Suddenly, at the end of the decade, Matisse resumed etching. Within a few months he produced a constellation of about 125 plates, studies of nudes and odalisques (Nu Couché sur le Côté, les jambes repliées, lot 14), and a series of girls gazing at goldfish (Jeune femme contemplant un bocal de poissons rouges, lot 37 and Tête penchée et Bocal des poissons, lot 33). Again, as in 1914, he worked directly on the plate from the model. Sometimes, like the lithographs, the etchings repeat or anticipate motifs in his painting. Usually, although often similar in subject, they remain distinct. These small prints seem whimsical but speak of the artist’s intense concentration on capturing the sensations of the moment.

Matisse would never be as prolific a maker of individual prints as he was at the end of the 1920s. In the last two decades of his life, his concentration in printmaking was directed primarily to the production of deluxe illustrated books. However, this did not signal an unwillingness to learn new techniques. In 1936 he made his first aquatint (a variant of etching) and was soon using it to create boldly-brushed black lines against fields of unprinted white paper, in the manner of Indian ink brush drawings. Bedouine au grande voile (lot 44) is a prime example of this.

‘[Matisse] saw printmaking as an extension of drawing, which he made clear was central to his art. To view Henri Matisse’s prints is to encounter his drawing, and through the chronology of his prints we learn how his approach to drawing changed and functioned in different modes. His printmaking oeuvre amounts to an enormous visual library, a published record more accessible and complete than any of his drawings assembled for exhibition could offer.’ Jay McKean Fisher, Matisse as Printmaker; Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, American Federation of Arts, 2009.