Henri Matisse (1869-1954), along with his friend and rival Pablo Picasso, made a major contribution to modern art from its very beginnings. A leader of the Fauves, Matisse’s art was based on colour, in a quest for balance with the purity of line. He focused on certain recurring themes, such as the movement of the body and dance. A major artist of the 20th century, he was an innovator in painting and sculpture, as well as in drawing and collage, with his famous “papiers découpés”.
“The painter’s duty is to give what photography does not”. Henri Matisse.
“Madame Matisse with a hat”, an oil on canvas from 1905. This work is part of the Haas Collection and has been in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 1991.
The way in which his wife is represented is simple, typical of the “Fauvism” of which Matisse was the leader at the time.
The colours are vivid and pure, with no mixing or transformation, and the quick, vivid brushstrokes reflect the painter’s spontaneous feeling for the model. There is no effect of depth or volume in this painting.
“The Terrace”, Saint Tropez an oil on canvas painted in 1904.
A work already in its expression, painted in the Fauvist style that it prefigures.
The original of this canvas is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
That summer of 1904, Matisse had joined the painter Signac in the south-east, who was part of the “Pointillism” artistic movement. When Matisse showed him this canvas, Signac severely criticised the work, saying that his brushstrokes were too broad and imprecise.
The artist took this criticism very badly and returned furious to La Ramade, his home in Saint Tropez.
To calm him down, his wife Amélie took him to the beach and he painted “Le goûter”, his first large Fauve canvas.
Then he replied to Signac, “My painting, Terrace in Saint-Tropez, a masterpiece to throw the pointillist rules out the window”, but in fact this period was still a time when Matisse was trying to find his way.
However, the following winter, in his Paris studio in 1904-1905, he painted “Luxe, calme et volupté”, in homage to the verses of Baudelaire, a painting that will always be dear to the pointillist movement.
Signac bought the painting from him and hung it in his house in the Tropez, so the artistic quarrel between the two artists was short-lived.
Matisse did not return to Saint Tropez, preferring Collioure the following summer in 1905, where he met up with Derain, who criticised him for not yet having turned the page on pointillism. However, everything was ready for Matisse to do away with this movement and embark on “Le Fauvisme”, of which the painter would be the leader.
“La plage rouge” is an oil on canvas that Matisse painted in the small port of Collioure in July-August 1905.
This painting is part of the collection of The Courtauld Art Gallery in London.
It was painted from the window of the artist’s studio. At this time, he had joined the painter Derain, with whom he was working in Collioure. Few figures are introduced in this work.
Matisse wrote of this canvas: “You may be surprised to see a beach of this colour, but in reality it was yellow sand. I realised that I had painted it with red. The next day, I tried yellow, but it didn’t work at all, so I put red back on. “
Matisse was pushing painting to its limits, using a technique of flat paint.
This was totally in keeping with what was to become “Fauvism”, the artistic movement of the early twentieth century led by Matisse.
These works were exhibited to great acclaim at the Salon d’Automne at the Grand Palais in Paris in autumn 1905.
A sculpture representing a classical child’s bust, in the neo-renaissance style, was on display in Room VII, amidst these exuberant canvases, with their explosive colours and pure tones.
The art critic Vauxcelles said, “It’s Donatello with the Fauves”, which later became “The Cage of Fauves”, and thus “Fauvism” was born. “
Thirty-nine canvases, including those by Matisse, caused a scandal with their excess of violent colours, illustrating a new construction of the image through colour.
Derain and Vlaminck also exhibited in this room, and Derain said, “Make colour a new material”.
The deconstruction of space combined with violent colours in the art of painting initiated the principles of Fauvism, which would be recognised in the history of art as the first avant-garde movement of the twentieth century, although it would only be active from 1904, which saw its beginnings, until 1907.
“The Open Window at Collioure”, an oil on canvas from 1905, at the height of the Fauvist period, is kept in Washington at the National Gallery of Art.
The opening onto the world through this window is not the object here; on the contrary, Matisse uses this window as a pretext for upsetting all perspective, with the elements arranged one on top of the other in a composition that seems flattened.
We are here in a debauchery of pure, unrealistic tones, the painter from the window of his bedroom in Collioure painting this canvas in three distinct spaces:
In the foreground are the walls of his bedroom, blue-green on one side, pink on the other, with the window frame.
In the second shot, the balcony surrounded by vegetation, a setting that foreshadows the third shot, the harbour with a few boats, the water and the sky. This third shot gives us the impression of seeing a painting within a painting.
