Henri Matisse

Pierre Matisse, New York (by descent from the artist)
Pierre-Noel Matisse (by descent from the above and sold: Christie's New York, May 10, 2007, lot 294)
Acquired at the above sale

Taipei, National Museum of History, Matisse, l'émotion du trait, le don de l'espace, 2002-03, illustrated p. 37

Guy-Patrice & Michel Dauberville, Matisse, Catalogue des Oeuvres Répertoiriées, vol. I, Paris, 1995, no. 42, illustrated p. 355

Canvas is unlined. Surface is slightly dirty. A few vertical abrasions to the surface, particularly at the upper right edge that may be inherent to the artist's process. Under UV light: no inpainting is apparent, the work is in excellent condition.
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1904, the year this work was completed, marked a turning point in Matisse's career and a decisive shift towards Fauvism.   This picture presages the colorful direction that Matisse's art would take over the course of the next decade (see fig. 1) and also the influence of his style on the German Expressionist painters only a few years later (see fig. 2).  As described by John Elderfield in a Matisse Retrospective catalogue, "During an extended stay in Corsica and Toulouse in 1898-1899, he produced an important group of paintings in high key, arbitrary colors and with un-naturalistically broken or atomized forms.  The still lives in particular are constructed purely from the relationships between colors, whose descriptive function is only summarily indicated.  These 'proto-fauve' paintings suddenly reveal the nature of Matisse's genius as a colorist: his using color not to imitate light, but to create it ...Until 1904, an architectonic style concerned with expressing volume as color through juxtaposed patches of different color...or through sculptural masses composed of variations of a single color...dominated his production" (John Elderfield, Henri Matisse, A Retrospective, New York, 1992, p. 81).

The absence of human figures allows Matisse to explore the dynamic interplay of colorful planes.  As the artist describes, "The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.  I put down my tones without a preconceived plan.  If at first, and perhaps without my having been conscious of it, one tone has particularly seduced or caught me, more often than not once the picture is finished I will notice that I have respected this tone while I progressively altered and transformed all the others.  The expressive aspect of colors imposes itself on me in a purely instinctive way.  To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will be inspired only by the sensation that the season arouses in me: the icy purity of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the nuances of foliage ...There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition.  Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely" (Jack Flam, Matisse, A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 80).

 

Fig. 1: Henri Matisse, La Forêt à Fontainebleau, oil on canvas, 1909, Private Collection

Fig. 2: Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape at Murnau, oil on canvas, 1907, Private Collection