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People Figurative Prints

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Art Subject: People
Cecy Loftus
Located in Columbia, MO
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC Cecy Loftus 1948 Lithograph on paper Ed. 166/740 20.5 x 14 inches
Category

19th Century Post-Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Hotel du Pacha Noir (before lettering).
Located in New York, NY
Hotel Pachenoir, 1900. Color lithograph. On Linen 51 x36. ( Image Size: 48 x33 3/4.) Jules-Alexandre Grünwas a French post-impressionist painter, poster artist, and illustrator. ......
Category

Early 1900s Art Nouveau Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Vuillard, Intérieur aux tentures roses, L'œuvre gravé de Vuillard (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph on grand vélin Renage paper Year: 1948 Paper Size: 12.375 x 9.5 inches; image size: 11.81 x 9.05 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Seventy Percent Chance
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Medium: Mezzotint Year: 2023 Edition: 50 Image Size: 11.75 x 17.5 inches Pedestrians sheltering from the rain under umbrellas in an urban downtown setting, Art Werger’s prints show...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Mezzotint

HM Queen Elizabeth II
Located in London, GB
Christian Furr HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2022 Inkjet on 310gsm Hahnemuhle paper Paper size 70.5 x 54.2 cms Image Size 54.5 x 40.2cms Edition of 70 + 5 AP hand-signed and numbered by the...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Inkjet

LAND OF THE PHAROAHS Signed Lithograph, Expedition, Egyptian Pyramids, Camels
Located in Union City, NJ
LAND OF THE PHAROAHS by the woman artist Robin Morris, is an original limited edition lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Coventry Rag paper, 100% acid free. LAND OF THE PHAROAHS is a humorous desert expedition scene near the Egyptian pyramids featuring a row of barefoot explorers in safari hats and suits and their camels, walking side by side posed like figures depicted in the ancient Egyptian reliefs...
Category

1980s Art Deco Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Nude - Lithograph by Carlo Marcantonio - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Nude is an lithograph artwork on paper realized by Carlo Marcantonio. Hand-signed on the lower right in pencil. Good conditions. Artist's proof IX/XV. The artwork is represented ...
Category

1970s Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Hand with Enigmatic Symbol - Original lithograph (Atelier Michel Cassé), 1964
Located in Paris, IDF
Le Corbusier Hand with Enigmatic Symbol, 1964 Original lithograph Printed signature in the plate On vellum 42.5 x 35.5 cm (c. 16.5 x 13.7 in) Edited by Forces-Vives (Paris) in 1964...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Still Life with White Pot and Pears - Original Lithograph
Located in Paris, IDF
Raoul DUFY Still Life with White Pot and Pears, 1953 Original Lithograph with stencil watercolor With printed signature in the plate On Arches vellum 28 x 38 cm (c. 11 x 15 inch) E...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Leonor Fini, Sphinx Ariene, rare handsigned print
Located in Saint Ouen, FR
Rare print handsigned and numered by surrealist artist Leonor Fini, now rediscovered and inscreasingly esteemed with the movement of rediscovering art by women. It depicts a mytholog...
Category

20th Century Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Paper

Untitled, contemporary artwork by Ida Applebroog
Located in New York, NY
Artwork by Ida Applebroog Untitled 1996 Signed and numbered Lithograph (Edition of 50) 12 x 9 inches
Category

1990s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Lithograph

Original Liqueur Menthe Pastille vintage French drink poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Liqueur Menthe Pastille antique French stone lithograph poster (E. Giffard distillateur) linen-backed in very good condition, ready to frame. Artist: Misti. Turn of the c...
Category

Early 1900s Art Nouveau Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Nijinsky in Petrouchka.
Located in London, GB
BARBIER, George. Nijinsky in Petrouchka. London, C. W. Beaumont, 1913. ‘The designs, although somewhat fantastic in treatment, do convey the impression produced by Nijinsky in h...
Category

1910s Art Nouveau Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

'The Pimp' — Graphic Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Fritz Eichenberg, 'The Pimp', wood engraving, 1980, artist's proof before the edition. Signed in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (2 3/16 to 3 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Archivally sleeved, unmatted. Image size 12 x 9 3/4 inches (305 x 248 mm); sheet size 18 x 14 inches (457 x 356 mm). ABOUT THE ARTIST Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence. Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting. In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories. Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday. Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...
Category

1980s American Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Vintage Large Scale Picasso "National Galerie, Berlin" Exhibition Poster C.1989
Located in San Francisco, CA
Vintage Large Scale Picasso "National Galerie, Berlin" Exhibition Poster c.1989 Fantastic vintage exhibition poster for works by Pablo Picasso at the National Gallery in Berlin. Th...
Category

1980s Abstract Figurative Prints

Materials

Ink

UFO ca. 1913, Folk Art Lithograph by Edward M. Plunkett
Located in Long Island City, NY
Edward M. Plunkett, American (1922 - 201?) - UFO ca. 1913, Year: 1981, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, AP 30, Image Size: 14.5 x 23.5 inches, Siz...
Category

