Modern More Prints

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...

Sister Mary Corita Kent (American, 1918-1986) He Repeated the Letters of the Alphabet... Color Screenprint 22.5 x 38.75 inches Signed Lower Right Sister Mary Corita Kent, once the n...

Jonathan Winters "Hung up on Strange Fruit" Original Silkscreen Hand signed and titled in pencil Artist's Proof Image Size: 18 x 25 inches Paper size: ...

This colorful modern lithographic poster by Wassily Kandinsky was printed in 1972 at the Atelier Mourlot in Paris to promote an exhibition of his watercolors and drawings at the Gale...

Original Alhambra Theatre Maurice Chevalier vintage lithographic poster. Artist: Charles Kiffer (1902 - 1992). Size: 19.25" x 27.25". Archival linen-backed antique vintage poster; ready to frame. An original lithograph was done for the inauguration of the new Alhambra Theater, featuring Maurice Chevalier. Over the years; Kiffer designed 13 for Chavalier from 1927 - 1963. (Kiffer also designed for Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, and many other performers.) Today this version with the text of the Alhambra Theatre Maurice Chevalier is a rare poster. Mid-century-modern. The Alhambra was a music hall located at 50, rue de Malte in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. It opened on August 11, 1866. This image with the familiar tilted hat is a recognized image associated with several different poster designs created for the actor Maurice Chevalier. In addition to the images created for the French cabaret; a similar image is also associated with the liquor poster...

Original Las Vegas, Nevada American Airlines travel poster. Archival linen backed in very good Condition Grade A-. The post...

Charles-Éduard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss architect and designer who is generally regarded as a key figure in the development of modern architecture, his work bein...

This artwork titled "Flying Head" c.1990, is an original colors lithograph by renown Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin, b.1943. It is hand signed and numbered 173/260 in pencil by the ...

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...

Theo Tobiasse Suite: Shavuot Festival Year: 1984 Medium: Original carborundum embossed etching lithograph in colors on Arches paper (deckle edged paper) Signature: Hand signed by the artist Publisher Nahan Gallery, New Orleans Theo Tobiasse, born Tobias Eidesas, 1927 in Jaffa then in British Mandate Palestine, died 2012 in Cagnes-sur-Mer in France. Well known painter, engraver, draftsman and sculptor. French Jewish artist. The youngest son of Chaim (Charles) Eidesas and Brocha (Berthe) Slonimsky from Kaunas, Lithuania, Théo Tobiasse was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1927, where his Jewish parents lived since 1925, far from the threat of pogroms and upheavals of East European policies. The family encountered material difficulties and decided to return to Lithuania, ultimately leaving for Paris in 1931 where his father typographer finds work in a Russian printing press. Theodore Tobiasse...

This original 1987 exhibition poster was created for an exhibition of works by Marc Chagall which travelled Japan (Tokyo, Yamagata, Nagoya and Gunma). It was printed in Paris by the ...

To see our other original vintage travel posters including more London Transport posters, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or...

Very good impressions of these 4 color screenprints on white wove paper. Each signed, dated and numbered 15/25, 18/36, 15/39 or 6/40 in pencil.

Ernest Wallcousins (1882-1976), UK 1939 Keep Calm and Carry On (Small size) Ministry of Information Lithographic poster 37 x 25 cm Very rare - we have traced copies in the Imperial ...

Original rare poster: SAVE A LOAF A WEEK - HELP WIN THE WAR. Original WW1, 1917, U. S. Food Administration antique American poster. Artist sig...

