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拍品专文
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Wanda de Guébriant.
Formerly in the collection of the celebrated French poet Louis Aragon, a friend of Matisse who also wrote extensively on him, Portrait de femme is an absorbing portrait that highlights the artist's virtuosity and draughtsmanship. This picture shows the same woman whose features are shown in Matisse's L'Asie, 1946 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, fig. 1), which is now housed in the Kimbell Museum of Arts, Texas and which was also executed during the same period at Vence. The present drawing has an intimacy and a directness that appears to showcase the character of the sitter, the relationship with the artist, and Matisse's own enthusiasm for depictions of the human face. It is telling that Matisse, discussing portraiture, explained that 'the basic expression of a portrait results almost entirely from the projection of the feelings aroused in the artist by his model, and not from exact representation of the model's features' (H. Matisse, Portraits by Henri Matisse, Monte Carlo, 1955, p. 13). Here, in a few simple strokes, Matisse has managed to convey mood as well as character.
The elegant economy of means with which Matisse has captured this woman's appearance and character in a few calligraphic lines allows the drawing to project an intense light, as though the face were radiating its own internal glow. Matisse was fascinated by the human face as a window to both the character of the sitter and to a more general spirituality, and has deliberately left most of the paper in 'reserve' in order to enhance the brightness of the picture, and thereby to heighten this sense of an aura. The white of the paper was as important to the artist as the lines upon it, and it was with masterful manipulations of the interaction between them that Matisse created his celebrated line-drawings. Discussing the deceptively simple appearance of pictures such as Portrait de femme, Matisse explained that:
'My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotion. Simplification of means allows that. But those drawings are more complete than they appear to some people who confuse them with a sketch. They generate light; looked at in poor, or indirect light, they contain not only quality and sensibility, but also light and difference in values corresponding obviously to colour... Once I have put my emotion to line and modelled the light of my white paper, without destroying its endearing whiteness, I can add or take away nothing further' (quoted in V.I. Carlson ed., Matisse as a Draughtsman, exh.cat., Baltimore, 1971, p. 18).
(fig. 1) Henri Matisse, L'Asie, 1946. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; © Succession H Matisse, Paris and DACS, London, 2007.
Formerly in the collection of the celebrated French poet Louis Aragon, a friend of Matisse who also wrote extensively on him, Portrait de femme is an absorbing portrait that highlights the artist's virtuosity and draughtsmanship. This picture shows the same woman whose features are shown in Matisse's L'Asie, 1946 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, fig. 1), which is now housed in the Kimbell Museum of Arts, Texas and which was also executed during the same period at Vence. The present drawing has an intimacy and a directness that appears to showcase the character of the sitter, the relationship with the artist, and Matisse's own enthusiasm for depictions of the human face. It is telling that Matisse, discussing portraiture, explained that 'the basic expression of a portrait results almost entirely from the projection of the feelings aroused in the artist by his model, and not from exact representation of the model's features' (H. Matisse, Portraits by Henri Matisse, Monte Carlo, 1955, p. 13). Here, in a few simple strokes, Matisse has managed to convey mood as well as character.
The elegant economy of means with which Matisse has captured this woman's appearance and character in a few calligraphic lines allows the drawing to project an intense light, as though the face were radiating its own internal glow. Matisse was fascinated by the human face as a window to both the character of the sitter and to a more general spirituality, and has deliberately left most of the paper in 'reserve' in order to enhance the brightness of the picture, and thereby to heighten this sense of an aura. The white of the paper was as important to the artist as the lines upon it, and it was with masterful manipulations of the interaction between them that Matisse created his celebrated line-drawings. Discussing the deceptively simple appearance of pictures such as Portrait de femme, Matisse explained that:
'My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotion. Simplification of means allows that. But those drawings are more complete than they appear to some people who confuse them with a sketch. They generate light; looked at in poor, or indirect light, they contain not only quality and sensibility, but also light and difference in values corresponding obviously to colour... Once I have put my emotion to line and modelled the light of my white paper, without destroying its endearing whiteness, I can add or take away nothing further' (quoted in V.I. Carlson ed., Matisse as a Draughtsman, exh.cat., Baltimore, 1971, p. 18).
(fig. 1) Henri Matisse, L'Asie, 1946. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; © Succession H Matisse, Paris and DACS, London, 2007.