Chevelure ruban de fumée

From the early 1920s onwards, Henri Matisse consistently oscillated between dual methods of drawing. At certain moments, he favored the fine, spontaneous and irreversible line of pen and ink against a stark white sheet. Alternatively, as evinced by the present exquisite drawing, Chevelure ruban de fumée, he employed the rich nuance and satin finish of charcoal, using his fingers, a rag or the end of an estompe—a thick stick of tightly rolled paper—to rub the charcoal into the surface of the sheet. Both practices served as intrinsically related steps in a process of translating his emotions, by means of a likeness, to paper. In his own words, the medium "allowed [him] to dig into the personality of the model, their expression, the quality of the surrounding light, the ambiance and everything that only drawing can convey" (quoted in “Notes of a Painter on His Drawing” in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 130-131).
Here, with a mere block of charcoal, Matisse coaxes from the sheet a final image of extraordinary precision and spirited experimentation. Turning his charcoal stick on its side, in one expert and undulating gesture, he conjures his subject’s hazy tresses in both texture and form. From this turret of sfumato curls, her alluring features and beguiling gaze beckon, seemingly informed in equal parts by artistic invention as by nocturnal memory. As his granddaughter, Jacqueline Matisse-Monnier, fondly recalled, "His talent was something physical, that lived in his hand... His hand guided him after absorbing the object and he no longer looked at it. What he drew of it was simply the result that was in him, like a film negative" (quoted in H. Spurling, Matisse the Master, New York, 2007, p. 447).