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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
During an interview in 1950, near the end of his long career, Matisse told Georges Charbonnier: 'Painting and drawing say the same thing. A drawing is a painting made with reduced means... which can be totally absorbing, which can very well release the feelings of the artist just as much as the painter' (in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 194). Matisse had recently undertaken a remarkable series of still-lifes drawn vigorously with brush and black ink, the powerful and assured culmination of the many years of thought, effort and experience that he had put into drawing. This process began four decades earlier, during the Fauve period of 1905-1907, in such innovative and rarely encountered drawings as the striking Portrait de Marguerite seen here.
This kind of drawing was radical and unprecedented in the history of Western art. Here Matisse dispensed with realistically delineated contours, and the use of shading to suggest volume, elements which were the very foundation of conventional drawing. Instead he utilized a variety of abbreviated and unconnected marks, spontaneous gestures, improvised flourishes and arabesques, set starkly against the whiteness of the sheet, to compose the image of his daughter's face. Although the intensity of colour is neither employed nor implied, Matisse had found a graphic equivalent to the fragmented facture and lack of transitional passages in Fauve painting. Indeed, as John Golding has pointed out, 'Fauvism... was actually a form of drawing in paint... Linear and decorative plasticity are united, and being united, allow Matisse at one and the same time to decompose objects and to maintain their sense of identities' (in The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984, pp. 38 and 40).
Marguerite Matisse was born in 1894, the child of the artist's early liaison with Camille (Caroline) Joblaud. Matisse and Camille later broke up, and in 1898 he married Amélie Parayre, who in the following year graciously accepted Marguerite into their household. Marguerite, on account of illness, had to stay behind with her father's mother in Bohain while Matisse, Amélie, and their sons Jean and Pierre spent the summer of 1905 in Collioure, where the artist painted his first Fauve pictures. Marguerite was present, together with her step-mother, during the artist's second stay in Collioure in May-October 1906. They traveled back to Paris to attend the Salon d'Automne, after which Matisse returned alone to Collioure. Amélie and Marguerite rejoined him in November. Marguerite was again unwell, but her parents decided that the climate of the Midi would benefit her, and they allowed her to miss the school year in Paris. They remained in Collioure until September 1907 (fig. 1).
Matisse executed this drawing of Marguerite during one of these extended sojourns in Collioure, most likely during the summer months, while Marguerite was present. Or it is possible, as Wanda de Guébriant has suggested, that Matisse drew it in late October or November 1906, before Marguerite returned with Amélie, while the artist was working alone in Collioure. Matisse might have referred to an ink drawing that he made of Marguerite earlier in 1906, probably during the summer, when he painted the well-known Fauve picture Marguerite lisant (La liseuse; Musée de Grenoble). The whereabouts of this prior drawing are unknown; a photograph of it in the Galerie Druet archives (no. 42296) shows Marguerite bust-length, wearing, as was her custom, a black ribbon around her neck. Matisse devised the pearl necklace as a more open and rhythmical arabesque for the present drawing.
Matisse's abiding love for his only daughter is affectingly apparent in this portrait. He would never forget the terrifying experience in July 1901, when Marguerite, then only six years old, had to endure an emergency tracheotomy to allow her to breathe during a bout with diphtheria. She wore the neck ribbon to cover the large scar, and often suffered from problems arising from her damaged trachea and larynx. Hilary Spurling has written about this heroic and indomitable girl, 'This first child inspired in Matisse what became one of the dearest and deepest attachments of his life... Marguerite was already the third pole around which the life of the studio and the household revolved. Brave, resolute and uncompromising, she could be (and was for the rest of her life) relied on absolutely by her parents and brothers in small things and large. Even as a little girl, she took over routine chores like shopping, cleaning, looking after the boys, all the offices that would have been performed in a less hard-up household by a maid of all work... Her life was shaped, as [Matisse] was, by the pull of duty... Her father's studio represented, more perhaps for Marguerite than for any of the others, a human and imaginative refuge from the long series of ordeals that had shaken, and very nearly shattered, the Matisse family at the beginning of the century' (in The Unknown Matisse, New York, 1998, pp. 93 and 335-336).
(fig. 1) Matisse, Mme Matisse and Marguerite in the artist's studio, Collioure, summer 1907. A painting of Marguerite hangs on the wall behind the sculpture Deux négresses. Archives Henri Matisse, Paris.
