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Lot Essay
The pleasure that Matisse took from his new surroundings in Nice in 1917-1918 soon became evident in his painting, which became more sensuously intimiste than in the preceding Paris wartime years. This change is apparent in his sculptures as well, and may be traced in three works that he modeled in 1918-1919, including Petit nu au polochon, the present sculpture, which points directly to the odalisque theme that Matisse was about to undertake in his painting at this time.
The last sculpture that Matisse had executed in his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux (near Paris) before visiting Nice was the relief Nu de dos (3e état), 1916-1917 (Duthuit and de Guébriant, no. 60). It is the most dramatically abstract and severely reductionistic of the three versions of this subject that Matisse had worked on since 1909, and reflects the significant impact that Cubism had on Matisse's work. Two of the subsequent sculptures that Matisse modeled in Nice, both known as Venus figures, show some of the deliberate roughness which characterizes the third state of Nu de dos; these are Nu accroupi (Vénus assise) and Vénus accroupie (Duthuit and de Guébriant, nos. 61 and 63, respectively). The latter was based on a Hellenistic marble crouching Venus in the Louvre, and also recalls Matisse's own L'écorché, after Puget, of 1903. In contrast to the tensed and compacted forms in the two Venus figures, the reclining pose in Petit nu an polochon lends it an altogether different feeling--it is more feminine, and is reminiscent of odalisques in Orientalist paintings of the latter part of the 19th century, as well as the work of academic sculptors who showed in the official Salon.
The last sculpture that Matisse had executed in his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux (near Paris) before visiting Nice was the relief Nu de dos (3e état), 1916-1917 (Duthuit and de Guébriant, no. 60). It is the most dramatically abstract and severely reductionistic of the three versions of this subject that Matisse had worked on since 1909, and reflects the significant impact that Cubism had on Matisse's work. Two of the subsequent sculptures that Matisse modeled in Nice, both known as Venus figures, show some of the deliberate roughness which characterizes the third state of Nu de dos; these are Nu accroupi (Vénus assise) and Vénus accroupie (Duthuit and de Guébriant, nos. 61 and 63, respectively). The latter was based on a Hellenistic marble crouching Venus in the Louvre, and also recalls Matisse's own L'écorché, after Puget, of 1903. In contrast to the tensed and compacted forms in the two Venus figures, the reclining pose in Petit nu an polochon lends it an altogether different feeling--it is more feminine, and is reminiscent of odalisques in Orientalist paintings of the latter part of the 19th century, as well as the work of academic sculptors who showed in the official Salon.