1980s Folk Art Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Paris I Love You I Love You ! BATIK signed limited edition
Located in London, GB
Paris I Love You I Love You ! BATIK signed limited edition POP ART print Paper Size 30 x 20" inches / 76 x 51 cm Signed & numbered by artist on front Archival Pigment print Limited to 25 only Pop art of the now infamous mugshot arrest photo of socialite and famous hotel heiress Paris Hilton...
Category

2010s Pop Art Figurative Prints

Materials

Color, Archival Pigment

Pablo Picasso - Le Vieux Roi (The Old King), original lithograph
Located in London, GB
Pablo Picasso Le Vieux Roi (The Old King) Seigneur et deux filles, 1959 Original Lithograph on Arches light paper with Mourlot watermark, signed in the stone with a red signature. p...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Le goût du Bonheur : Self Portrait with a Cigarette - Lithograph
Located in Paris, IDF
Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) Le goût du Bonheur, Self Portrait with a Cigarette, 1964 Lithograph Unsigned Printed date in the plate On vellum 32.5 x 25 cm (c. 12.6 9.8 in) INFORMATIO...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

"Sukeroku" framed, hand-signed lithograph from "Kabuki Suite" by Al Hirschfeld
Located in Boca Raton, FL
"Sukeroku" by Al Hirschfeld from the "Kabuki Suite," a series of 12 color lithographs on Arches paper capturing Hirschfeld's impressions from a trip to Japan in 1975 of the country's...
Category

1970s Other Art Style Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Vuillard, Intérieur a la suspension, L'œuvre gravé de Vuillard (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph on grand vélin Renage paper Year: 1948 Paper Size: 12.375 x 9.5 inches; image size: 12.2 x 9.45 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From ...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Eat Grapefruits, Drink Wine - Original handsigned lithograph - 90 copies
By Bona de Mandiargues
Located in Paris, IDF
Bona de MANDIARGUES Eat Grapefruits, Drink Wine Original lithograph Handsigned in pencil Limited to 90 copies On vellum 16 x 12" (40 x 30 cm) Excellent Condition
Category

Late 20th Century Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

The Factory - Lithograph by Giuseppe Megna - 1980
Located in Roma, IT
The Factory is an lithograph on paper realized in 1980 by  Giuseppe Megna. Hand-signed and dated on the lower right, artist's proof. Good conditions. The artwork represents the a ...
Category

1980s Contemporary Landscape Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Pair of Hand-colored Romantic French Engravings after Francois Boucher
By (After) Francois Boucher
Located in Alamo, CA
A pair of French classical romantic prints original created in the 18th century by Jacques-Firmin Beauvarlet (1731-1797) after paintings by Francois Boucher (1703-1770), utilizing ...
Category

18th Century Romantic Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving, Etching

'The Wolf and the Little Kids' — Graphic Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Fritz Eichenberg, 'The Wolf and the Little Kids' from the suite 'Fables with a Twist', wood engraving, 1975-76, artist's proof apart from the edition of c. 50. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Artist’s Proof' in pencil. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (7/8 to 1 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Complete with vellum folder with descriptive text in red and black linotype. Printed by master printer Harold McGrath at The Gehenna Press, Northampton, MA. Image size 13 15/16 x 12 1/8 inches (354 x 308 mm); sheet size 16 1/2 x 14 inches (419 x 356 mm). Archivally sleeved, unmatted. Collection: Harvard Museums. ABOUT THE ARTIST Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990) was a German-American illustrator and arts educator who worked primarily in wood engraving. His best-known works were concerned with religion, social justice, and nonviolence. Eichenberg was born to a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, where the destruction of World War I helped to shape his anti-war sentiments. He worked as a printer's apprentice and studied at the Municipal School of Applied Arts in Cologne and the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, where he studied under Hugo Steiner-Prag. In 1923 he moved to Berlin to begin his career as an artist, producing illustrations for books and newspapers. In his newspaper and magazine work, Eichenberg was politically outspoken and sometimes wrote and illustrated his reporting. In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler drove Eichenberg, who was a public critic of the Nazis, to emigrate with his wife and children to the United States. He settled in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project and was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. In his prolific career as a book illustrator, Eichenberg portrayed many forms of literature but specialized in works with elements of extreme spiritual and emotional conflict, fantasy, or social satire. Over his long career, Eichenberg was commissioned to illustrate more than 100 classics by publishers in the United States and abroad, including works by renowned authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Poe, Swift, and Grimmelshausen. He also wrote and illustrated books of folklore and children's stories. Eichenberg was a long-time contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, his illustrations appearing between 1930 and 1980. Eichenberg’s work has been featured by such esteemed publishers as The Heritage Club, Random House, Book of the Month Club, The Limited Editions Club, Kingsport Press, Aquarius Press, and Doubleday. Raised in a non-religious family, Eichenberg had been attracted to Taoism as a child. Following his wife's unexpected death in 1937, he turned briefly to Zen Buddhist meditation, then joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1940. Though he remained a Quaker until his death, Eichenberg was also associated with Catholic charity work through his friendship with Dorothy Day...
Category