At the same time, there are still inspirations from the “Pointillism” from which Matisse had not yet fully extracted himself. The interior spaces, on the other hand, feature flat monochrome colours. For the balcony and the plants, the painter drew thicker or thinner lines, accompanied by spots.
It is the breaks in colour that determine the shapes, the drawing is absent, the colour here is the drawing, these colours are bright, vivid, they clash. Matisse was absolutely looking for the vibration of light.
“Woman at the Water’s Edge”, or “Japanese Woman at the Water’s Edge”, an oil on canvas from the summer of 1905, created in Collioure.
It shows a Japanese woman in a kimono at the water’s edge; the work is at the MOMA in New York.
Derain and Matisse were staying in this small port in the eastern Pyrenees at the time, and the two artists were ten years apart. Matisse was the older, and therefore artistically more mature, but a relationship of frank emulation developed between the two artists.
This painting is the result of Matisse’s pictorial research during his stay in Collioure. In fact, he was experimenting with the neo-Impressionism he had just discovered, a movement that was supposed to be the logical development of Impressionism. However, this new movement was more concerned with colour and less with movement and spontaneity.
The principle here is the systematic division of tones, which the eye then endeavours to reconstruct in order to discover the subject and setting of the canvas.
It is widely believed that the two artists’ stay here was at the origin of the new artistic movement known as “Fauvism”, which is thought to have been born in 1905.
At that year’s Salon d’Automne in Paris, a room was dedicated to Matisse and Derain and other artists known as “Les Avant-Gardes”, and this room was later named “La Salle Fauve”.
It is true that in this painting, “La japonaise au bord de l’eau”, we can detect the characteristics of Fauvism, the principle of bold colours is new and very present, with pure, vivid colours.
This work represents a break with academic art, both in the use of lines and the treatment of colour.
Here, Matisse hesitates between the line and the dot, clearly wanting to break away from “Pointillism”. We also see broad flat areas of colour for the foot or the colours of the kimono, and less clear strokes for the rocks in the foreground.
The rocks are formed by the colour used in the space, and the Japanese woman’s garment owes its shape to the light line sketched in.
The treatment of colour was surprising, as was the technique, foreshadowing the fauvism of which Matisse was the leader, a movement that died out around 1910.
“The roofs of Collioure”, 1905 by Henri Matisse. Painted from his bedroom window. Fauvist period.
“La joie de vivre”, a large oil on canvas from 1905, is now in the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania.
It was exhibited at the 1906 Salon des Indépendants. The figures were inspired by Cezanne’s “Bathers”.
This representation was badly received by the critics, “who argued that the colours had nothing to do with reality and also for its white and empty figures”.
This painting was first bought by Léo Stein and was much seen in this context by Picasso, who feared “large format” works. This large canvas gave rise in part to his work: “Les demoiselles d’Avignon” dated 1907, as a way of surpassing Matisse, in whom he saw a rival.
“Young Girl Reading”, 1905.
Matisse painted this intimate scene of his daughter, Marguerite, reading in a profusion of colours; her hair is painted with almost as many colours as the fruit in the foreground. He did this work during the summer of 1905 in Collioure, where he was staying with his friend André Derain. He wanted to “make the colours sing”.
“Les Pivoines”, 1906, a highly creative artist who sublimates flowers. A lesson in modernity!
“The Dance II” or “The Dance” is a large-format oil on canvas (260 x 391 cm), painted in 1910 to order by the Russian collector “Shchukin”, a lover of early 20th-century French art.
It is said to have been used to decorate his home, along with a 2nd painting in the same style, “La musique”, by Matisse.
The original version of “The Dance II” is now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and was later reproduced several times by Matisse on several canvases as a decorative element.
It would become one of the painter’s most famous works in the pure Fauvist tradition.
“The Red Studio”, 1911.
You have to bear in mind what life was like in 1911, barely out of the 19th century marked by the austerity of the Victorian era. The interiors were full of dark hangings, the women often dressed in black, their dresses touching the floor. Matisse floods us with this brilliant colour. MoMA, New York.
Iris vase, 1912
The Blue Window, 1913, MOMA collection
“Moroccans at Prayer” is an oil on canvas painted between 1915 and 1916.
This work is kept at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was painted in Issy- les- Moulineaux. At the time, Matisse was living with his family in the town, enjoying the garden and the light. Matisse was fascinated by oriental art, which he had discovered in 1903 at an exhibition of Muslim art.