Theo Tobiasse Title "On the Shores of the Circus" Suite: Song of Songs of King Solomon Year: 1975 Medium: Original lithograph in colors on paper (deckle edged paper) Publisher: Leon Amiel, Paris & New York Signature: Hand signed by the artist Theo Tobiasse, born Tobias Eidesas, 1927 in Jaffa then in British Mandate Palestine, died 2012 in Cagnes-sur-Mer in France. Well known painter, engraver, draftsman and sculptor. French Jewish artist. The youngest son of Chaim (Charles) Eidesas and Brocha (Berthe) Slonimsky from Kaunas, Lithuania, Théo Tobiasse was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1927, where his Jewish parents lived since 1925, far from the threat of pogroms and upheavals of East European policies. The family encountered material difficulties and decided to return to Lithuania, ultimately leaving for Paris in 1931 where his father typographer finds work in a Russian printing press. Theo Tobiasse shows very early talent for drawing and painting, and during a visit to the Special Exhibition of 1937 held in Paris, he is enchanted by Raoul Dufy. The death of his mother (in June 1939) followed by the outbreak of the Second World War, Paris under the German Nazi occupation, the wearing of the yellow star and his registration at the National School of Decorative Arts denied for racist reasons upsets his life. He enrolled in a private advertising design course on the boulevard Saint-Michel, which he abandoned nine months later because his family, narrowly escaping the Winter Vélodrome roundup in July 1942 was forced to hide in an apartment in Paris for two years. At the Liberation of Paris, he quickly began a career as an advertising graphic designer with the Draeger art printer and also produced tapestry cartoons, stage sets and Hermes showcases at the Hermès boutique on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. In 1950, he obtained French nationality and moved to Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes, where he continued his advertising graphic design career. His first paintings were exhibited at the Salon des peintres du Sud-Est in 1960. He was laureate in 1961 the "prize of the young Mediterranean painting" and Armand Drouant offers him a first contract and exhibited at the Faubourg Saint-Honoré Gallery in Paris in 1962. Théo Tobiasse also won the Dorothy Gould Prize in 1961. He decided to devote himself solely to the visual arts. Numerous exhibitions are dedicated to him all over the world, in Paris at the Drouant Gallery, in Geneva, Montreal or Tokyo, then London, Zurich, Lausanne, Los Angeles, Kiev, and then a first personal exhibition in New York (1968). Self-taught, he studied the technique of grand masters in museums during his travels. The reliefs, glazes and colors of Rembrandt's Jewish Fiancee at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in particular, open up new technical possibilities that he explores in his canvases back to his studio. The figurative subjects without narrative or symbolism (cat, bird, kite, velocipede, etc.) of his first paintings, allow him to focus on the techniques, the color and the texture of oil painting and gouache. From 1964, Theo Tobiasse develops a more personal iconography drawn from his own memories of his childhood in Lithuania, the wanderings of a family seeking a land of asylum and the Holocaust. The train, the one which drove his family from Kaunas to Paris, or the Jews to the camps, becomes a recurring motif and memory a major theme in his work. A visit to Jerusalem, Israel in 1970 brings him closer to his Israeli Jewish origins. He created his first Judaic stained-glass windows on the theme of "Jewish Feasts" for the Jewish Community Center in Nice and a monumental oil painting titled " Que tentes sont beau", O Jacob (1982). He continues to travel and immerse himself in the cultures he meets, New Orleans jazz, Mexican archaeological sites and Native American totems . In New York, he meets Elie Wiesel (1982). While Josy Eisenberg makes a film about Théo Tobiasse, entitled Tell me who you are painting, for French television in 1977, many personal exhibitions are devoted to him in France and abroad, notably at the Passali gallery in Paris, France. Atheneum Museum in Geneva and the Nahan Gallery in New Orleans. In 1983, a retrospective exhibition of his work was organized in Nice , at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ponchettes. Carborundum engraving, lithography, stained glass, mosaic, pottery, bronze and ceramic sculpture are all tools of expression he first explored in the studio he had built at his home on the heights of Nice (1954 -1972), then to the Rauba Capeu wharf in Nice (1971-1976). He leaves Nice to install his main workshop on his property in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1976. In collaboration with Pierre Chave, lithographer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Théo Tobiasse is developing a technique for making lithographs of eighteen to twenty colors that he produces for many original portfolio editions published in France, Sweden and the United States. In addition to the theme of memory of the wanderings and exodus of his family and the Jewish people, the personal iconography of Tobiasse comprises three other major themes that recur in his work: The cities that are dear to him (Paris and Jerusalem, first, then New York and Venice from the 1980s); twenty-eight monochrome gouaches, From Notre-Dame to Saint-Germain-des-Près (1969). The Hebrew Bible, an endless source of human dramas, which he re-imagines in contemporary times. Rachel (1978), Sarah and the three messengers (1981),Bathsheba in the Garden of Pomegranates (1982). The woman, lover, erotic and shameless, Daphnis and Chloé (1978), Portrait of a woman immobile in ecstasy , (1978), a creature-sex apple whose skin burns and arms twist (1980). To explore the theme of the erotic woman, Tobiasse adopts nude drawing in graphite, ink and pastel on paper, as well as the writing of poetic texts he inscribed in his drawings and notebooks. The American merchant, Kenneth Nahan Sr., met in 1978, encourages Théo Tobiasse to join in the United States other French painters he represents, including Max Papart and James Coignard. Tobiasse moved to New York in 1984. He first worked at the Chelsea Hotel and then set up his studio in Manhattan. He decides to split his time and his work between Saint-Paul-de-Vence and New York. The first paintings painted in America are distinguished from their European production by their scale and their bright themes. Oil-painted canvases are filled with family portraits, children, and biblical characters. My family came from Lithuania, Little Girl Sitting , Saul and David (1984). In these paintings, families no longer flee the pogroms in the trains, but land in New York, new host country according to his imagination, as in America (1984). He also created the Myriam sculpture in New York, which became the model for the Venus, a monumental bronze sculpture to be installed at the entrance of Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 2007 15. New York joins the inspiring cities of Theo Tobiasse and the woman now personifies freedom. Along with Marc Chagall, Raya Sorkine, Zamy Steynovitz and Yoel Benharrouche, Tobiasse becomes one of the pillars of modern French Judaica...

