拍品专文
Matisse painted Femme lisant devant une table in Nice in the fall of 1919, during one of the many sojourns that he made to the south of France between 1916 and 1932. It is a fine example from an elegant and appealing group of pictures that Matisse produced in these years, depicting languid female models posed in lavishly decorated interiors. With their limpid, golden light and light, harmonious tonalities, these pictures are thoroughly permeated with the seductive character of the Cote d'Azur. At no previous time in Matisse's career had his physical environment contributed so significantly to the appearance of his art; as one critic has asked, "Could what happened to Matisse's art between 1917 and 1930--when he lived in this city, this site, its ambience, not to mention its light--have taken place elsewhere?" (D. Fourcade, Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, 1916-1932, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 50).
Matisse was struck by the palpable light of the Riviera from the moment he arrived there. In a letter to Charles Camoin from May of 1918, the artist wrote:
A little while ago I took a nap under an olive tree, and the color harmonies I saw were so touching. It's like a paradise you have no right to analyze, but you are a painter, for God's sake! Nice is so beautiful! A light so soft and tender, despite its brilliance. I don't know why it often reminds me of the Touraine The Touraine light is a little more golden; here it is silvery. Even though the objects it touches have rich colors - the greens, for example, I often break my back trying to paint them (quoted in J. Flam, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 170).
The present picture was painted in Matisse's room at the Htel Mediterrane et de la Cote d'Azur at 25 Promenade des Anglaises, an elegant old hotel with nineteenth-century Italianate dcor overlooking the Baie des Anges. The hotel provided a fertile, expansive environment for Matisse's artistic explorations; as he later recalled:
An old and good hotel, of course! And what pretty Italian-style ceilings! What tiling! It was wrong to demolish the building. I stayed there four years for the pleasure of painting nudes and figures in an old rococo sitting room. Do you remember the light we had through the shutters? It came from below as if from theater footlights. Everything was fake, absurd, amazing, delicious (quoted in J. Coward, op. cit., exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 24).
Matisse took a different room each season that he stayed at the Htel Mediterrane. The present picture was made in the second of these, which had large windows facing the sea. The simple furnishing of the room, with its patterned carpet, sheer curtains, and oval-mirrored dressing table, appear in numerous pictures from the winter of 1919 and the spring of 1920. Charles Vildrac, who visited Matisse at the Htel Mediterrane, describes many of these elements:
I went to see Matisse once in the room in Nice which looks out on the promenade and on the sea I knew most of the paintings that he painted there these last years. Therefore I found the high window and its curtains, the red rug and its decoration, the "toad" armchair I recognized the decorated porcelain vase and the lacquered dressing table with the oval mirror. Without a doubt, I found myself in the room 'of the Matisse paintings' (Quoted in ibid., p. 26).
The paintings executed at the Hotel Mediterranee are notable for the luxuriant, slightly sensuous tranquility that they exude. Whereas the interiors and still-lifes from the mid-1920s are characterized by crisp outlines, acid colors, and intense light, pictures like Femme lisant devant une table appear soft and shimmering, intimate and calm. The model for the present picture is one that he hired frequently in 1919, possibly a sister of Antoinette Arnoux, his most celebrated sitter from the early years at Nice. He posed her in various ways: wearing a tassled shawl, a voluminous striped robe, a ruffled blouse, or draped simply with a sheer, seafoam-colored cloth. Here, she is dressed modestly in a cream-colored dress, a book open on her lap, her serene, enigmatic gaze directed at the viewer. The male figure reflected in the mirror of the dressing table, presumably the artist himself, lends the picture a subtle erotic charge. Describing the distinct emotional and visual tenor of paintings like Femme lisant devant une table, Robert Hughes concludes:
Scanning Matisse's rooms is like reading a reticent autobiography, written before the days when authors were expected to spill all the beans. The calm they radiate is not an expression of complacency but a ploy against anxiety. Nice enabled Matisse to stabilize things, to remain in the same frame of mind for days of end. 'After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there,' he wrote to a friend. 'Nature--or rather, my nature--remains mysterious. Meanwhile I believe I have put a little order in my chaos. . .I am not intelligent.' Of course, Matisse painted his share of perfunctory images in Nice. But the overwhelming impression is of strength and synthesis, of a mature artist who, having achieved a monumental diction before 1916, set out to reinvest it with immediate impressions before it congealed (R. Hughes, "Henri Matisse in Nice," Nothing if not Critical, New York, 1987, p. 172).
