Danse, the large decorative mural that Dr. Albert C. Barnes had commissioned for his home in Pennsylvania, and was further occupied during this period by an important series of four retrospective exhibitions, in Berlin, Paris, Basel, and New York. He also took the opportunity to travel extensively for the first time in his life—to the United States on four occasions, visiting his son Pierre in New York, before voyaging halfway around the world to Tahiti for a transformative five-month sojourn. “When you have worked a long time in the same milieu, it is useful at a given moment to stop and take a voyage,” he explained to the publisher Tériade in 1930. “[It] will let parts of the mind rest while other parts have free reign—especially those parts repressed by the will. This stopping permits a withdrawal and consequently an examination of the past. You begin again with more certainty” (quoted in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 88).
When Matisse finally returned to painting after this long hiatus, he found himself faced with two alternative paths—he could return to the hedonistic fantasies that had occupied him in Nice during the previous decade, filling his canvases with sensual odalisques and sumptuous figure studies once again, or he could renew an experimental streak in his art, which had been interrupted in 1918. He boldly chose the latter course, setting himself a highly ambitious project that would lead him to some of the most dynamic works of his career. Determined to reclaim his status as a leading proponent of modernism and demonstrate the continued strength of his creativity, Matisse tested the boundaries of his pictorial idiom, flattening his forms, heightening his color palette, and leaning increasingly towards the decorative in his focus on pattern. These developments coincided with a subtle shift in his practice, as he employed new methods and techniques in his painting, inspired by his experiences planning and executing the Barnes mural. While the application of paper cut-outs to his canvases allowed him to assess the visual power of his compositions as he worked to refine his vision, photography became an important tool in tracking the progress and development of his ideas, recording the various adjustments, revisions and reworkings that occurred at each stage.
At the same time, line drawing also took on a greater prominence and significance in Matisse’s work. According to his assistant and frequent model, Lydia Delectorskaya, the artist would paint in the mornings, before turning his attention to drawing in the afternoon, a ritual that simultaneously prolonged his painterly activities through the day, while also preparing him for the following morning’s work. As Ellen McBreen has noted, the lines between the two became increasingly blurred within this period: “The interdependence of the two media—the intensity of drawing sessions allowing for the ‘apparent ease’ of painting—is also signified by the graphite marks… on raw canvas, peering out from under the colored surface” (in M. Affron, exh. cat., op. cit., 2022, p. 189). However, this also threw up new questions for Matisse—whereas previously he had believed line and color to be perfectly in accord with one another, symbiotic elements that were inextricably intertwined, by the late 1930s he felt that they were in fact opposing, contrapuntal forces. This concept is vividly explored in Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre), as Matisse conjures an intriguing contrast between the large, flat areas of color, and the delicate, sinuous linear drawing overlaying it, describing the figure, the furniture and the various objects of his studio in a fluid, abbreviated style.
In her publication With apparent ease… Henri Matisse: Paintings from 1935-1939, Delectorskaya indicates that Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) was completed over the course of several weeks and numerous painting sessions in the spring of 1937 (op. cit., 1988, pp. 220-221). She also included a photograph illustrating an earlier state of the work, recording the painting’s progress on 12 February 1937, which showcases the evolution of Matisse’s approach to the overall composition. In this rare glimpse at the work-in-progress, the lines appear much thicker and darker, executed in flowing, paint-laden strokes of the brush that imbues them with a distinct solidity and weight. Matisse subsequently pared these details back significantly, favoring a thinner, more refined line that echoed his drawings in pen and ink. He also reworked the contours of the figure’s face, altering the angle of her jaw and nose, to create a more elegant silhouette, while the scalloped edges of the frame and the incised detailing of the blue jug appear to have been similarly adjusted or added as he worked. Most notably, another drawing, most likely a self-portrait of the artist executed on a dark black ground, was removed from the wall in the upper right corner of the finished composition, allowing the framed female portrait to take center stage instead.
This elegant, abbreviated impression of Delectorskaya sits prominently on the wall above the mantlepiece, and appears to refer directly to a group of related pen and ink drawings of Lydia that had occupied the artist in recent months. Each work in this long series offered a subtle variation of his sitter in a similar pose, her chin resting on her hand in a pose of quiet insouciance, as in Head of a Woman with Chin in Palm (1937; Pushkin Museum, Moscow). A similar drawing also made an appearance on the wall in Matisse’s La grande robe bleue et mimosas (1937; The Philadelphia Museum of Art), this time reduced to just a series of stark white outlines against a soft blue toned sheet that matches the central protagonist’s dress. In Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) the large sheet appears to be filled with subtle, interweaving layers of lines, suggesting partially-visible pentimenti that hint at the shifting path of the artist’s hand as he worked to capture her likeness.