(fig. 2) H. Matisse, Marguerite, 1907 (Mus©e Picasso, Paris)
© Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2006
© Mus©e Picasso, Paris
During an interview in 1950, near the end of his long career, Matisse told Georges Charbonnier: 'Painting and drawing say the same thing. A drawing is a painting made with reduced means... which can be totally absorbing, which can very well release the feelings of the artist just as much as the painter' (in J. Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 194). Matisse had recently undertaken a remarkable series of still-lifes drawn vigorously with brush and black ink, the powerful and assured culmination of the many years of thought, effort and experience that he had put into drawing. This process began four decades earlier, during the Fauve period of 1905-1907, in such innovative and rarely encountered drawings as the striking Portrait de Marguerite seen here.
This kind of drawing was radical and unprecedented in the history of Western art. Here Matisse dispensed with realistically delineated contours, and the use of shading to suggest volume, elements which were the very foundation of conventional drawing. Instead he utilized a variety of abbreviated and unconnected marks, spontaneous gestures, improvised flourishes and arabesques, set starkly against the whiteness of the sheet, to compose the image of his daughter's face. Although the intensity of colour is neither employed nor implied, Matisse had found a graphic equivalent to the fragmented facture and lack of transitional passages in Fauve painting. Indeed, as John Golding has pointed out, 'Fauvism... was actually a form of drawing in paint... Linear and decorative plasticity are united, and being united, allow Matisse at one and the same time to decompose objects and to maintain their sense of identities' (in The Drawings of Henri Matisse, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984, pp. 38 and 40).
Marguerite Matisse was born in 1894, the child of the artist's early liaison with Camille (Caroline) Joblaud. Matisse and Camille later broke up, and in 1898 he married Amélie Parayre, who in the following year graciously accepted Marguerite into their household. Marguerite, on account of illness, had to stay behind with her father's mother in Bohain while Matisse, Amélie, and their sons Jean and Pierre spent the summer of 1905 in Collioure, where the artist painted his first Fauve pictures. Marguerite was present, together with her step-mother, during the artist's second stay in Collioure in May-October 1906. They traveled back to Paris to attend the Salon d'Automne, after which Matisse returned alone to Collioure. Amélie and Marguerite rejoined him in November. Marguerite was again unwell, but her parents decided that the climate of the Midi would benefit her, and they allowed her to miss the school year in Paris. They remained in Collioure until September 1907 (fig. 1).
Matisse executed this drawing of Marguerite during one of these extended sojourns in Collioure, most likely during the summer months, while Marguerite was present. Or it is possible, as Wanda de Guébriant has suggested, that Matisse drew it in late October or November 1906, before Marguerite returned with Amélie, while the artist was working alone in Collioure. Matisse might have referred to an ink drawing that he made of Marguerite earlier in 1906, probably during the summer, when he painted the well-known Fauve picture Marguerite lisant (La liseuse; Musée de Grenoble). The whereabouts of this prior drawing are unknown; a photograph of it in the Galerie Druet archives (no. 42296) shows Marguerite bust-length, wearing, as was her custom, a black ribbon around her neck. Matisse devised the pearl necklace as a more open and rhythmical arabesque for the present drawing.
Matisse's abiding love for his only daughter is affectingly apparent in this portrait. He would never forget the terrifying experience in July 1901, when Marguerite, then only six years old, had to endure an emergency tracheotomy to allow her to breathe during a bout with diphtheria. She wore the neck ribbon to cover the large scar, and often suffered from problems arising from her damaged trachea and larynx. Hilary Spurling has written about this heroic and indomitable girl, 'This first child inspired in Matisse what became one of the dearest and deepest attachments of his life... Marguerite was already the third pole around which the life of the studio and the household revolved. Brave, resolute and uncompromising, she could be (and was for the rest of her life) relied on absolutely by her parents and brothers in small things and large. Even as a little girl, she took over routine chores like shopping, cleaning, looking after the boys, all the offices that would have been performed in a less hard-up household by a maid of all work... Her life was shaped, as [Matisse] was, by the pull of duty... Her father's studio represented, more perhaps for Marguerite than for any of the others, a human and imaginative refuge from the long series of ordeals that had shaken, and very nearly shattered, the Matisse family at the beginning of the century' (in The Unknown Matisse, New York, 1998, pp. 93 and 335-336).
(fig. 1) Matisse, Mme Matisse and Marguerite in the artist's studio, Collioure, summer 1907. A painting of Marguerite hangs on the wall behind the sculpture Deux négresses. Archives Henri Matisse, Paris.
(fig. 2) H. Matisse, Marguerite, 1907 (Mus©e Picasso, Paris)
© Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2006
© Mus©e Picasso, Paris