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Lot Essay
In Océanie, le ciel, Henri Matisse explores a range of intriguing forms across a stretch of subtly hued, golden-beige linen, the abstracted silhouettes of ocean vegetation, animals and coral arranged in a dynamic pattern so that they appear to float across the support. Conceived in 1946, Océanie, le ciel, alongside its pendant composition, Océanie, la mer, occupies a pivotal position in Matisse’s late oeuvre—these screen-printed wall-hangings were the first compositions to draw explicitly upon the rich trove of memories and impressions that remained with the artist following his trip to Tahiti in 1930, marking the arrival of an iconography that would become the principal inspiration for his most famous works through the final years of his career.
As his studio assistant and frequent model Lydia Delectorskaya recalled, it was during a summer sojourn in Paris that Matisse first embarked upon the sequence of cut-out shapes and designs that formed the foundation of the project. “Matisse had cut out a swallow from a sheet of writing paper and, as it distressed him to tear up this beautiful shape and throw it away, he said, he put it up on his wall, also using it to cover up a stain, the sight of which disturbed him. Over the following weeks other shapes were cut out and put up on the same wall. Little by little all this ended up becoming an entire composition that decorated the whole wall panel” (note from L. Delectorskaya to the Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambresis, October 1997; quoted in P. Deparpe, ed., exh. cat., op. cit., 2013, p. 65, n. 22). Channeling his memories of the extraordinary environment of Tahiti, Matisse worked intuitively with his scissors, creating a series of simple paper cut-outs that ranged from birds captured in mid-flight, to exotic plants and marine life, which were then pinned directly onto two adjacent walls in his apartment.
For Matisse, the impromptu mural was initially an enjoyable diversion, with no specific goal or product in mind—“I am cutting out all these elements and putting them up on the walls temporarily,” he explained to the photographer Brassaï in December 1946. “I don’t know yet what I’ll come up with. Perhaps panels, wall hangings” (quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, trans. J.M. Todd, Chicago and London, 1999, p. 293). However, a visit from the London-based entrepreneur and textile printer Zika Ascher, solidified this idea, resulting in the paper cut-outs being transformed into two fabric wall panels, the array of sponges, corals, seaweeds, fish and birds replicated in an intriguingly minimalist decorative scheme. As art historian John Klein has noted, Océanie, le ciel and Océanie, la mer were intended to be “a decidedly modern decoration, not tapestry, but taking its place, referring to, but completely revising, one of the great French decorative traditions for contemporary consumers” (J. Klein, op. cit., 2018, p. 115). At the same time, the wall-hangings appear to echo the forms and finish of Tahitian tapa cloth, known as ‘ahu and made from the inner bark of exotic trees, examples of which Matisse may have seen during his trip to the island.
However, Ascher and Matisse faced several challenges in translating these ephemeral compositions of cut-paper into the more durable medium of silk-screened linen, from finalizing the weight and texture of the cloth, to finding an exact match to the color of the artist’s apartment wall-covering (a pale beige papier d’apprêt that reportedly reminded Matisse of the golden sands of the Pacific). Similarly, they searched in vain for an effective method of translating the cut-out shapes onto the linen support, and ended up deciding to trace each element within the composition directly from the wall. The two panel designs were finally printed in 1948 at the Belfast Silk and Rayon Company under Ascher’s supervision, with thirty examples of each composition produced, all of which Ascher sent to Matisse in Nice to check and sign. The artist was delighted with the final silk-screens, which he described in one of his notebooks as his “very successful white and beige wall-hanging” (quoted in J. Klein, “Matisse after Tahiti: The Domestication of Exotic Memory” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 60, no. 1, 1997, p. 55).
In an article published in Labyrinthe in 1946, Matisse described how the project allowed him to revisit and explore his memories of his time in the South Seas: “This panel, printed on linen—white for the motifs and beige for the background—forms, together with a second panel, a wall tapestry composed during reveries which came fifteen years after a voyage to Oceania. From the first, the enchantments of the sky there, the sea, the fish, and the coral in the lagoons, plunged me into the inaction of total ecstasy. The local tones of things hadn’t changed, but their effect in the light of the Pacific gave me the same feeling as I had when I looked into a large golden chalice. With my eyes wide open I absorbed everything as a sponge absorbs liquid. It is only now that these wonders have returned to me, with tenderness and clarity, and have permitted me, with protracted pleasure, to execute these two panels” (quoted in J. Cowart, J.D. Flam, D. Fourcade and J.H. Neff, eds., exh. cat., op. cit., 1977, p. 125). Over the ensuing years his memories of the flora and fauna of Tahiti would continue to provide key creative inspiration for Matisse’s work, filling his compositions with bold, colorful forms.
