Henri Matisse

Curt Valentin Gallery, New York (by October 1952)

Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1953)

Acquired by descent from the above

New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, The Sculpture of Henri Matisse, 1953, no. 38

Claude Duthuit & Wanda de Guébriant, Henri Matisse, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre sculpté, Paris, 1997, no. 79, illustration of another cast

Matisse, Painter as Sculptor (exhibition catalogue), Dallas Museum of Art and Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; San Francisco Museum of Art & The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2007-08, illustration of another cast in color p. 245

Excellent condition. It displays a dark brown patina that is in excellent condition. No significant scratches or abrasions were observed on the surface. The sculpture is clean and displays a fresh protective wax coating. The sculpture is structurally sound.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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The goddess Venus, ascending from the water on a half-shell, was the subject of two sculptures that Matisse completed in Nice in 1930s.  The present work, Vénus à la coquille I, is the more streamlined and powerfully articulated rendering of the two. The model's pose recalls that of Degas' bather in Le Tub, but was in fact inspired by a cloud formation that Matisse saw in Tahiti, resembling a woman rising from the water. 

Matisse's radically stylized modeling of the figure here brings to the fore many of the formal concerns that were central to his artistic production at this pivotal moment in his career.  Posed with her arms stretched tautly overhead, Vénus à la coquille I possesses the same sharp, vertical delineation as Matisse's grand Dos IV, also completed that same year.  As Dos IV is by far the most abstract of the four monumental reliefs of backs, so too is the present rendering of Venus in comparison with the more languid and anatomically detailed versions of the goddess that Matisse executed almost two decades earlier.  In fact, Albert Elsen's description of Dos IV can equally be applied to Vénus à la coquille I. "Matisse shows here his great gift for dividing up a rectangular area into sculptural shapes," wrote Elsen.   "Like color in painting he wanted the light to follow the form of the volumes.  Light no longer excavates or obscures the big masses.  Depressions have been reduced, as has steepness of gradient, to enhance the volumes" (A. E. Elsen, The Sculpture of Henri Matisse, New York, 1972).

Vénus à la coquille I was cast by the Valsuani foundry in an edition of eleven bronzes, numbered 0-10, between 1930 and 1954.  According to Wanda de Guébriant's 1997 inventory of Matisse's bronzes, casts of this work are in the following five public collections: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Cone Collection, Baltimore; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; the Musée Matisse, Nice and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.