Henri Matisse

Charles Cox, Nice
Galerie Schmit, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1979

Paris, Galerie Schmit, Maîtres Francais, XIX-XX Siècles, 1979, no. 102, illustrated in the catalogue

Lydia Delectorskaya, Henri Matisse, Contre vents et marées, Peinture et livres illustrés de 1939 à 1943, Paris, 1996, illustrated in colour p. 442

Executed on white wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the mount. All four edges are deckled and there are artist's pinholes to all four corners. There is a nailhead-sized area of paper infill in the lower right quadrant. Apart from a minor staining to all four corners, probably due to previous mounting, and some light studio dirt, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall accurate, although the paper tone is whiter in the original.
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Executed in December 1942, the present work depicts a solitary female figure, one of the main themes in Matisse's œuvre. Matisse increasingly turned to drawing during his slow recovery from a serious illness that he suffered in winter 1940-41 and which left him partially disabled. In 1943 the artist's friend, the poet Louis Aragon, published 158 drawings that were produced during this period in an album entitled Themes et variations. Although not included in the album, Moniquis characteristic of the work of this period. This drawing is among a series of works produced by the artist that portray his nurse Monique Bourgeois, who took care of him during his long convalescence from several incidences of liver failure. Matisse also painted several canvases of her in Nice and in Vence, where the artist was taking refuge during the war. Later, Monique became a nun of the Dominican order and an inspiration to Matisse for the chapel in Vence, which he designed.

Matisse uses the threadlike pen line to define the silhouette of the model and the details of her dress, allowing contour and space to dominate. Matisse does not use tonal gradation, which is conventionally employed to express volume, texture and pictorial depth but, rather, turns to an even and consistent line to divide and subdivide the sheet. In the artist's own words, 'a good drawing must be like a wicker basket... from which one cannot remove a single cane without making a hole in it' (the artist in Pierre Schneider, Matisse, London, 1984, p. 574). Matisse believed in the expressive potential of contour and compared his drawings to writing. Rhythm and movement are, indeed, the qualities that prevail in this work.