In 1912, he made two trips to Morocco with his wife, bringing back ceramics and carpets, but above all an inordinate desire for light and blue.
In 1914, war was declared. In 1916, his two sons were at the front and he painted this canvas at that time. His stay in Morocco led Matisse, the leader of Fauvism, to develop his style and he tried a new pictorial approach, very close to Cubism, such as this work “Moroccans at Prayer”.
“Mademoiselle Matisse in a tartan coat” during the spring of 1918 in Nice.
Seeking to escape the harsh winters of northern France, Henri Matisse moved to Nice at the end of 1917. In May of the following year, he wrote to Charles Camoin: “Ah, Nice is a beautiful place! “What soft, mellow light despite the glare!
It was the beginning of a lifelong infatuation with the south.
Matisse took up residence at the Hȏtel Beau-Rivage, close to the Opera and Cours Saleya, where his room offered a breathtaking view of the sea and the Bay of Angels.
“Woman with a Red Umbrella Seated in Profile”, (Interior), 1919-1921, oil on canvas, 81cm x 65cm. Private collection.
This work by Matisse was sold at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Auction from the collection of John T. Dorrance Jr. Dorrance Jr. in New York on 18 October 1989 for $12.4 million, a record for a work by the artist. The painting is a rhapsody of Mediterranean light. The blue of the sea plays with the red tiles and turquoise shutters of the luxury hotel room where Matisse lived and worked.
“Woman at her Window” is an oil on canvas from 1920. This work is part of the collection of the Musée d’art moderne de Paris, located at the Centre Pompidou, but since March 1972, it has been on deposit at the Musée de l’annonciade in Saint Tropez.
In this painting, a simple representation of a sketched female silhouette, in front of an open window overlooking the Nice seaside, in a room with a coloured carpet where red dominates, black arabesques punctuate the uniformity of the colour, the window is draped with heavy curtains, the yellow of what looks like a bathrobe echoes the yellow colour of the window frame and the ochre armchair.
The open window offers a view of the sea, light sailboats and the sky in shades of grey-blue, reminiscent of the interior covering of the walls and the uncovered floor of the carpet.
The work has a peaceful quality, conducive to dreaming and escapism with its open window, but I think there is also a sort of melancholy about it.
To put Matisse’s life in context at this time, it is worth noting that in the early 1920s, the painter moved to Nice, where he invented a world that would be his for the next ten years or so: “Les odalisques”, which lent itself to a set design using accessories and flamboyant fabrics. The painter created interiors full of motifs, materials and objects, painting his models naked or dressed in clothes brought back from Morocco, where he had travelled.
It should also be remembered that in 1920 Matisse designed the sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s ballet “Le chant du rossignol”, his first decorative experience outside the flat surface of a painting.
An oil on canvas painted in Nice in 1925, “Figure décorative sur fond ornemental”. This painting is kept at the MNAM, Centre Pompidou in Paris.
This painting shows a woman sitting on a carpet in a very present setting. Fabric was to be used by Matisse several times in his compositions, notably for odalisques, a theme taken up many times by the painter.
Here, the colours organise the canvas, the outlines are underlined by a black line, and the space is saturated with decorative ornaments. The fabric with medallions containing bunches of flowers adds to this ornamental saturation.
This canvas was exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in June 1926 and was the subject of admiring reviews. It is one of Matisse’s most widely reproduced works.
This painting would be the pivotal work of the Nice period, which began in 1919 and ended in 1930.
In 1938, the painter sold the painting to the French state.
“The Dream”, an oil on canvas from 1935, painted in the MNAM in Paris, Centre Pompidou.
The model here is a young woman of Russian origin, Lydia Delectorskaya, who posed daily for Matisse.
The years from 1930 to 1933 were spent in reflection and fine-tuning. The encounter with this new model triggered a different vision and enabled the painter to develop a new sequence.
For Matisse, the relationship with the model was very important, and in 1939 he declared: “My models, my human figures, are never figures in an interior. They are the main theme of my work; I depend absolutely on the model, whom I observe in freedom, and it is then that I decide on the pose that corresponds most naturally to him. When I take on a new model, it’s in his abandonment at rest that I guess the pose that suits him and to which I make myself a slave. “
The pose in “The Dream” thus appears to be personal to Lydia Delectorskaya, from the very first drawing the painter made of her.