As his studio assistant and frequent model Lydia Delectorskaya recalled, it was during a summer sojourn in Paris that Matisse first embarked upon the sequence of cut-out shapes and designs that formed the foundation of the project. “Matisse had cut out a swallow from a sheet of writing paper and, as it distressed him to tear up this beautiful shape and throw it away, he said, he put it up on his wall, also using it to cover up a stain, the sight of which disturbed him. Over the following weeks other shapes were cut out and put up on the same wall. Little by little all this ended up becoming an entire composition that decorated the whole wall panel” (note from L. Delectorskaya to the Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambresis, October 1997; quoted in P. Deparpe, ed., exh. cat., op. cit., 2013, p. 65, n. 22). Channeling his memories of the extraordinary environment of Tahiti, Matisse worked intuitively with his scissors, creating a series of simple paper cut-outs that ranged from birds captured in mid-flight, to exotic plants and marine life, which were then pinned directly onto two adjacent walls in his apartment.
For Matisse, the impromptu mural was initially an enjoyable diversion, with no specific goal or product in mind—“I am cutting out all these elements and putting them up on the walls temporarily,” he explained to the photographer Brassaï in December 1946. “I don’t know yet what I’ll come up with. Perhaps panels, wall hangings” (quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, trans. J.M. Todd, Chicago and London, 1999, p. 293). However, a visit from the London-based entrepreneur and textile printer Zika Ascher, solidified this idea, resulting in the paper cut-outs being transformed into two fabric wall panels, the array of sponges, corals, seaweeds, fish and birds replicated in an intriguingly minimalist decorative scheme. As art historian John Klein has noted, Océanie, le ciel and Océanie, la mer were intended to be “a decidedly modern decoration, not tapestry, but taking its place, referring to, but completely revising, one of the great French decorative traditions for contemporary consumers” (J. Klein, op. cit., 2018, p. 115). At the same time, the wall-hangings appear to echo the forms and finish of Tahitian tapa cloth, known as ‘ahu and made from the inner bark of exotic trees, examples of which Matisse may have seen during his trip to the island.
However, Ascher and Matisse faced several challenges in translating these ephemeral compositions of cut-paper into the more durable medium of silk-screened linen, from finalizing the weight and texture of the cloth, to finding an exact match to the color of the artist’s apartment wall-covering (a pale beige papier d’apprêt that reportedly reminded Matisse of the golden sands of the Pacific). Similarly, they searched in vain for an effective method of translating the cut-out shapes onto the linen support, and ended up deciding to trace each element within the composition directly from the wall. The two panel designs were finally printed in 1948 at the Belfast Silk and Rayon Company under Ascher’s supervision, with thirty examples of each composition produced, all of which Ascher sent to Matisse in Nice to check and sign. The artist was delighted with the final silk-screens, which he described in one of his notebooks as his “very successful white and beige wall-hanging” (quoted in J. Klein, “Matisse after Tahiti: The Domestication of Exotic Memory” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 60, no. 1, 1997, p. 55).
In an article published in Labyrinthe in 1946, Matisse described how the project allowed him to revisit and explore his memories of his time in the South Seas: “This panel, printed on linen—white for the motifs and beige for the background—forms, together with a second panel, a wall tapestry composed during reveries which came fifteen years after a voyage to Oceania. From the first, the enchantments of the sky there, the sea, the fish, and the coral in the lagoons, plunged me into the inaction of total ecstasy. The local tones of things hadn’t changed, but their effect in the light of the Pacific gave me the same feeling as I had when I looked into a large golden chalice. With my eyes wide open I absorbed everything as a sponge absorbs liquid. It is only now that these wonders have returned to me, with tenderness and clarity, and have permitted me, with protracted pleasure, to execute these two panels” (quoted in J. Cowart, J.D. Flam, D. Fourcade and J.H. Neff, eds., exh. cat., op. cit., 1977, p. 125). Over the ensuing years his memories of the flora and fauna of Tahiti would continue to provide key creative inspiration for Matisse’s work, filling his compositions with bold, colorful forms.