Original " Are You 100% American? Prove it! Buy US government bonds. Third Liberty Loan" vintage poster. This poster from World War I questions whether the viewer is genuinely A...

Abstract Composition, 1959 Lithograph This was from a portfolio which included works by Yosl Bergner, Menashe Kadishman, Yosef Zaritsky, Aharon Kahana, Moshe Tamir and Michael Gross. Joseph (Yossef) Zaritsky (Hebrew: יוסף זריצקי‎; September 1, 1891 – November 30, 1985) was one of Israel's greatest artists and one of the early promoters of modern art in the Land of Israel both during the period of the Yishuv (Palestine, the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel before the establishment of the State of Israel) and after the establishment of the State. In 1948 Zaritsky was one of the founders of the "Ofakim Hadashim" group. In his works he created a uniquely Israeli style of abstract art, which he sought to promote by means of the group. For this work he was awarded the Israel Prize for painting in 1959. Joseph Zaritsky...

Original Philips Infra-Rouge vintage poster. Size: 23" x 31". Archival linen-backed French antique poster. It is archival linen backed and ready to frame. This fun kitchen poster...

Original lithograph: POINT BLEU RADIO. Artist: Pierre. Baudouin (1921 - 1971). Size is 31" x 47". Archival linen backed and ready to frame. Cleaned and restored rare original French antique...

Beautiful colors on this well done piece by Diane Lachman, circa 1980's , pencil signed and numbered 4/18. The piece its sold unframed very nice condition and colors.

Isamu Noguchi Offset lithograph postcard Hand signed and inscribed "Regards Dan Pope Isamu Noguchi" Provenance: Acquired from the private collection of Dan Pope, a former CBS News ca...

This beautiful original lithograph depicting a Greek landscape by Charles Lapicque was printed in Paris at the Atelier Mourlot in 1964. The artist produced some of his first landscap...

Original linen backed vintage travel poster on United Air Lines to Washington D. C. Artist: Jebary. Linen backed vintage poster. Ve...

Original ‘Fiesta Mayor Badalona” vintage travel poster. Conservation linen backed and ready to frame. Very good condition full lithograph A bright and vibrant travel poster that ...

This was from a portfolio which included works by Yosl Bergner, Menashe Kadishman, Yosef Zaritsky, Aharon Kahana, Moshe Tamir and Michael Gross. Yigal Tumarkin (also Igael Tumarkin...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - The House in my Village Original Lithograph from 1960. Dimensions of work: 32 x 24 cm. Publisher: Maeght Éditeur, Paris. The work is in Excellent condi...

Limited edition of 30 museum quality Giclee prints on CANVAS, signed and numbered by the artist. Print lead time 1 week. A "Certificate of Authenticity" issued by the artist is inc...

Jean Cocteau - Olé - Original Lithograph 1934 Signed and dated in the plate Numbered in pencil Edition : /200 Dimensions: 50 x 33 cm Provenance : Succession Dermit, Cocteau's heir

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - Tete de Veau (Calf's Head) Drypoint etching and watercolor from 1968. The edition 25/145. Dimensions of work: 38.5 x 28.5 cm. Hand signed. The work i...