“Le rêve de 1935” (The Dream of 1935) was one of the stages that would lead Matisse to cut-out gouache, but it is also a canvas representative of voluptuousness, sublimated by its construction in gently interlocking arabesques, by its harmony of pink and blue, by the triangle of the face enveloped by the larger triangle of the arms, and also by the serene expression of the face, a diffuse gentleness that seems to spread over the whole canvas.
“Lydia Delectorskaya, le nu rose”, an oil on canvas begun on 3 June 1935, which he took up again on 29 June, this painting would go through at least fourteen new states before reaching its final version, which is now at the Museum of Art in Baltimore.
This post is also illustrated by a photo of Lydia and Matisse and a photo of Lydia alone, in front of a canvas on an easel.
Born in Tomsk, Russia, in 1910, she came from a noble family and was orphaned at an early age. Lydia fled the Bolshevik revolution, headed for the Chinese city of Harbin, which served as a haven for Russian immigrants, entered into a hasty marriage at the age of 20, moved to Paris and then divorced.
Lydia Delectorskaya arrived in Nice in 1930, where she worked at various odd jobs before meeting Matisse in 1932. She stayed with the painter for 22 years until his death in 1954.
She was at once his muse, his favourite model, his assistant and his secretary.
Matisse saw in Lydia what he called “an ice princess”.
In 1938, although Madame Matisse dismissed her, she remained indispensable to the painter, in particular for logistics, secretarial work, maintenance and housekeeping. At the very least, Matisse and Lydia enjoyed a strong emotional relationship and friendship.
Lydia Delectorskaya followed the preparations for the Musée Matisse in Cateau-Cambrésis in 1952, and the production of ceramic tiles and stained glass windows for the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence.
After the painter’s death in 1954, she published two works illustrating her collaboration with Matisse: “L’apparente facilité, Henri Matisse” paintings from 1935-1936, published in 1986 by Adrien Maeght, and ten years later, “Henri Matisse, contre vents et marées”: paintings and books, with illustrations from 1935 to 1939, published by Hansma, Paris.
Lydia Delectorskaya died in 1998 at the age of 87. Matisse’s muse was buried in Pavlovsk, near Saint Petersburg.
“Young Girl with Tiara”, 1936.
“I often have this strange and penetrating dream
Of an unknown woman whom I love and who loves me
And who is, each time, neither quite the same
Nor quite another, and loves me and understands me.
For she understands me, and my heart, transparent
For her alone, alas! ceases to be a problem
For her alone, and the dampness of my pale forehead,
Only she knows how to cool them with tears.
Is she brunette, blonde or redhead? – I can’t tell.
What’s her name? I remember that it is sweet and sonorous
Like those of the loved ones exiled by Life.
Her eyes are like the eyes of statues,
And his voice, distant, calm and deep, has
The inflection of dear voices that have fallen silent.”
Paul Verlaine
“La blouse roumaine”, oil on canvas, 1940, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
The painter worked on this canvas from 5 October 1939 to 9 April 1940, a little over six months.
But as early as 1936, this type of blouse with wide sleeves was already being worn by his model at the time, Lydia Delectorskaya.
These pen-and-ink drawings can be seen in publications 3-5 of the cahiers d’art, and other studies more or less related to this painting were produced in 1939.
From 1935 onwards, Matisse used photography to prepare his work and to follow its progress. For this painting, to achieve the desired simplification, he took eleven photographs to erase the model in favour of this embroidered blouse, which swells and takes up a large part of the space, details disappear and the lines are simplified.
We know that Matisse was very sensitive to handmade fabrics and their variety, and he often used them as backdrops for his canvases, creating a whole scenography.
“Femme au collier”, 1942
The beloved was naked, and, knowing my heart,
She had kept only her sonorous jewels,
Whose rich paraphernalia gave her the winning air
That the slaves of the Moors have in their happy days.
When it throws out its lively, mocking noise as it dances,
This radiant world of metal and stone
Ravishes me in ecstasy, and I love to fury
Things where sound mingles with light.
So she lay down and let herself be loved,
And from the couch she smiled at ease
At my love, deep and gentle as the sea,
Which rose towards her as towards its cliff.
Her eyes fixed on me like a tamed tiger,
With a vague and dreamy air she tried poses,
And candour combined with lechery
Gave a new charm to her metamorphoses;
And her arm and leg, and thigh and loins,
Polished like oil, undulating like a swan,
Passed before my clear-sighted and serene eyes;
And her belly and her breasts, these clusters of my vine,
Cuddlier than the Angels of Evil,
To disturb the repose of my soul,
And to disturb it from the crystal rock
Where, calm and solitary, it had sat.