The diagonal between the ochre figure and the blue vase on the mantlepiece, meanwhile, introduces a feeling of recession and volume to the scene, offsetting the apparent flatness of the surrounding planes of color. This also sets up an intriguing mirroring effect between the vividly colored character in the foreground and the woman in the framed portrait behind, drawing our attention to the similarities in their features, as well as their striking differences. The grid-like backdrop, meanwhile, places the viewer squarely within the artist’s studio in Nice. In April 1928, Matisse had secured two apartments on the fifth-floor of an attractive building in the Ponchettes neighborhood of the city, and proceeded to merge and reconfigure the two spaces to best suit his needs. In this redesign, Matisse created two studios, which became the site of many of his figurative paintings through the ensuing decade—one had a large bay window, looking out over the Mediterranean sea, while the other boasted corner windows and trompe l’oeil walls made by a local artisan, one with a faux-tile grid, the other imitating a marble finish.
The graph-like pattern of the tiling brought a dynamic, decorative quality to many of the artist’s paintings during this period—he often played with the size and dimensions of the squares, and frequently allowed the wall to take on different hues as it reflected the play of light within the space. In one canvas the small squares would be depicted using a gently variegated greyish-white tone, off-set by lines of deeper green, only to transform in the next to an expanse of pale turquoise delineated by strong white lines. In other works, the walls are a study of delicate lavender shadows, or a soft, almost iridescent pink, as if bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun. In Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) these tiles retain their natural, off-white hue, allowing the rhythmic nature of the evenly spaced replica tiling to stand out, while also enhancing the power of the glowing tones of the other elements within the scene. The overall effect is a rich play of color and form, figuration and abstraction, that in many ways anticipates the highly stylized, decorative compositions Matisse would complete in the final years of his career.
Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) was among a selection of the artist’s recent compositions shown in a series of important international exhibitions between 1937 and 1938, in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Stockholm. The painting subsequently travelled to New York, where it was included in the show “Henri Matisse: Paintings and Drawings of 1918 to 1938,” held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. It was purchased shortly thereafter by the French-American soprano and actress, Lily Pons. Considered one of the most glamorous stars on the operatic stage, Pons had trained as a singer in Paris during the 1920s, and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, in January 1931. Her expressive style and coloratura soprano led her to become an immediate critical success, while her elegance, beauty and dramatic skills made her a favorite with audiences. As well as touring extensively, she remained with the Metropolitan for more than three decades as a principal, famed for French and Italian coloratura parts. Matisse’s Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) remained in Pons’s collection for over thirty years, and was hung in her Dallas apartment alongside works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marie Laurencin and Georges Braque. It was sold by her estate in May 1976, at which point the painting was acquired by Robert and Patricia Weis.
In the five years between 1929 and 1934, Matisse had done very little easel painting—he had devoted more than two years of intensive work to La Danse, the large decorative mural that Dr. Albert C. Barnes had commissioned for his home in Pennsylvania, and was further occupied during this period by an important series of four retrospective exhibitions, in Berlin, Paris, Basel, and New York. He also took the opportunity to travel extensively for the first time in his life—to the United States on four occasions, visiting his son Pierre in New York, before voyaging halfway around the world to Tahiti for a transformative five-month sojourn. “When you have worked a long time in the same milieu, it is useful at a given moment to stop and take a voyage,” he explained to the publisher Tériade in 1930. “[It] will let parts of the mind rest while other parts have free reign—especially those parts repressed by the will. This stopping permits a withdrawal and consequently an examination of the past. You begin again with more certainty” (quoted in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 88).
When Matisse finally returned to painting after this long hiatus, he found himself faced with two alternative paths—he could return to the hedonistic fantasies that had occupied him in Nice during the previous decade, filling his canvases with sensual odalisques and sumptuous figure studies once again, or he could renew an experimental streak in his art, which had been interrupted in 1918. He boldly chose the latter course, setting himself a highly ambitious project that would lead him to some of the most dynamic works of his career. Determined to reclaim his status as a leading proponent of modernism and demonstrate the continued strength of his creativity, Matisse tested the boundaries of his pictorial idiom, flattening his forms, heightening his color palette, and leaning increasingly towards the decorative in his focus on pattern. These developments coincided with a subtle shift in his practice, as he employed new methods and techniques in his painting, inspired by his experiences planning and executing the Barnes mural. While the application of paper cut-outs to his canvases allowed him to assess the visual power of his compositions as he worked to refine his vision, photography became an important tool in tracking the progress and development of his ideas, recording the various adjustments, revisions and reworkings that occurred at each stage.
At the same time, line drawing also took on a greater prominence and significance in Matisse’s work. According to his assistant and frequent model, Lydia Delectorskaya, the artist would paint in the mornings, before turning his attention to drawing in the afternoon, a ritual that simultaneously prolonged his painterly activities through the day, while also preparing him for the following morning’s work. As Ellen McBreen has noted, the lines between the two became increasingly blurred within this period: “The interdependence of the two media—the intensity of drawing sessions allowing for the ‘apparent ease’ of painting—is also signified by the graphite marks… on raw canvas, peering out from under the colored surface” (in M. Affron, exh. cat., op. cit., 2022, p. 189). However, this also threw up new questions for Matisse—whereas previously he had believed line and color to be perfectly in accord with one another, symbiotic elements that were inextricably intertwined, by the late 1930s he felt that they were in fact opposing, contrapuntal forces. This concept is vividly explored in Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre), as Matisse conjures an intriguing contrast between the large, flat areas of color, and the delicate, sinuous linear drawing overlaying it, describing the figure, the furniture and the various objects of his studio in a fluid, abbreviated style.
