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Lot Essay
Between 1917 and 1930, Henri Matisse traveled annually to Nice, living and working in various hotels and apartments along the city’s waterfront. These highly decorative rooms served as a visual inspiration for the paintings produced during this period, which were characterized by an elaborate orchestration of color and pattern, and the works created in Nice mark a pivotal moment in Matisse’s aesthetic development. It was there that the artist “tested color to the limit [by] constantly shifting the borders of perception” (H. Spurling, “Material World: Matisse, His Art and His Textiles” in Matisse: His Art and His Textiles, exh. cat., Royal Academy, London, 2005, p. 30). The resulting canvases, including Femme au chapeau fleuri, reveal Matisse’s evolving visual idiom and the ways in which he began to exploit color’s structural possibilities.
Having previously stayed in several hotels, by 1923, Matisse was renting a third-floor apartment in the ornate, eighteenth-century building at 1, place Charles-Félix. The rooms—which boasted views of the sea—were covered in a densely patterned wallpaper and a frescoed ceiling. To these furnishings, Matisse added his own compositions as well as mirrors, masks, reproductions of Michelangelo drawings, and elaborate textiles. He also set up several large portable frames that were used to mount the decorative fabrics which served as backdrops for his paintings. For Matisse, a descendent of generations of weavers, textiles were fundamental to his conception of the decorative and allowed the artist to explore questions of reality and illusion. As Roberta Smith observed, “Matisse’s textiles were basic to his development of painting as a unified, all-over, forward-pressing surface” (“How a Renowned Painter Found Inspiration in Cloth” in New York Times, 24 June 2005, online).
Matisse’s primary model during this period was Henriette Darricarrère, whom he had first encountered in 1920 at the Studios de la Victorine, a film studio, where she was dancing ballet for the camera. She began sitting for the artist shortly thereafter, eventually becoming the subject of hundreds of drawings, paintings, and sculptures over the next seven years. Commenting on his attachment to particular faces, Matisse explained, “My models, human figures, are never just ‘extras’ in an interior. They are the principal theme in my work. I depend entirely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature” (“Notes of a Painter on his Drawing,” 1939; reproduced in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 131). Darricarrère’s theatrical presence provided a wellspring of inspiration as she threw herself into inhabiting various roles in Matisse’s oeuvre, particularly that of the odalisque. As art historian Jack Cowart has noted, she came to “incarnate the artistic and psychological atmosphere of the niçoise years” (in exh. cat., op. cit., 1986, p. 27).
During the winter of 1922 to 1923, Matisse painted a series of portraits of Darricarrère set against a decorative ground. Several of these works are now held in museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. The pink blossoms depicted in Femme au chapeau fleuri can be seen in several paintings from this period. While concentrating on the single-figure portrait, Matisse represented Darricarrère in various guises. In some canvases, she is shown in the lavish accessories befitting an odalisque; in others, she sports the fashion of the era. In the present work, Darricarrère wears a loose fitting white chemise with scalloped sleeves, while a multicolored beaded necklace hangs around her neck. Bangles and a wristwatch call attention to her long, elegant arms that rest upon a checkered tablecloth. Concealing her recognizable dark hair is a wide-brimmed hat adorned with luxuriant pink blooms and draped with a stretch of blue fabric. Women wearing extravagant hats was a preferred motif for Impressionists including Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who depicted contemporary fashions in order to both capture modern life and demonstrate their prowess at representing texture and pattern within a painting.
For Matisse, the process of creating a portrait required a strong rapport between artist and sitter, and he was able to build up this understanding during the many years he worked with Darricarrère. Portraiture, reflected Matisse, “demands especial gifts of the artist, and the possibility of an almost total identification of the painter with his model. The painter should come to his model with no preconceived ideas. Everything should come to him in the same way that in a landscape all the scents of the countryside come to him: those of the earth, of the flowers linked with the play of clouds, of the movement of the trees and of the different sounds of the countryside” (quoted in “Portraits,” 1952; reproduced in J. Flam, op. cit., 1995, p. 222). Such understanding is evident in the present work, particularly in Matisse’s rendering of Darricarrère’s expressive face.
The tonalities used in Femme au chapeau fleuri make clear that Matisse was a colorist par excellence. Rose pink and olive green produce a harmonious rhythm that is punctuated by the cobalt blue cloth wrapped around her hat. Although a figurative image, there is a sense of abstraction in the painting, particularly in the manner in which Matisse has played with depth through color. The blue-and-green checkered cloth in the foreground appears to swell as the floral backdrop surges forward. The two textiles appear to surround Darricarrère, who is seemingly the only solid presence within this vertiginous space.
