Mid-20th Century Figurative Prints

Original Salamanca Ferias y Fiestas vintage Spanish poster. Lithograph archival linen backed and ready to frame. Artist: Ramon Melero. Very good condition. No tears, no stains, no damage. Fine condition This image has two piñata style faces. The woman has a flower in her hair and a veil and the man is just wearing a small Swiss hat. On the left side, there is a cow handing off a string that also has flowers. A city seal is in the upper left corner. The festival is in honor of la Virgen de la Vega...

A very good impression of this early lithograph on Arches. Initialed, dated and numbered 5/100 in pen and black ink. Printed and published by Original Press, San Francisco, with the ...

This exquisite lithograph after Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), titled Deux monosabios (Two Monosabios), from the folio Taureaux, Lithographies de Jean Cocteau (Bulls, Lithographs by Jean ...

This exquisite lithograph after Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), titled Frontispice pour Les Cavaliers d’Ombre (Frontispiece for The Horsemen of Shadow), from the album Les Cavaliers d'Ombr...

European fashion design from the 'Atelier Sogra', published in Vienna. 325mm by 220mm (sheet)

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Serie C, var. 8 (Series C, Variation 8), from the album Henri Matisse, Dessins, Themes et Variations (Drawings, Them...

Original vintage Badajoz Fiesta de San Juan linen backed poster. Very good condition, ready to frame. Printed: Lit. Ortega, Valencia. Archival linen backed. No tears, no stain...

This exquisite lithograph by Andre Derain (1880–1954), titled La Chasse (The Hunt), from Verve, Revue Artistique et Litteraire, Vol. II, No. 8, originates from the 1940 issue publish...

Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Diurnes, The Man From French Riviera, 1962 Original collotype and stencil (Jacomet workshop) Unsigned Limited to 1000 copy On paper 40 x 30 cm (c. 15.7 11...

Mediterranean Calm Image: 25.0 x 18.2 cm Mount: 37.8 x 29.8 cm Wood engraving 1932 Condition: Slight foxing One of Fourteen Wood Engravings, from drawings made on Orient Line Cruises by Robert...

Fernand Leger ( 1881 -1955 ) " La Fleur " .1952 . Lithograph in colors on wove paper Framed with museal glass : Specially created by the artist in 1952 for the XXe Siècle Cahiers d...

Mary Van Blarcom, 'China Spring', color serigraph, c. 1945, edition not stated but small. Signed in pencil in the image, lower right. Titled in pencil, bottom left sheet edge. A rich, painterly impression, with fresh colors, on cream laid paper; with full margins (9/16 to 1 5/16 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 10 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches; sheet size 11 15/16 x 12 5/8 inches. ABOUT THE ARTIST Painter, printmaker, and craftsperson, Mary Van Blarcom was born in Newark, New Jersey, and studied at Wellesley College. She was a member of the National Serigraph Society where she served on the board of trustees from 1945 through 1952 and was 1st vice-president from 1949-51. She was also a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Artists Equity Association, the American Color Print Society, the New Jersey Artists Association (Director), and Artists of Today. Van Blarcom exhibited actively throughout the 1940s at many prominent art organizations including: Montclair Art Museum, 1941-45 and 1947-51 (prize, 1948); Society of Independent Artists, 1942-44; Artists of Today, 1942-46; Elisabeth Ney Museum, 1943; Northwest Printmakers, 1944, 1946-49; Laguna Beach Art Association, 1945-47, 1949; National Association of Women Artists, 1945-50, (prize, 1946); Library of Congress, 1946-47; Museum of Modern Art Traveling Exhibition, 1945-47; Carnegie Institute, 1947; Serigraph Gallery, 1946, 1951 (solo); American Color Print Society, 1947-52; Newark Museum, 1947-48, 1951; California State Library, 1947, 1949; National Serigraph Society, 1949 (prize), 1950 (prize); University of Chile, 1950; New Jersey State Museum, 1950; Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1951; and the Main Gallery, NY, 1952. Van Blarcom’s work is in the collections of the Newark Public Library, U.S. Library of Congress; the American Association of University Women; New York Public Library; Tel-Aviv Museum, Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Princeton Print Club...

This etching from David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio depicts the somewhat obscure story Old Rinkrank, which Hockney chose to illustrate beca...

Artist: Andy Warhol Title: Washington Monument Medium: Screenprint on wallpaper Date: 1974 Edition: Unnumbered Sheet Size: 44" x 29 1/2" Framed Size: 50 5/8" x 36 1/8" Signature: Uns...

John DePol, 'Magic Hour, Autumn', chiaroscuro wood engraving, 1981, edition 160 in 1983. Signed, dated and titled in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A superb impression, on...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled L'apparition au cirque (The Vision at the Circus), from the album The Lithographs of Chagall, Volume II, originates from...

Nude is a colored lithograph on paper realized by the French artist  Paul Guiramand .

Tolle, tolle, crucifige eum is a Color lithograph on heavy rag paper realized in 1964. It is part of Biblia Sacra vulgatæ edition is published by Rizzoli-Mediolani between 1967 and 1...

Original 'U. S. SAVINGS BONDS will help you get there! NOW Back Your future. Linen-backed, excellent condition. Archival linen backed with original government-issued fold ma...

Accompanied by four original dry point etchings by Picasso on Lana wove paper Hardcover book Housed in publisher's wooden boards with cloth ties Numbered 97 of 230 copies 16 x 10 in...

