Henri Matisse

Jean Matisse (the artist's son)
Heinz Berggruen, Berlin (acquired by 1966)
Albert Loeb, New York (acquired by 1967)
Robert Elkon Gallery, New York (acquired in 1970)
William Vareika Fine Arts, Newport, Rhode Island (acquired from the above in 1999)
R.H. Love Galleries, Chicago
Acquired from the above

Berlin, Heinz Berggruen, Matisse Drawings, 1967
New York, Robert Elkon Gallery, Matisse and his Friends, 1970
London, Waddington Galleries (dates unknown)
New York, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (dates unknown)

Executed on cream colored wove paper hinged to a mount at two places at top edge on verso. The edges are deckled. Artist pinholes at upper corners. A statement of authenticity is written on the verso of the sheet by Wanda de Guébriant. Edges of the sheet are slightly darker than the rest of the sheet - likely from a prior mat. A nick at right edge towards upper right corner, otherwise fine. This work is in very good condition.
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Matisse’s artistic output from 1928 marks this year as one of the most celebrated of his career. Le Repos des modelés, fond ornemental et damier, executed while the artist was living in Nice and during what is considered his most accomplished period as a draughtsman, combines the most important elements of his work at the time: the iconic Orientalist setting and a fascination with texture and patterns. In 1928 Matisse painted several compositions in which two models are shown seated or reclining around a checkerboard, and this particular composition closely relates to the painting Deux Odalisques in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (see fig. 1).

Like most of his works from this period, the exotic costumes of the two sleeping young women and ornamented interior evoke his travels in Morocco in 1912-13, which provided Matisse with a life-long source of inspiration. The artist once proclaimed about this subject: "The odalisques were the bounty of a happy nostalgia, a lovely, vivid dream, and the almost ecstatic, enchanted days and nights of the Moroccan climate. I felt an irresistible need to express that ecstasy, that divine unconcern, in corresponding coloured rhythms, rhythms of sunny and lavish figures and color" (quoted in Jack Flam, ed., Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 230).