I thought I saw a new design
The hips of Antiope with the bust of a beardless man,
So much her waist made her pelvis stand out.
The blush on her fawn and brown complexion was superb!
And the lamp resigned itself to dying,
As the hearth alone lit the chamber,
Each time he heaved a flaming sigh,
He flooded the amber skin with blood!
Charles Baudelaire, “Les Fleurs du mal”, 1857
“Le clown”, June 1943, gouache paper, cut out and pasted on marouflé paper. This work is in the MNAM, Centre Pompidou.
Along with “Le lagon”, this collage is part of the model for the book “Jazz”, published in 1947 in collaboration with the Greek publisher Tériade. “
The clown was one of the first illustrations produced.
Stained glass window in the nave of the Chapelle du Rosaire, Vence, France, 1948-51
“Zulma”, 1950, a gouache on cut paper, the work is in Copenhagen, at the Statens. Museum for Kunst.
Matisse illustrates a nude in an interior, a theme often reproduced in many of the artist’s earlier paintings and sculptures, but here it is reduced to a simple coloured silhouette that is drawn on the space defined by the colours around the model, producing an effect of light and shadow.
light and shadow.
Each element has been materialised in planes of colour that interact according to the principles used by the painter 45 years earlier in “Le portrait de Madame Matisse”.
“La tristesse du roi” (The King’s Sadness), created in 1952, is a gouache on paper, cut out, pasted onto paper and laid out on canvas.
The simplicity of the forms, but also the exuberance of the colours, make this painting a satisfactory representation of Fauvist art, despite its limited colour palette. This is abstract art.
Matisse seems to have wanted to link this painting to a biblical theme, that of Salome dancing in front of Herod.
This work evokes the theme of old age, and it will be the last self-portrait of Matisse, who represents himself as an old man in the centre of the painting. He is this black form, studded with yellow flowers, in the midst of calm pleasures, such as the azure, the waves and the various splendours offered to the eye.
This creation is considered one of the painter’s most important works.
In spite of everything, the king is sad; from his guitar escape yellow petals representing joyful musical notes meant to soften old age; the green odalisque represents the Orient; the dancer on the right is intended as a tribute to the female body.
This work, painted two years before Matisse’s death, is an admission of the painter’s introspection and concern about old age.
A magnificent document showing Henri Matisse making his famous papiers découpés, assisted by Lydia Delectorskaya.
The Matisse Museum in Nice was inaugurated on 5 January 1963, and the works of Henri Matisse are exhibited on the 1st floor of the villa,
The history of the museum is deeply linked to the painter’s genuine attachment to the city of Nice, where he produced most of his work, a bond confirmed by Henri Matisse’s successive donations to the city, followed by those of his heirs.
In the 17th century, this site originally housed a modest house surrounded by Roman remains, belonging to the “Gubernatis” family, whose head was consul of Nice. Their heir, Jean-Jérôme de Gubernatis, President of the Senate of Nice, then decided to build a mansion, which he named the “Palais”, a typical Genoese building.
In 1823, the Count of Cocconato bought the property and, from 1865, encouraged excavations that uncovered a quarter of the Roman city of Cemenelum.
The building then became a modest “English boarding house”.
The city of Nice bought the villa in 1950, at which time it was known as the “Villa Garin de Cocconato” or “villa des arènes”. It was close to Henri Matisse’s residence at Le Regina, and the idea was born to use the property to display the painter’s important works.
In 1978, following the donation of Jean Matisse, the city wishes to renovate the villa, in particular to enhance the enhancement of the collections of the initial donation of Madame Henri Matisse, but the city then clashes with excavation work on the site, which will significantly slow down the work.
The museum was not reopened until 1993. The architect Jean-François Bodin was responsible for its renovation and the creation of a new contemporary wing.
In 2002, this villa will be equipped with an artistic initiation workshop and in 2003 a drawing studio dedicated to the conservation and management of graphic art works.
In 2013, a new layout will allow to receive on level 2 the donation of the ceramic “The pool”.
Finally, in 2017, a redeployment of the collections will require the implementation of a new museographic route, imposing new renovation works of the museum and its environment.
Merci Véronique pour ce partage encore magnifique qui rappelle que l’Art est impprtant dans nos vies. Au travers des toiles de Matisse on retrouve l’Amour de la vie de par ses couleurs chatoyantes.
la vie est belle