Femme au chapeau fleuri was previously in the collection of Baroness Eva Gebhard Gourgaud, who, along with her husband, built an impressive collection, with works by Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Seurat, among others. Her portrait was painted twice by Marie Laurencin in 1923 and, the following year, by Matisse. All three paintings are in the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Much of the Baroness’ collection was bequeathed to the French state following her death in 1959, and works can now be found in institutions worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Femme au chapeau fleuri was acquired by the Baroness in the same year it was painted.
Having previously stayed in several hotels, by 1923, Matisse was renting a third-floor apartment in the ornate, eighteenth-century building at 1, place Charles-Félix. The rooms—which boasted views of the sea—were covered in a densely patterned wallpaper and a frescoed ceiling. To these furnishings, Matisse added his own compositions as well as mirrors, masks, reproductions of Michelangelo drawings, and elaborate textiles. He also set up several large portable frames that were used to mount the decorative fabrics which served as backdrops for his paintings. For Matisse, a descendent of generations of weavers, textiles were fundamental to his conception of the decorative and allowed the artist to explore questions of reality and illusion. As Roberta Smith observed, “Matisse’s textiles were basic to his development of painting as a unified, all-over, forward-pressing surface” (“How a Renowned Painter Found Inspiration in Cloth” in New York Times, 24 June 2005, online).
Matisse’s primary model during this period was Henriette Darricarrère, whom he had first encountered in 1920 at the Studios de la Victorine, a film studio, where she was dancing ballet for the camera. She began sitting for the artist shortly thereafter, eventually becoming the subject of hundreds of drawings, paintings, and sculptures over the next seven years. Commenting on his attachment to particular faces, Matisse explained, “My models, human figures, are never just ‘extras’ in an interior. They are the principal theme in my work. I depend entirely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I decide on the pose which best suits her nature” (“Notes of a Painter on his Drawing,” 1939; reproduced in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 131). Darricarrère’s theatrical presence provided a wellspring of inspiration as she threw herself into inhabiting various roles in Matisse’s oeuvre, particularly that of the odalisque. As art historian Jack Cowart has noted, she came to “incarnate the artistic and psychological atmosphere of the niçoise years” (in exh. cat., op. cit., 1986, p. 27).
During the winter of 1922 to 1923, Matisse painted a series of portraits of Darricarrère set against a decorative ground. Several of these works are now held in museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. The pink blossoms depicted in Femme au chapeau fleuri can be seen in several paintings from this period. While concentrating on the single-figure portrait, Matisse represented Darricarrère in various guises. In some canvases, she is shown in the lavish accessories befitting an odalisque; in others, she sports the fashion of the era. In the present work, Darricarrère wears a loose fitting white chemise with scalloped sleeves, while a multicolored beaded necklace hangs around her neck. Bangles and a wristwatch call attention to her long, elegant arms that rest upon a checkered tablecloth. Concealing her recognizable dark hair is a wide-brimmed hat adorned with luxuriant pink blooms and draped with a stretch of blue fabric. Women wearing extravagant hats was a preferred motif for Impressionists including Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who depicted contemporary fashions in order to both capture modern life and demonstrate their prowess at representing texture and pattern within a painting.
For Matisse, the process of creating a portrait required a strong rapport between artist and sitter, and he was able to build up this understanding during the many years he worked with Darricarrère. Portraiture, reflected Matisse, “demands especial gifts of the artist, and the possibility of an almost total identification of the painter with his model. The painter should come to his model with no preconceived ideas. Everything should come to him in the same way that in a landscape all the scents of the countryside come to him: those of the earth, of the flowers linked with the play of clouds, of the movement of the trees and of the different sounds of the countryside” (quoted in “Portraits,” 1952; reproduced in J. Flam, op. cit., 1995, p. 222). Such understanding is evident in the present work, particularly in Matisse’s rendering of Darricarrère’s expressive face.
The tonalities used in Femme au chapeau fleuri make clear that Matisse was a colorist par excellence. Rose pink and olive green produce a harmonious rhythm that is punctuated by the cobalt blue cloth wrapped around her hat. Although a figurative image, there is a sense of abstraction in the painting, particularly in the manner in which Matisse has played with depth through color. The blue-and-green checkered cloth in the foreground appears to swell as the floral backdrop surges forward. The two textiles appear to surround Darricarrère, who is seemingly the only solid presence within this vertiginous space.
Femme au chapeau fleuri was previously in the collection of Baroness Eva Gebhard Gourgaud, who, along with her husband, built an impressive collection, with works by Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Seurat, among others. Her portrait was painted twice by Marie Laurencin in 1923 and, the following year, by Matisse. All three paintings are in the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Much of the Baroness’ collection was bequeathed to the French state following her death in 1959, and works can now be found in institutions worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Femme au chapeau fleuri was acquired by the Baroness in the same year it was painted.