Original vintage poster: Portugal and Spain by Pan American World Airways Clipper, Artist: Jean Carlu. Pan American original vintage poster large travel size format 27.5" x 41.1" Earliest version (the 1950s) of the poster for travel by Constellation aircraft. Original linen-backed, Pan American World Airways by Clipper vintage poster for travel to Portugal and Spain. Wear and stress marks in the top and bottom dark area but are not tears.. Small touch-up on the left white border. In the middle of this image, it features a matador with a cape hanging off his shoulder. Surrounding the image in vignettes of cut-out windows showing typical landscape scenes and castles. A great smaller format original for "The World's Most Experienced Airline". One of the windmills shown in this image has cloth sails. Trimming the sails allowed the windmill to turn at near the optimal speed in a large range of wind velocities. Pan American World Airways by Clipper. Pan American a.k.a. Pan Am Airlines posters are very collectible and rare year to year. This a great design opportunity for a home with a European flair. The Pan Am Clipper...

Alberto Giacometti The Search , ca. 1968 Restrike Etching unsigned comes with COA from publishers 25.4 × 20.3 cm 51 x 40.5 cm (framed)

Georges Braque (after) Title: "Profil" from the Espace Portfolio Year: 1957 Year of Original: 1952 Medium: Pochoir (pigment print) on Richard de Bas, signed in the plate Edition: 26...

This elegant etching titled the gilded youth is of the second wife of the artist The edition is 75 and is referenced as Fletcher #80. Gerald Brockhurst is best known for his portr...

This exquisite lithograph by Joan Miro (1893–1983), titled Sans titre (Untitled), originates from the April 1961 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 125-126, published by Maeght Editeur, P...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Ange du Paradis (Angel of Paradise), from Marc Chagall, Dessins Pour La Bible (Drawings for the Bible), Verve: Revue Art...

French men's fashion design published as a Supplement to 'L'Homme et Le Maitre Tailleur', a Parisien fashion periodical. Jean Darroux was a Parisien tailor, who designed several seri...

Hand signed in pencil and numbered with Roman numerals 8/24. A very small edition. Old Lower East Side of New York or East European Shtetl. Jewish Shtetl Peddler Merchant. humorous ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Claude, Femme nue (Claude, Nude Woman), originates from the 1952 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 46–47, published by M...

Marc Chagall Original Lithograph 1969 From the revue XXe Siecle, edition of 12,000 Unsigned, as issued Dimensions: 32 x 24 Condition : Excellent Reference: Mourlot 572 Marc Chagall (born in 1887) Marc Chagall was born in Belarus in 1887 and developed an early interest in art. After studying painting, in 1907 he left Russia for Paris, where he lived in an artist colony on the city’s outskirts. Fusing his own personal, dreamlike imagery with hints of the fauvism and cubism popular in France at the time, Chagall created his most lasting work—including I and the Village (1911)—some of which would be featured in the Salon des Indépendants exhibitions. After returning to Vitebsk for a visit in 1914, the outbreak of WWI trapped Chagall in Russia. He returned to France in 1923 but was forced to flee the country and Nazi persecution during WWII. Finding asylum in the U.S., Chagall became involved in set and costume design before returning to France in 1948. In his later years, he experimented with new art forms and was commissioned to produce numerous large-scale works. Chagall died in St.-Paul-de-Vence in 1985. The Village Marc Chagall was born in a small Hassidic community on the outskirts of Vitebsk, Belarus, on July 7, 1887. His father was a fishmonger, and his mother ran a small sundries shop in the village. As a child, Chagall attended the Jewish elementary school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible, before later attending the Russian public school. He began to learn the fundamentals of drawing during this time, but perhaps more importantly, he absorbed the world around him, storing away the imagery and themes that would feature largely in most of his later work. At age 19 Chagall enrolled at a private, all-Jewish art school and began his formal education in painting, studying briefly with portrait artist Yehuda Pen. However, he left the school after several months, moving to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study at the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. The following year, he enrolled at the Svanseva School, studying with set designer Léon Bakst, whose work had been featured in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. This early experience would prove important to Chagall’s later career as well. Despite this formal instruction, and the widespread popularity of realism in Russia at the time, Chagall was already establishing his own personal style, which featured a more dreamlike unreality and the people, places and imagery that were close to his heart. Some examples from this period are his Window Vitebsk (1908) and My Fianceé with Black Gloves (1909), which pictured Bella Rosenfeld, to whom he had recently become engaged. The Beehive Despite his romance with Bella, in 1911 an allowance from Russian parliament member and art patron Maxim Binaver enabled Chagall to move to Paris, France. After settling briefly in the Montparnasse neighborhood, Chagall moved further afield to an artist colony known as La Ruche (“The Beehive”), where he began to work side by side with abstract painters such as Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger as well as the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. At their urging, and under the influence of the wildly popular fauvism and cubism, Chagall lightened his palette and pushed his style ever further from reality. I and the Village (1911) and Homage to Apollinaire (1912) are among his early Parisian works, widely considered to be his most successful and representative period. Though his work stood stylistically apart from his cubist contemporaries, from 1912 to 1914 Chagall exhibited several paintings at the annual Salon des Indépendants exhibition, where works by the likes of Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay were causing a stir in the Paris art world. Chagall’s popularity began to spread beyond La Ruche, and in May 1914 he traveled to Berlin to help organize his first solo exhibition, at Der Sturm Gallery. Chagall remained in the city until the highly acclaimed show opened that June. He then returned to Vitebsk, unaware of the fateful events to come. War, Peace and Revolution In August 1914 the outbreak of World War I precluded Chagall’s plans to return to Paris. The conflict did little to stem the flow of his creative output, however, instead merely giving him direct access to the childhood scenes so essential to his work, as seen in paintings such as Jew in Green (1914) and Over Vitebsk (1914). His paintings from this period also occasionally featured images of the war’s impact on the region, as with Wounded Soldier (1914) and Marching (1915). But despite the hardships of life during wartime, this would also prove to be a joyful period for Chagall. In July 1915 he married Bella, and she gave birth to a daughter, Ida, the following year. Their appearance in works such as Birthday (1915), Bella and Ida by the Window (1917) and several of his “Lovers” paintings give a glimpse of the island of domestic bliss that was Chagall’s amidst the chaos. To avoid military service and stay with his new family, Chagall took a position as a clerk in the Ministry of War Economy in St. Petersburg. While there he began work on his autobiography and also immersed himself in the local art scene, befriending novelist Boris Pasternak, among others. He also exhibited his work in the city and soon gained considerable recognition. That notoriety would prove important in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution when he was appointed as the Commissar of Fine Arts in Vitebsk. In his new post, Chagall undertook various projects in the region, including the 1919 founding of the Academy of the Arts. Despite these endeavors, differences among his colleagues eventually disillusioned Chagall. In 1920 he relinquished his position and moved his family to Moscow, the post-revolution capital of Russia. In Moscow, Chagall was soon commissioned to create sets and costumes for various productions at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, where he would paint a series of murals titled Introduction to the Jewish Theater as well. In 1921, Chagall also found work as a teacher at a school for war orphans. By 1922, however, Chagall found that his art had fallen out of favor, and seeking new horizons he left Russia for good. Flight After a brief stay in Berlin, where he unsuccessfully sought to recover the work exhibited at Der Sturm before the war, Chagall moved his family to Paris in September 1923. Shortly after their arrival, he was commissioned by art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce a series of etchings for a new edition of Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls. Two years later Chagall began work on an illustrated edition of Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables, and in 1930 he created etchings for an illustrated edition of the Old Testament, for which he traveled to Palestine to conduct research. Chagall’s work during this period brought him new success as an artist and enabled him to travel throughout Europe in the 1930s. He also published his autobiography, My Life (1931), and in 1933 received a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. But at the same time that Chagall’s popularity was spreading, so, too, was the threat of Fascism and Nazism. Singled out during the cultural "cleansing" undertaken by the Nazis in Germany, Chagall’s work was ordered removed from museums throughout the country. Several pieces were subsequently burned, and others were featured in a 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art” held in Munich. Chagall’s angst regarding these troubling events and the persecution of Jews in general can be seen in his 1938 painting White Crucifixion. With the eruption of World War II, Chagall and his family moved to the Loire region before moving farther south to Marseilles following the invasion of France. They found a more certain refuge when, in 1941, Chagall’s name was added by the director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City to a list of artists and intellectuals deemed most at risk from the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaign. Chagall and his family would be among the more than 2,000 who received visas and escaped this way. Haunted Harbors Arriving in New York City in June 1941, Chagall discovered that he was already a well-known artist there and, despite a language barrier, soon became a part of the exiled European artist community. The following year he was commissioned by choreographer Léonide Massine to design sets and costumes for the ballet Aleko, based on Alexander Pushkin’s “The Gypsies” and set to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. But even as he settled into the safety of his temporary home, Chagall’s thoughts were frequently consumed by the fate befalling the Jews of Europe and the destruction of Russia, as paintings such as The Yellow Crucifixion...