Original, linen backed, Visit Washington State - Diamond Jubilee vintage poster (1889 - 1964), excellent condition. This poster would be produced pri...

Original ‘Ghost of Zorro’ vintage movie poster. 1949. Museum archival mounted on acid-free archival linen. Original fold marks touched up but could use more touch-up on the fol...

Artist: Marc Chagall Title: The Circus Portfolio: Mourlot Lithographe I Medium: Lithograph Year: 1960 Edition: Unnumbered Framed Size: 20 1/2" x 17 1/2" Image Size: 12 1/2" x 9 1/2" ...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - Sirène au pin (Sirene with Pine) Lithograph from 1967. an unsigned proof, from the numbered edition of 150, on Arches paper. Dimensions of work: 73 x 52...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 Jean Cocteau W...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 Jean Cocteau W...

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) - A Shattering Entrance upon the American Stage Drypoint etching with stencil from 1973. Editon A 55/195 on Arches paper. Dimensions of work: 65.4 x 50.4...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - La Souris Metamorphosée en Fille (The Mouse Transformed into a Girl) Etching from 1954. Edition of 85. Enhanced with watercolour by the artist. Dimensi...

Artist: Marc Chagall Title: Blue Still Life Portfolio: Derriere le Miroir 99-100 Medium: Lithograph Date: 1957 Edition: 2500 Frame Size: 19 1/2" x 17 3/4" Sheet Size: 15" x 11" Signa...

"Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - L'apparition au Cirque Original Lithograph from 1960. Dimensions of work: 32 x 24 cm. Publisher: Maeght Éditeur, Paris. The work is in Excellent condi...

This artwork titled "Pessach" from the suite "The Seven Festivals" 1981, is an original colors serigraph on Arches paper by noted Israeli artist David Sharir,b. 1938. It is hand sign...

This artwork "Trees " c.1990 in an original monotype on B.F.K Rives paper by American artist Kelly Detweiler. It is hand signed, titled and numbered 1/1 in pencil by the artist. The image size is 17.85 x 15.65 inches, sheet size is 24.25 x 22.25 inches. It is in excellent condition, the colors are fresh and bright, has never been framed. About the artist: Born in Twin Falls Idaho, his family immediately moved to Monte Vista, Colorado where he lived until age 12. Many of the idyllic memories of this childhood inform his imagination and enter into his work. Moving from a very small farming and ranching community, he was plunged into the crazed consumer culture of Southern California. He lived in La Mesa, California and watched as the entire face of America changed with Vietnam, rampant divorce, and then the summer of love. He attended Grossmont College and immersed himself in art. Seeking to escape the drug crazed beach culture, he set out for northern California. Kelly attended Cal State University at Hayward where he studied with Mel Ramos, Raymond Saunders, Harold Schlotzhauer, Misch Kohn, Kenji Nanao and Clayton Bailey...

Lorenzo Homar Casals Poster, 1966. Lithograph, 19 x 29 inches. Some wear as can be observed in detail photos.

“LA CASA VIVENDA” Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) created this color lithograph entitled “La Casa Vivenda” circa 1991. Image size 18.38 x 25 inches and the paper size 21.75 x 29.38 inches. Printed in an edition of 100 this impression is inscribed “70/100” - the 70th impression of 100. This impression is pencil signed in the lower right and inscribed in the lower left. “Best known for his architectural paintings and lithographs, Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) explored the effects of light and shadow to emphasize the abstract geometry of his subjects. His artwork encompasses his Cuban heritage...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - Acrobats at Play Original Lithograph from 1960. Dimensions of work: 32 x 24 cm. Publisher: Maeght Éditeur, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition.

The Ninth Hour Clarence Holbrook Carter American (1904–2000) Date: 1978 Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 200, AP 30 Size: 40 in. x 26 in. (101.6 cm x 66.04 cm)

“LA CASITA AZUL” Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) created this color lithograph entitled “La Casita Azul” circa 1970. The image size is 21.50 x 31.25 inches and the paper size 23.13 x 33 inches. Printed in an edition of 100 this impression is inscribed “91/100” - the 54th impression of 100. Pencil signed in the lower right and inscribed in the lower left. “Best known for his architectural paintings and lithographs, Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) explored the effects of light and shadow to emphasize the abstract geometry of his subjects. His artwork encompasses his Cuban heritage...