In her publication With apparent ease… Henri Matisse: Paintings from 1935-1939, Delectorskaya indicates that Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) was completed over the course of several weeks and numerous painting sessions in the spring of 1937 (op. cit., 1988, pp. 220-221). She also included a photograph illustrating an earlier state of the work, recording the painting’s progress on 12 February 1937, which showcases the evolution of Matisse’s approach to the overall composition. In this rare glimpse at the work-in-progress, the lines appear much thicker and darker, executed in flowing, paint-laden strokes of the brush that imbues them with a distinct solidity and weight. Matisse subsequently pared these details back significantly, favoring a thinner, more refined line that echoed his drawings in pen and ink. He also reworked the contours of the figure’s face, altering the angle of her jaw and nose, to create a more elegant silhouette, while the scalloped edges of the frame and the incised detailing of the blue jug appear to have been similarly adjusted or added as he worked. Most notably, another drawing, most likely a self-portrait of the artist executed on a dark black ground, was removed from the wall in the upper right corner of the finished composition, allowing the framed female portrait to take center stage instead.
This elegant, abbreviated impression of Delectorskaya sits prominently on the wall above the mantlepiece, and appears to refer directly to a group of related pen and ink drawings of Lydia that had occupied the artist in recent months. Each work in this long series offered a subtle variation of his sitter in a similar pose, her chin resting on her hand in a pose of quiet insouciance, as in Head of a Woman with Chin in Palm (1937; Pushkin Museum, Moscow). A similar drawing also made an appearance on the wall in Matisse’s La grande robe bleue et mimosas (1937; The Philadelphia Museum of Art), this time reduced to just a series of stark white outlines against a soft blue toned sheet that matches the central protagonist’s dress. In Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) the large sheet appears to be filled with subtle, interweaving layers of lines, suggesting partially-visible pentimenti that hint at the shifting path of the artist’s hand as he worked to capture her likeness.
The diagonal between the ochre figure and the blue vase on the mantlepiece, meanwhile, introduces a feeling of recession and volume to the scene, offsetting the apparent flatness of the surrounding planes of color. This also sets up an intriguing mirroring effect between the vividly colored character in the foreground and the woman in the framed portrait behind, drawing our attention to the similarities in their features, as well as their striking differences. The grid-like backdrop, meanwhile, places the viewer squarely within the artist’s studio in Nice. In April 1928, Matisse had secured two apartments on the fifth-floor of an attractive building in the Ponchettes neighborhood of the city, and proceeded to merge and reconfigure the two spaces to best suit his needs. In this redesign, Matisse created two studios, which became the site of many of his figurative paintings through the ensuing decade—one had a large bay window, looking out over the Mediterranean sea, while the other boasted corner windows and trompe l’oeil walls made by a local artisan, one with a faux-tile grid, the other imitating a marble finish.
The graph-like pattern of the tiling brought a dynamic, decorative quality to many of the artist’s paintings during this period—he often played with the size and dimensions of the squares, and frequently allowed the wall to take on different hues as it reflected the play of light within the space. In one canvas the small squares would be depicted using a gently variegated greyish-white tone, off-set by lines of deeper green, only to transform in the next to an expanse of pale turquoise delineated by strong white lines. In other works, the walls are a study of delicate lavender shadows, or a soft, almost iridescent pink, as if bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun. In Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) these tiles retain their natural, off-white hue, allowing the rhythmic nature of the evenly spaced replica tiling to stand out, while also enhancing the power of the glowing tones of the other elements within the scene. The overall effect is a rich play of color and form, figuration and abstraction, that in many ways anticipates the highly stylized, decorative compositions Matisse would complete in the final years of his career.
Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) was among a selection of the artist’s recent compositions shown in a series of important international exhibitions between 1937 and 1938, in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Stockholm. The painting subsequently travelled to New York, where it was included in the show “Henri Matisse: Paintings and Drawings of 1918 to 1938,” held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. It was purchased shortly thereafter by the French-American soprano and actress, Lily Pons. Considered one of the most glamorous stars on the operatic stage, Pons had trained as a singer in Paris during the 1920s, and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, in January 1931. Her expressive style and coloratura soprano led her to become an immediate critical success, while her elegance, beauty and dramatic skills made her a favorite with audiences. As well as touring extensively, she remained with the Metropolitan for more than three decades as a principal, famed for French and Italian coloratura parts. Matisse’s Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) remained in Pons’s collection for over thirty years, and was hung in her Dallas apartment alongside works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marie Laurencin and Georges Braque. It was sold by her estate in May 1976, at which point the painting was acquired by Robert and Patricia Weis.