Original “The 3rd Man”, 1949, linen-backed vintage one-sheet movie poster "The 3rd Man". NSS: # 49/452. Excellent condition with restored original fold m...

Color lithograph realized by Marc Chagall in 1960 to illustrate "The Bible".  Edition of 6500, published by Tériade in no. 33 and 34 of the Art Magazine Verve. Printed by Mourlot a...

Medium: Lithograph on vélin Hamilton Kilmory paper Year: 1947 Paper Size: 9.5 x 12.5 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, Rembrandt, Drawings...

Edgar DEGAS (after) Whorehouse Scene : The Drunk Prostitutes Original etching and aquatint On Rives vellum 25 x 32 cm (c. 10 x 13 inch) In the early 1920s, Ambroise Vollard (the gre...

Andre Derain, After, French (1880 - 1954) - L'Enfant, Year: Printed circa 1968, Medium: Linocut, stamp signed, Image Size: 11 x 9 inches, Size: 19 in. x 15 in. (48.26 cm x 38.1 c...

Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper size: 9.25 x 12.25 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dessinateur, 1948. Publ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Serie K, var. 2 (Series K, Variation 2), from the album Henri Matisse, Dessins, Themes et Variations (Drawings, Them...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled L’Ange a l’Epee (The Angel with the Sword), from Marc Chagall, Dessins Pour La Bible (Drawings for the Bible), Verve: Re...

This exquisite lithograph after Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), titled Spring Sun, originates from the distinguished 1962 folio The Four Seasons: Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth. Published and printed by Art in America Company, Inc., New York, the edition captures Wyeth’s luminous portrayal of seasonal awakening. Spring Sun evokes the thin sunlight and faint warmth of early spring—the quiet renewal of life after winter’s retreat—rendered with Wyeth’s characteristic restraint, tonal subtlety, and contemplative emotional depth. Executed on velin paper, this lithograph measures 17 x 13 inches (43.2 x 33 cm). As issued, it is unsigned and unnumbered, representing the folio’s authentic format. The Four Seasons series was conceived by the editors of Art in America in collaboration with Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, who selected drawings from the artist’s studio and personal collection to illustrate the intimate relationship between nature, time, and memory. Each composition distills Wyeth’s gift for transforming the familiar into visual poetry through mastery of texture, light, and mood. Artwork Details: Artist: After Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Title: Spring Sun, from The Four Seasons, Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth, 1962 Medium: Lithograph on velin paper Dimensions: 17 x 13 inches (43.2 x 33 cm) Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Date: 1962 Publisher: Art in America Company, Inc., New York Printer: Art in America Company, Inc., New York Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium Provenance: From the 1962 folio The Four Seasons, Paintings and Drawings by Andrew Wyeth, published and printed by Art in America Company, Inc., New York Notes: Excerpted from the 1962 folio: "In 1962 the editors of Art in America proposed to Wyeth a portfolio of images of his recent dry-brush drawings. The artist and his wife suggested the theme, 'The Four Seasons,' because of the essential role played in his work by the cycle of the seasons. The drawings were selected by Andrew and Betsy Wyeth from works in the house and studio at Chadds Ford, supplemented by some owned by friends. With a few exceptions they had never been exhibited or reproduced. The plates were made directly from the originals. In these drawings Wyeth's loving concentration on the object is fully revealed. But as always in his work, this concern with the tangible is balanced by sensibility to mood, to the emotion arising from the actual. They are pervaded with a sense of the season—the exact time of year, the hour of the day, the quality of the light. To the truth and subtlety with which he captures these intangible factors, these drawings owe their poignant poetry." About the Artist: Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) was an American visual artist and one of the best-known painters of the mid-20th century. Although he considered himself an abstractionist, Wyeth’s work is characterized by a meticulous realism imbued with psychological depth and atmosphere. He often painted the landscapes and people surrounding his homes in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, creating an intimate record of American rural life. The son of the celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth, Andrew trained under his father before developing his own deeply personal visual language inspired by Winslow Homer, Henry David Thoreau, and King Vidor. His wife, Betsy Wyeth, was both his muse and career manager, while his son Jamie Wyeth continued the family’s artistic legacy. Among Wyeth’s best-known works is Christina’s World (1948), housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York—a quintessential image of 20th-century American art. His other notable series include The Helga Pictures and his window studies, each reflecting a profound meditation on solitude, memory, and perception. Wyeth was the first painter to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1980. In 2022, Andrew Wyeth's painting Day Dream sold for USD 23.29 million at Christie’s New York, setting a world record for the artist. Andrew Wyeth lithograph...

Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Diurnes, On the Rock, 1962 Original collotype and stencil (Jacomet workshop) Unsigned Limited to 1000 copy On paper 30 x 40 cm (c. 11,8 x 15.7 in) REFERE...

Genesys XLIX , 27 from Vitraux pour Jérusalem is an original lithograph print on paper realized by Marc Chagall, Monte Carlo Sauret, 1962. Inc...

Metaphysical Still Life is a vintage offset print, reproducing the original watercolor of 1918 by Giorgio Morandi. Very Good conditions.

Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper size: 12.25 x 9.25 inches. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dessinateur,...

Medium: Lithograph on vélin de Lana paper Year: 1950 Paper Size: 9.75 x 12.5 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the album, Signac Dessins, 1950. Publi...

Original Hurricane Bicycle vintage poster. Archivally linen backed in mint condition 72-year-old poster, ready to frame. This is an original mid-century modern vintage Hurricane...

Pablo Picasso (after) Helene Chez Archimede Medium: engraved on wood by Georges Aubert Dimensions: 44 x 33 cm Portfolio: Helen Chez Archimede Year: 1955 Edition: 240 (Here it is on...

The Traitor of Montaperti from the Series "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri is an original woodcut print by Salvador Dalì, realized in 1963. Good conditions. Not signed. Plate...

This exquisite lithograph after Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966), titled Sans titre (Untitled), from the album XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie N°3 (double) Juin 1952, originates from the 19...

Between 1964 and 1965, Picasso created 10 aquatint etchings that were published as a supplement to Pierre Reverdy's literary work "Sable Mouvant". A stri...

Image dimensions: 26.5 x 20.5 cm. La Gitane de Richepin is a chromolithographed poster, monogrammed on plate on the lower right margin by the French bohemian artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec...

Marc Chagall - A Midsummer Night's dream - Original Handsigned Lithograph 1975 Dimensions: Sheet : 97.5 x 71.5 cm Image : 80 x 60 cm Handsigned and numbered Edition: 50 Reference: ...

Washington At Pohick Church - 1932 Etching On Paper 1932 black and white etching depicting George Washington at Pohick Church by Ernest David Roth (German, 1879-1964). George Washin...

Irwin Hoffman created a lively scene of a Mexican barber shop that serves as a focal point of the community's life. A man is being shaved as people cook, eat and revel in the camaraderie of the scene. This print was issued by Associated American Artists and is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art. Born in East Boston...

Original French poster: Camembert, E. PAILLAUD lithograph. Artist: Andre Roland. Size: 12.75" x 17.75" Archival linen backed and in excellent condition; ready to frame. The ...

This artwork titled "The Owl that calls upon the Night speaks the Unbeliever's" 1968 is an original woodcut on Makuroko paper by noted American artist Leonard Baskin, 1922-2000. It i...

Knights is an original artwork realized by Mino Maccari in the second half of XX century. Black and white xylograph. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower margin and a minor disco...

Lithograph on vélin bouffant d'Alfa paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Le Dur Désir de Durer, illustré par Marc Chagall, ...

This surreal botanical print by Salvador Dali is from a suite of 10 engravings called "Flora Dalinae". Growing from a vine are leaves shaped like lips an...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Serie I, var. 14 (Series I, Variation 14), from the album Henri Matisse, Dessins, Themes et Variations (Drawings, Th...

Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire From the book by André Rouveyre, "Apollinaire " (Paris: Raisons d'Etre, 1952) Artist : Henri MATISSE 13 x 10 inches Edition: 151/330 References : Duthuit-Matisse Catalogue raisonné 31 MATISSE'S BIOGRAPHY YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born in a tiny, tumbledown weaver's cottage on the rue du Chêne Arnaud in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis at eight o'clock in the evening on the last night of the year, 31 December 1869 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis is in the extreme north of France near the Belgian border). The house had two rooms, a beaten earth floor and a leaky roof. Matisse said long afterwards that rain fell through a hole above the bed in which he was born. Matisse’s ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the convulsive social and industrial upheavals of the nineteenth century. Matisse grew up in a world that was still detaching itself from a way of life in some ways unchanged since Roman times. The coming of the railway had put Bohain on the industrial map, but people still traveled everywhere on foot or horseback. Matisse’s father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. Warmhearted, outgoing, capable and energetic, she was small and sturdily built with the fashionable figure of the period: full breasts and hips, narrow waist, neat ankles and elegant small feet. She had fair skin, broad cheekbones and a wide smile. "My mother had a face with generous features," said her son Henri, who always spoke of her with particular tenderness of the sensitivity. Throughout the forty years of her marriage, she provided unwavering, rocklike support to her husband and her sons. Matisse later said: "My mother loved everything I did." He grew up in nearby Bohain-en-Vermandois, an industrial textile center, until the age of ten, when his father sent him to St. Quentin for lycée. Anna Heloise worked hard. She ran the section of her husband's shop that sold housepaints, making up the customers' orders and advising on color schemes. The colors evidently left a lasting impression on Henri. The artist himself later said he got his color sense from his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Henri was the couple’s first son. The young Matisse was an awkward youth who seemed ill-adapted to the rigors of the North; in particular, he hated the gelid winters. He was a pensive child and by his own account he was a dreamy, frail and not outstandingly bright. In later life he never lost his feeling for his native soil, for seeds and growing things he had encountered in his youth. The fancy pigeons he kept in Nice more than half a century after he left home recalled the weavers' pigeon-lofts tucked away behind even the humblest house in Bohain. Matisse's childhood memories were of a stern upbringing. "Be quick!" "Look out!" "Run along!" "Get cracking!" were the refrains that rang in his ears as a boy. In later years when survival itself depended on habits of thrift and self-denial, the artist prided himself on being a man of the North. When Matisse in turn had children of his own to bring up, he chided himself for any lapse in discipline or open display of tenderness as weakness on his part. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. Although he considered law as tedious, he nonetheless passed the bar in 1888 with distinction and began his practice begrudgingly. Once Matisse finished school, his father, a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office. PAINTING: BEGINNINGS Matisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during the period of convalescence. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.” Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions. Matisse was so committed to his art that he later extended a warning to his fiancée, Amélie Parayre, whom he later married: “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.” Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. His drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father. Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. After a discouraging year at the Académie Julian, he left in disgust at the overly perfectionist style of teaching there. Afterwards he trained with Gustave Moreau, an artist who nurtured more progressive leanings. In both studios, as was usual, students drew endless figure studies from life. From Bouguereau, he learned the fundamental lessons of classical painting. His one art-schooled technical standby, almost a fetish, was the plumb line. No matter how odd the angles in any Matisse, the verticals are usually dead true. Moreau was a painter who despised the "art du salon", so Matisse was destined, in a certain sense, to remain an "outcast" of the art world. He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted. Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters having made four the French still-life master paintings in the Louvre. Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art. His first experimentations earned him a reputation as the rebellious member of his studio classes. In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime. In 1897 and 1898, he visited the painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh who had been a good friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Matisse also observed Russell's and other artists' stable marriages. This probably influenced him to find in Amélie Noellie Parayre, his future wife, his anchor. The Dinner Table (1897) was Matisse’s first masterpiece, and he had spent the entire winter working on the oeuvre. Though the Salon displayed the piece, they hung the work in a poor location, disgusted by what they considered its radical, Impressionist aspects. Caroline Joblaud was Matisse's early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline (also called Camille) gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse's marriage to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted contrary to conventional hostility such arrangements provoked. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life. MARRIAGE WITH AMÉLIE NOELLIE PARAYRE The Matisses of Bohain and the Parayres of Beauzelle had outwardly nothing in common, and there was no reason why Matisse and Amélie should ever have met. But in October 1897 Matisse went to a wedding in Paris and happened to sit next to her at the uproarious banquet that followed. There had been no banal flirtation between them, even when the wine flowed, each recognized the other as true metal, and when they got up from the table she held out her hand to Henri Matisse in a way that he never forgot. Matisse at that time was not yet the professorial figure of legend. He was known as a prankster, as a ribald and anti-clerical songster, and as someone who had once broken up a café concert performance just for the hell of it. Amélie's relatives operated at that time within a social, intellectual, and political context of which Matisse had had no previous experience. They stood for free thinking, for the separation of church and state, and for the secularization of the French educational system. Her family, better off that that of Matisse, provided the support he needed for the budding artist. When Matisse married Amélie in January 1898, they had been introduced only three months after. Amélie's Aunt Noélie and two of her brothers ran a successful women's shop called the Grande Maison des Modes. Before her marriage, Amélie had shown a gift for designing, making, and modeling hats for a fashionable clientele. In June 1899, she found a partner and opened a shop of her own on the rue de Châteaudun. This allowed Henri and herself to live, with Marguerite, in a tiny two-room apartment on the same street. Madame Matisse, fervently loyal, would play a fundamental role in the life and career of the artist for more than 40 years. Marguerite was to become her father's lifetime mainstay In 1902 disaster struck. Amélie’s parents were disgraced and financially ruined in a spectacular scandal of national scope, as the unsuspecting employees of a woman whose financial empire was based on fraud. Thanks to his early years in a lawyer's office, Matisse was able to busy himself to great effect in the organization of his father-in-law's defense. When all about him lost their heads, burst into tears, and felt more than sorry for themselves, Henri Matisse dealt with their problems one by one. The ordeal had taken its toll, in more than one way. His doctors ordered Matisse to go to Bohain and take two months' complete rest. Amélie had lost both her hat shop and the apartment on the rue de Châteaudun. For the first time, Henri, Amélie and the three children were united in Bohain, having nowhere else to go. Hillary Spurling, one of Matisse’s biographers, asserts that Amélie’s memories of that public disgrace nurtured a “suspicion of the outside world” that would always mark the Matisse family. The Matisse family formed a kind of hermetic unit which revolved around the artist’s work and profession. They fitted their activities according his breaks and work sessions. Silence was essential. Even during the years when Matisse lived mostly alone in Nice, an annual ritual of unpacking, stretching, framing and hanging ended with the whole family settling down to respond to the paintings. The conference might last several days. Then the dealers were admitted. Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). He was not always in peace with his family. He wrote that their views were not always in accord “which disturbs me considerably in my work, for which I require the most complete calm and from those how surround me, a serenity that I cannot find here. I intend to move to a village a few league away.” Pierre, his brother, Jean, and Marguerite remained close to their father through every vicissitude, and Matisse, in his last invalid years, was devoted to his several grandchildren. In 1899, at a time when his paintings displayed rebellious talent but not much clear direction, Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, he selected Jaguar Devouring a Hare a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye. Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations. Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, "In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most." By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes -- which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves -- Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life. Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. After years in poverty, Matisse went through his "dark period" (1902-03), moved briefly to naturalism, went back to a dark palette and told friends in 1903 that he had lost all desire to paint and had almost decided to give up. Fortunately, Matisse was able to earn some money painting a frieze for the World Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also traveled extensively in the early 1900s when tourism was still a new idea. Brought on by railroad, steamships, and other forms of transportation that appeared during the industrial revolution, travel became a popular pursuit. As a cultured tourist, he developed his art with regular doses of travel. FAUVISM Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work. In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity . Matisse hit his stride in the avant-garde art world in the first years of the new decade. He explored the modern art scene through frequent visits to galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Vollard, where he was exposed to work by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success. In 16 May 1905 he arrived in the charming Catalan port of Collioure, in the south of France. He soon invited the painter André Derain (1880-1954), 11 years his junior, to join him. By 1905, Matisse was considered spearhead the Fauve movement in France, characterized by its spontaneity and roughness of execution as well as use of raw color straight from the palette to the canvas. Matisse combined pointillist color and Cézanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism - a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes. When the Fauve summer drew to an end, Derain left Collioure with 30 paintings, 20 drawings and some 50 sketches, never to return, while Matisse departed some days later bringing back to Paris 15 finished paintings, 40 aquarelles, over 100 drawings. He returned Collioure in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1911 and 1914. The lure of the sun would prove always to have powers of restoration to the artist throughout his life particularly after periods of great emotional exertion. When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse's most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves' color "sticks of dynamite." The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse. This picture was bought be was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, a fact which had a very positive effect on Matisse who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work. Matisse continued his experiments in Collioure, visible in the painting The Open Window and the View of Collioure , also a characteristic work of Fauvism in its raw color and disregard for details. Both of these works of the landscape in the French Mediterranean present a distinct development towards the spontaneous and uninhibited style. Other than André Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck were also members of the Fauve movement. However, Matisse’s intimate friends among artists were mostly easygoing minor painters, such as Albert Marquet. Matisse’s temperamental aloneness made him prey to vertiginous depressions. He later recalled a breakdown that he underwent in Spain, in 1910: “My bed shook, and from my throat came a little high-pitched cry that I could not stop.” From the onset of is career women were from one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. His Joy of Life (1906) draws us into the world of hallucinatory vividness composed of nymphs set in an idyllic open fields dressed in pure color and sensual outline. Two women lounge in the sunlight while two more chat on the edge of the forest. One crouches to pick some flowers while her companion weaves a chain of them into her hair. A couple embraces each other while another group engages in a lively round-dance in the distance. In this way, Joy of Life depicts woodland nymphs engaging in a celebration of their life, their womanhood, and their sexuality. Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means. Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne. FAME The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to deter the rise of Matisse. From 1906 -1917 he lived in Paris and established his home, studio, and school at Hôtel Biron. Among his neighbors is sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer Isadora Duncan. Many of his finest works were created in this period, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. In fact, the aim of Matisse’s art was something less than revolutionary. In 1908, in a famous statement drawn from “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse declared as his ideal an art “for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” Matisse's personal habits were incredibly regular. On a typical day rose early and worked all morning with a second work session after lunch, followed by violin practice, a simple supper (vegetable soup, two hard-boiled eggs, salad and a glass of wine) and an early bedtime. In 1906, he created a series of 12 lithographs, all variations on the theme of a seated nude. He chose to share his graphic work with the public almost immediately. The lithographs were exhibited at the Druet Gallery in Paris the same year that they were produced, and the woodcuts were shown at the Salon des Independants in the spring of 1907. In 1907 Appolinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." Notwithstanding newly-won fame, Matisse's work continued to encounter vehement criticism and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Blue Nude was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913. Contrary to the fate of the Impressionists, Matisse and other Fauves were able to exhibit in art galleries. In 1908 Paul Cassirer, the German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, staged an exhibit of Matisse’s works in Berlin. In the same year the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York organized him one-man show in his tiny Manhattan gallery called 291 which effectively introduced