Henri MATISSE (1869-1954)

Lot 79
Go to lot
Estimation :
300000 - 500000 EUR
Result without fees
Result : 420 000EUR
Henri MATISSE (1869-1954)
Two Women and a Child in an Interior, Open Window, January 1939. Charcoal and etching on paper. Signed and dated lower left "Henri Matisse 1939". 61 x 61 cm Bibliography: Lydia Delectorskaya, L'Apparente facilité, Henri Matisse: peintures de 1935-1939, Paris, éditions A. Maeght, 1986, p. 294. A certificate of authenticity issued by Madame Wanda de Guébriant dated 22 March 2018 will be given to the future buyer. Said certificate specifies that the work is registered at No. E 118 of the artist's archives The work is accompanied by a certificate of export of cultural goods issued on 10/01/2018 Une maternitéd'Henri Matisse 1939 HENRI MATISSE ET PIERRE MATISSE During the 1930s, Pierre Matisse exhibited only a few of his father's works, obtaining the painter's trust only for a few lithographs. The young gallery owner devoted himself to other artists such as Mirò, Balthus, Calder and Giacometti. During the winter of 1943, the Pierre Matisse Gallery organized a successful retrospective of Picasso's work in New York. By putting the Picasso-Matisse rivalry into perspective, this exhibition could have represented a sort of casus belli between father and son. But the following year, Henri Matisse finally entrusted his son with a first exclusive exhibition of his gouache cut-outs in New York. MATERNITY (1939) The theme of family and motherhood runs through Matisse's work; his wife and children are privileged models between 1896 and 1917. But the painter's personal life took a painful turn in 1939, the year he separated from his wife, Amélie Parayre. The latter could no longer stand the presence of the beautiful Lydia Delectorskaya, who had been the artist's studio model, assistant and, of course, muse since 1933. In January, the artist began to study a painting which he eventually abandoned. Our drawing is the most important of a series whose starting point is probably The Family, 1939 (Dauberville, Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, tome II, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune editions, n°765), pen and ink sketch executed with a light and quick hand from a family scene. Our drawing was probably of great importance to Matisse because he placed it above his fireplace in the apartment he occupied at the Régina Hotel in Nice between 1938 and 1943. One can recognize the herringbone parquet floor and the large window with its wrought iron balconies. Matisse transformed his hotel room into a veritable studio where, in addition to the presence of his models, he piled up plants, fabrics, furniture, vases and other knick-knacks that we find in his works. MATISSE: SPACE AND ARABICS This maternity home evokes the theme of happiness, which runs through all of Matisse's painted and drawn work. The sentimental fusion is suggested here by the circular arabesques that envelop the mother and child. On the formal level, it is the contradiction between perspective and flatness (an obsessive theme for Matisse, addressed in his masterpieces from the beginning of the century) that preoccupies the artist. The group of figures, the armrests of the armchair and the parquet floor create vanishing lines that hollow out the space, while the fabric of the checkerboard dress, the floral wallpaper on the wall and the scrolls on the balcony are all motifs that flatten the composition. The Byzantine monumentality of the image that Matisse seeks and that demands the plane is, however, enlivened by the arabesques that dot and rhythm the surface. Matisse adds another counterpoint that opposes the rigor and firmness of his line to the poetic blur of the blur that shadows the faces.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue