Henri Matisse

Galerie Samlaren (Agnes Widlund), Stockholm
Private Collection (acquired in 1948)
Private Collection (by descent from the above)
Acquired by the present owner in February 1991

Liege (France), APIAW, Dessins, 1947, no. 27

Lydia Delectorskaya, Henri Matisse, Contre vents et marées, Peinture et livres illustrés de 1939 à 1943, Paris, 1996, illustrated p. 533


The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Wanda de Guébriant.

Executed on cream laid paper, affixed to a window mount at the top corners. Sheet is time-darkened, particularly in the lower register and above her shoulders. Remnants of an indistinct inscription at upper left which has been partially erased. On the verso, remains of hinging tape at the upper corners. Work is in generally good condition.
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During the years 1943-1946 Matisse worked on a series of drawings using a number of West Indian models. The present work relates closely to four pen and ink drawings of the same subject executed in March 1943, and titled Haïti. The model for these drawings appears to be the same Haïtian woman who features in a group of photographs made of Matisse at work in his studio at the villa Le Rêve at Vence in 1946 (see fig. 1) and described by Louis Aragon: 'Matisse with his back to us, in a dark jacket, is drawing the portrait of that lovely black woman who appears in countless drawings made at Vence, a woman from Haïti...' (quoted in Henri Matisse: a Novel, London, 1972, pp. 250-266). It is probable that the same model also inspired a series of 14 lithographs executed in 1944 to illustrate Charles Baudelaire's seminal Fleurs du mal, published in Paris in February 1947.

Between the 1920s and early 1940s, charcoal and estompe, as used in the present work, became Matisse's preferred medium when working on paper, using erasure to remove the rough charcoal surface and to create texture. In his article Notes d'un peintre sur son dessin published in 1939, Matisse described the advantages of this particular medium which allowed him, he wrote, 'to consider simultaneously the character of the model, the human expression, the quality of surrounding light, atmosphere and all that can be expressed by drawing' (quoted in John Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse, London, 1984, p. 84).