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Dans L'Atelier de Picasso Lithograph from 1957. The edition 211/275. With Arches watermark. Dimensions of work: 65 x 44 cm Publisher: Fernand Mourlot...

Materic silkscreen print “Ondate di gelo” (Frost Waves) by Mario Schifano. Signature and numbering in pencil on front side. Dry stamp of the artist on front. Edition F.C. (Not for...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 From the last po...

Tim Engelland (American, 1950-2012) Dim Sum!, 1991 Woodcut 8 1/2 x 11 in. Signed dated lower right: T. Engelland, '91 Titled lower middle: Dim Sum! Numbered lower left: 73/150 A lifelong artist, Engelland specialized in oil portraits and landscapes, and also worked extensively in woodcuts and linocuts. He was born on Jan. 5, 1950, in Ames, Iowa, the son of Charles Wilbur “Will” Engelland and Patricia Fairman Engelland.. Tim grew up in Terre Haute, IN, attending Fairbanks Elementary School and Indiana State University’s Laboratory School. He knew he wanted to be an artist from an early age, and was mentored by Lab School’s John Laska, graduating in 1968. He received a BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art; was a Norfolk Fellow at Yale University; and received his MFA from Cornell University, teaching there for two years after graduation. He spent the majority of his career, from 1976-2004, at Deerfield Academy, a prestigious preparatory school in Deerfield, Mass. There he taught art and photography, coached basketball and lacrosse, and served as faculty resident. When the school began accepting female students, Tim designed The Deerfield Girl, a bronze statue to accompany The Deerfield Boy statue standing in the school’s Memorial Building. Along with John O’Brien and Peter Fallon, Tim founded the Deerfield Press, publisher of limited-edition illustrated poems and stories; James Dickey, John McPhee, and Seamus Heaney are among the authors whom the Press published. For several decades, Tim served on the faculty at the Advanced Placement Summer Institute in St. Johnsbury, Vt., and as a consultant to the College Board. He spent sabbaticals in New York City and Boston, and he has exhibited in galleries in those cities and many other venues. His work can be found in the National Library of Ireland, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and in private collections worldwide. In 2004, Tim returned to Indiana. He was married to Susan Karen Carpenter...

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - La Comédie Humaine Lithograph from 1954. Dimensions of work: 35.5 x 26.5 cm Publisher: Tériade, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition. Fast and s...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - The Wolf, the Mother, and the Child Etching from 1954. Edition of 85. Enhanced with watercolour by the artist. Dimensions of work: 39 x 30 cm. Referen...

To see our other original vintage travel posters including more pre-war London Transport posters, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message if you cannot find the poster you want. Clifford and Rosemary Ellis London Underground Map Original vintage poster 103 x 64 cm Signed in the plate 'Clifford & Rosemary Ellis '35" Printed by Waterlow & Sons Ltd for London Transport. This marvellous original vintage poster was designed for London Transport and encourages shoppers to use the Tube to do their Christmas shopping. The map of London's streets of shops, including Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Bond Street, are set on the background of a Christmas shopping list and various items to be purchased. The cross-section of a Christmas cracker...

Chu Teh-Chun (1920-2014) - Composition en jaune, noir et rouge Lithograph from 2000. Edition 22/80. Dimensions of work: 75 x 53.5 cm. Hand signed. The work is in Excellent condi...

After Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - Avenue de la victoire à Nice Lithograph from 1967. Dimensions of work: 73 x 52 cm. Reference: Chagall Lithographs CS 31. The work is in Excellent...

Midcentury Modern Villa Architecture c. 1950 Architectural print "Elevation AA" Unknown edition 19 x 25.25 inches

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Taureaux Signed in the plate Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Trinckvel 1965 Jean Cocteau W...

"Saturday Night Fever" Original Vintage 1977 Lobby Card Condition Mint Original vintage 1977 lobby card from the film "Saturday Night Fever" directed by John Badham FRAMING: Pleas...

after Henri Matisse - Acrobat Edition of 200 with the printed signature, as issued 80 x 60 cm Posthumous edition after the original paper cut-out with stamp of the Succession Matisse References : Artvalue - Succession Matisse 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...