Matisse the powerful American art market. In the first decade of his notoriety as the leader of the Fauves, Matisse was more admired by foreigners than by the French. It was, after all, the Russians and the Americans who acquired significant collections of his early work almost as quickly as it was created. The great Matisses we see in the Paris museums today were mostly acquired after the artist's death in lieu of death duties. It took the French a good deal longer to understand Matisse's greatness-longer, certainly, than the international cadre of aspiring talents that flocked to his classes when he was still one of the most controversial figures in the Paris avant-garde. In the summer of 1907, Matisse and his wife went on a long trip to italy "for work and Pleasure," visiting Venice and Padua, where they admired Giotto's frescos. In Florence the were the guests of the Steins in their villa in Fiesole. From this base matisse visited Arezzo, to study Piero della Francesca, and Siena, attracted by the early Sienese painters, especially, Duccio. PICASSO, GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE CONE SISTERS During the first decade of the 20th century Americans in Paris Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah took keen interest in Matisse's art. In addition, Gertrude Stein's two friends from Baltimore. Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their works.The Cone Sisters acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings. In April of 1906 during a gathering at the house of the legendary Gertrude Stein, Matisse was introduced to Pablo Picasso who was 11 years younger. Picasso and Matisse were poles apart aesthetically and their life styles were no less so. Matisse was markedly taller and more polished than the stocky, cocky Catalan, was then ruler of the turbulent Paris avant-garde art scene. The two were said to have always been looking over their shoulders at each other. It is well-known that after their rivalry grew, sides were taken. Picasso later said: "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he." One key difference between their pictorial concepts was that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Gertrude Stein, who loved stirring things up, wrote, "the feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisse-ites became bitter." Although Matisse dryly noted that "our disputes were always friendly," it should be pointed out that Picasso and his friends threw suction-cupped darts at Matisse's 1906 Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon, from 1907). While the rift between the two artists eventually healed, the one between their supporters remained. ACADEMIE MATISSE IN PARIS & SERGEI SHCHUKIN In 1909, with the Matisse family lived in a former convent on the Boulevard des Invalides, in Paris, where the artist conducted a painting school. His immense notoriety, which had been confirmed in 1905-06 by Joy of Life, a work which seemed to trash every possible norm of pictorial order and painterly finesse.His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were several of his most loyal students. Although it lasted for only three years (1908-11), and yet, during its brief existence the Académie Matisse became one of the principal crossroads of modern painting for a number of gifted European and American artists. Given the reputation Matisse had acquired as the"wild man" of modernist color, it must have come as a shock to some of his early students that the program of instruction he offered was remarkably conservative. As Jean Heiberg, the first Norwegian to enroll in the Académie, later wrote in a memoir: "The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, acquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, Mars and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable." Among Matisse’s students was Olga Meerson, a Russian Jew who had studied with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich and, already possessed of an elegant style, sought to remake herself under Matisse’s tutelage. Amélie suspected the worst. Perhaps a combination of Amélie’s jealousy and Meerson’s neediness caused a Matisse to end the connection, with bad feeling all around. Meerson moved to Munich, where she married the musician Heinz Pringsheim, a brother-in-law of Thomas Mann. Never having fulfilled her promise as a painter, she committed suicide in Berlin, in 1929. One of Matisse's biographers, with access to much of the artist's correspondence, contends that the artist, after his marriage, rarely, if ever, had sex with models, despite his apparent feelings for many. Two Russian art collectors stood out at the beginning of the 20th century: the cloth merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and the textile manufacturer Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Both acquired modern French art, developed a sensibility for spotting new trends, and publicized them in Russia. In this period, Matisse had initiated his fecund association with the Russian textile magnate and visionary collector, Sergei Shchukin. The artist created one of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission. Inspired by a circular dance-- perhaps a sardana - performed by fishermen at Collioure, this painting embodies the clash between the sacred and reality. Human hands link together, but they form a divine spirit. Moreover, Matisse all but abandoned perspective The work ’s flatness emphasizes the idea, colors, and material, a notion that made Matisse a model for Modernists. The other painting commissioned was Music, 1909. Shchukin was considered by some almost as a co-producer of some of the artist’s greatest works and was strongly commuted to the French painter’s work. Concerning the violent attacks on his friend, the Russian wrote to the artist: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.” By 1914 Shchukin’s house in Moscow contained thirty-seven Matisses. “He always picked the best,” the artist said. During the political revolution Lenin expropriated Shchukin collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain, in servants’ quarters, as caretaker and guide. He died in Paris, in 1936. The collection is now in the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums From about 1911 to 1915, Matisse struggled with the ideas of Cubism, an experiment he felt he was "not participating in" because it did not "speak to [his] deeply sensory nature." MOROCCO Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He is one of the first painters to take an interest in various forms of “primitive” art. His art was profoundly influenced by Easter art as well. Matisse first flirted with the idea of visiting Morocco after a trip to the Moorish part of Spain in the winter of 1910. This taste of the Moors incited a flame of hope that there would be greater inspiration to paint in Morocco. Furthermore, well aware of the exotic subjects in Morocco that had engendered a wealth of inspiration for the famous French painter Delacroix when he visited the country over eighty years before, Matisse felt Morocco would stimulate his painting genius in ways Europe could not. He strove for neither the picturesque nor the pornographic. In Morocco, Matisse seems to have had difficulties finding models who would pose for him, particularly women because of the law of the veil. Only Jewesses and prostitutes were exempt. Luckily, Matisse to have found the prostitute Zorah for the purpose although he did not paint her as a prostitute. Instead, in his first picture of her, Zorah en Jaune, sexual themes are most conspicuously absent from the canvas. As a prostitute used to exposing and flaunting her body, Zorah could have easily been painted nude or with less clothing to show herself off, but instead Matisse chooses to keep her clothed and posed with prudence. Unlike the primitive, nude Western women in the Fauve Joy of Life. Moroccan Zorah is clothed with respect and detail to her finer characteristics. He is developing his ability to paint with awareness of the non-sexual qualities of his subject, a movement away from Fauve women. Many of Matisse's Moroccan paintings are covered only in the thinnest washes of pigment, as if he wanted the texture of the unpainted canvas to show through so that it would add rawness to the browns and grays. Matisse's odalisques have