Matisse was struck by the palpable light of the Riviera from the moment he arrived there. In a letter to Charles Camoin from May of 1918, the artist wrote:
A little while ago I took a nap under an olive tree, and the color harmonies I saw were so touching. It's like a paradise you have no right to analyze, but you are a painter, for God's sake! Nice is so beautiful! A light so soft and tender, despite its brilliance. I don't know why it often reminds me of the Touraine The Touraine light is a little more golden; here it is silvery. Even though the objects it touches have rich colors - the greens, for example, I often break my back trying to paint them (quoted in J. Flam, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 170).
The present picture was painted in Matisse's room at the Htel Mediterrane et de la Cote d'Azur at 25 Promenade des Anglaises, an elegant old hotel with nineteenth-century Italianate dcor overlooking the Baie des Anges. The hotel provided a fertile, expansive environment for Matisse's artistic explorations; as he later recalled:
An old and good hotel, of course! And what pretty Italian-style ceilings! What tiling! It was wrong to demolish the building. I stayed there four years for the pleasure of painting nudes and figures in an old rococo sitting room. Do you remember the light we had through the shutters? It came from below as if from theater footlights. Everything was fake, absurd, amazing, delicious (quoted in J. Coward, op. cit., exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 24).
Matisse took a different room each season that he stayed at the Htel Mediterrane. The present picture was made in the second of these, which had large windows facing the sea. The simple furnishing of the room, with its patterned carpet, sheer curtains, and oval-mirrored dressing table, appear in numerous pictures from the winter of 1919 and the spring of 1920. Charles Vildrac, who visited Matisse at the Htel Mediterrane, describes many of these elements:
I went to see Matisse once in the room in Nice which looks out on the promenade and on the sea I knew most of the paintings that he painted there these last years. Therefore I found the high window and its curtains, the red rug and its decoration, the "toad" armchair I recognized the decorated porcelain vase and the lacquered dressing table with the oval mirror. Without a doubt, I found myself in the room 'of the Matisse paintings' (Quoted in ibid., p. 26).
The paintings executed at the Hotel Mediterranee are notable for the luxuriant, slightly sensuous tranquility that they exude. Whereas the interiors and still-lifes from the mid-1920s are characterized by crisp outlines, acid colors, and intense light, pictures like Femme lisant devant une table appear soft and shimmering, intimate and calm. The model for the present picture is one that he hired frequently in 1919, possibly a sister of Antoinette Arnoux, his most celebrated sitter from the early years at Nice. He posed her in various ways: wearing a tassled shawl, a voluminous striped robe, a ruffled blouse, or draped simply with a sheer, seafoam-colored cloth. Here, she is dressed modestly in a cream-colored dress, a book open on her lap, her serene, enigmatic gaze directed at the viewer. The male figure reflected in the mirror of the dressing table, presumably the artist himself, lends the picture a subtle erotic charge. Describing the distinct emotional and visual tenor of paintings like Femme lisant devant une table, Robert Hughes concludes:
Scanning Matisse's rooms is like reading a reticent autobiography, written before the days when authors were expected to spill all the beans. The calm they radiate is not an expression of complacency but a ploy against anxiety. Nice enabled Matisse to stabilize things, to remain in the same frame of mind for days of end. 'After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there,' he wrote to a friend. 'Nature--or rather, my nature--remains mysterious. Meanwhile I believe I have put a little order in my chaos. . .I am not intelligent.' Of course, Matisse painted his share of perfunctory images in Nice. But the overwhelming impression is of strength and synthesis, of a mature artist who, having achieved a monumental diction before 1916, set out to reinvest it with immediate impressions before it congealed (R. Hughes, "Henri Matisse in Nice," Nothing if not Critical, New York, 1987, p. 172).