been described as "elaborate fictions" in which the artist re-created the image of the Islamic harem using French models posed in his Nice apartment. The fabrics, screens, carpets, furnishings and costuming recalled the exoticism of the "Orient" and provided a theme for Matisse's preoccupation with the figure and elaborate patterns of exotic fabrics. Although Matisse's interest in textiles are evident in his compositions made during his 1906 trip to Morocco, it didn't begin as a typical European attraction to the exotic. It was already present to him as a descendent of generations of weavers, who was raised among weavers in Bohain-en-Vermandois, which in the 1880's and 90's was a center of production of fancy silks for the Parisian fashion houses. Like virtually all his northern compatriots, he had an inborn appreciation of their texture and design. He understood the properties of weight and hang, he knew how to use pins and paper patterns, and he was supremely confident with scissors. Matisse was known to be an avid collector of fabrics, from his days as a poor art student in Paris to the latter years of his life, when his Nice studio overflowed with Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colorful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens, and backcloths. Textiles soon became the springboard for his radical experiments with perspective and an art based on decorative patterning and pure harmonies of color and line. When he moved house, he also moved his fabrics, describing them as "my working library." He added to the collection all his life, from markets in Algeria, Morocco and Tahiti to the end-of-season sales of Parisian haute couture. The revitalizing spirit of Morocco would live on in the artist's imagination until the cutouts of the artist's last years. AFTER PARIS Matisse continued to evolve in unexpected directions even though never became an abstract painter (though some of his most adventurous works, such as the View of Notre Dame of 1914 or the Yellow Curtain of 1916 come close). His motifs were always recognizable, and the tension between the subject and the formal aspects of the painting was a central concept of his artistic ideal. Matisse moved to Nice in 1917 to distance himself from wartime activity, where bright, warm colors showed him "simpler venues which won’t stifle the spirit." His spirit became loyal to the "silver clarity of light" in Nice, and he returned to Paris only for a few months each summer. The years 1917–30 are known as his early Nice period, when his principal subject remained the female figure or an odalisque dressed in oriental costume or in various stages of undress, depicted as standing, seated, or reclining in a luxurious, exotic interior of Matisse's own creation. These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns. They emanate the atmosphere suggestive of a harem. In 1929, Matisse temporarily suspended easel painting and traveled to America to sit on the jury of the 29th Carnegie International and, in 1930, spent some time in Tahiti and New York as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Merion, Pennsylvania.He was especially thrilled with New York. An important collector of modern art, and owner of the largest Matisse holdings in America, Dr. Albert Barnes of Merion, commissioned the artist to paint a large mural for the two-story picture gallery of his mansion. Matisse chose the subject of the dance, a theme that had preoccupied him since his early Fauve masterpiece Joy of Life. Americans were prominent among Matisse's patrons throughout his career, beginning with the Steins (Leo Stein bought Joy of Life right out of the Salon in 1906) and including the Cone sisters of Baltimore and the notoriously cantankerous Barnes. The foundational Matisse monograph was written during his lifetime by another American, Alfred Barr. Also important in promoting Matisse's presence before the transatlantic public was the Manhattan gallery founded in 1931 by the artist's son, Pierre, who remained a prominent figure in the New York art world for almost six decades. In addition to his father, he represented Balthus, Calder, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miro, Tanguy and others, many of them also friends. Throughout his long and productive career, Matisse periodically refreshed his creative energies by turning from painting to drawing, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression. In his lifetime he also produced 12 illustrated books which were known as “livre d’artiste” (artist’s book), a specific type of illustrated book that became common in France around the turn of the century. These books were deluxe, limited editions, meant to be collected and admired as works of art, as well as, read. This process began when Swiss publisher Albert Skira first approached the modern master in 1930 to illustrate the work, Poesies, by 19th century French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé . Matisse responded to Skira’s invitation with great enthusiasm and that summer, devoted most of his attention to the commission while he was residing in Paris. The result was a collection of 29 beautiful etchings, of which the Museum will display 16. The subject matter, like the poems themselves, varies considerably, although many of the images reflect the artist’s vacation to the South Pacific. Matisse’s etchings of Mallarmé’s poems are considered among his greatest works in the print medium. In 1941, again for Skira, Matisse began one of his most complicated and successful printmaking projects, Florilege des Amours de Ronsard, illustrating the love poems of 16th century French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard’s subject and strong imagery lent themselves gracefully to Matisse’s favored themes of fruits, flowers, the female form and portraits. The artist selected the poems himself and translated the work from Renaissance French to contemporary French for the publication of the anthology DIVORCE & LATE FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS For all his long-lasting friendships with other artists, famous and obscure, Matisse's days and nights were absorbed by solitary labor. Playing the violin seemed a more intimate consolation for decades of critical abuse than the affections of his wife and children. Although their marriage was still somewhat fragile, the Matisses had decided to stay on in Nice when their lease expired at Place Charles-Félix in the summer of 1938. Matisse and his wife were separated in 1939 after 41 years when Amélie tried to dismiss the coolly efficient young Lydia Delectorskaya, an orphan refugee from Siberia, who had been hired as Amélie’s companion. However, the Matisses’ marriage ran afoul not of any romantic rival but for the artist’s wish to stand on his own. The first climax came years before in 1913, when Amélie sat more than a hundred times for the Portrait of Madame Matisse. A friend’s diary reported at the time. “Crazy! weeping! By night he recites the Lord’s Prayer! By day he quarrels with his wife!” The portrait, which was the last work to enter Shchukin’s collection, caused Matisse “palpitations, high blood pressure and a constant drumming in his ears.” Such frenzy was not rare when Matisse had difficulty with a painting. He referred to the painting years later in a letter to her as “the one that made you cry, but in which you look so pretty.” Amélie ceded routine leadership of the family to Marguerite. The 1913 portrait was his last painting of her. Matisse and his wife met the last time to discuss details of their legal separation, in July 1939. One of its key provisions was that everything would be divided equally between the couple. The meeting took place in Paris at the Gare St. Lazare and lasted thirty minutes, during which Amélie Matisse kept up a flow of small talk while her husband."My wife never looked at me, but I didn't take my eyes off her...," Matisse wrote on the night of that final encounter: "I couldn't get a word out.... I remained as if carved out of wood, swearing never to be caught that way again." "I'm going to try to isolate myself as if I were still absent,'' Matisse announced on his first return to Paris since the official separation from his wife, 'rarely leaving his apartment except for visits to the cinema (his first color film, starring Danny Kaye...