1970s American Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Raimundo Orozco Cuban Artist Original Hand Signed engraving 2000
Located in Miami, FL
Raimundo Orozco (Cuba, 1949) 'Untitled', 2000 engraving on paper Guarro Biblos 250g. 10.1 x 6.6 in. (25.6 x 16.6 cm.) Edition of 60 ID: ORO-313-047 Hand-signed by author
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Paper, Aquatint, Screen, Engraving

The Thames and the Tower of London
Located in Storrs, CT
The Thames and the Tower of London. 1924. Etching and drypoint. 6 3/8 x 14 3/4 (sheet 10 1/4 x 17 1/4). Mat line; otherwise fine condition. A rich impr...
Category

1920s Modern Landscape Prints

Materials

Drypoint, Etching

Le Supplice du Garrot, Old Masters Heliogravure Etching by Francisco de Goya
Located in Long Island City, NY
Francisco de Goya, After by Amand Durand, Spanish (1746 - 1828) - Le Supplice du Garrot, Year: 1875, Medium: Heliogravure, Size: 12.5 x 8.5 in. (31.75 x 21.59 cm), Printer: Amand Durand, Description: An Amand Durand etching...
Category

1870s Old Masters Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Five images from the popular 1886 Spanish Bullfighting Journal La Lidia
Located in Paonia, CO
La Lidia, the oldest and most popular bullfighting magazine was founded by Julian Palacios the owner of a prestigious lithograph and engraving workshop in Madrid. These colorful...
Category

1880s Realist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Wassily Kandinsky, Tableau avec formes blanches, L'édition de tête (after)
Located in Southampton, NY
Lithograph on vélin de Rives paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition, with centerfold, as issued. Notes: From the folio, tête edition, Consacré au Blau...
Category

1960s Modern Landscape Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Robert van Audenaerde after Carlo Maratti - Engraving, Rebecca at the Well
Located in Corsham, GB
A charming 18th-century engraving depicting the religious scene of Rebecca at The Well. Inscribed in plate. Presented in a gilt frame. On paper.
Category

Early 18th Century Figurative Prints

Materials

Engraving

View of Avellino - Etching by Tommaso Piroli - Mid-19th century
Located in Roma, IT
View of Avellino is a print realized by Tommaso Piroli in the mid-19th century. Etching Hand-watercolored on paper. Signed and titled on the plate. Good conditions with foxing
Category

Mid-19th Century Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Cheval bleu au couple (Cramer 113; Mourlot 993), Derrière le miroir
Located in Southampton, NY
Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper Size: 15 x 11 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Catalogue raisonné references: Chagall, Marc, et al. Chagall Lithographe VI, 1...
Category

1980s Expressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Paris Café with Eiffel Tower France Limited Edition Print by British Artist
Located in Preston, GB
Paris Café with Eiffel Tower France Limited Edition Print of Figurative Cityscape Painting by Leading British Urban Landscape Artist, Angela Wakefield. Print measures 16 x 9.5 inch...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Prints

Materials

Digital, Color, Archival Paper, Paper, Printer's Ink, Giclée

NIGHT WINDOWS
Located in Portland, ME
Sloan, John (American, 1871-1951). NIGHT WINDOWS. Morse 152. Etching and drypoint, 1910. The 5th state of 5. Edition of 100. Titled, signed, and inscribed...
Category

1910s Figurative Prints

Materials

Drypoint, Etching

Chagall, Composition (Mourlot 412; Cramer 59), Derrière le miroir (after)
Located in Southampton, NY
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered. Good condition, with centerfold, as issued. Notes: From Derrière le miroir, N° 147. Published by Aimé Maeght, Éditeur...
Category

1960s Expressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Man Ray, Composition, Man Ray (after)
Located in Southampton, NY
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Man Ray, 1984. Published by Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Ni...
Category

1980s Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Bjrenomogeti Mushrooms - Lithograph by Vincenzo Tenore - 1870s
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph hand watercolored. Belongs to the Series "Atlante di Botanica popolare ossia Illustrazione di Piante Notevoli di ogni famiglia" (Atlas of popular botany or illustration o...
Category

1870s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Composition (Cramer 36; Bloch 360; Horodisch A6), Non Vouloir, Pablo Picasso
Located in Southampton, NY
Zincograph on Vélin Bouffant paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Non Vouloir, 1942. Published by Éditions Jeanne Bucher, Paris; printed...
Category

1940s Cubist Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Cuban signed limited edition original art print women woodcut 151
Located in Miami, FL
Luis Miguel Valdes (Cuba, 1949) 'Torso I', 2006 woodcut on paper Guarro Biblos 250g. 18.6 x 11.1 in. (47 x 28 cm.) Edition of 20 Unframed ID: 1G200613 Hand-signed by author _________...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Prints and Multiples

Materials

Woodcut, Ink

La Dentellière after Vermeer - Etching by Achille Isidore Gilbert - 1883
Located in Roma, IT
La Dentellière after Johannes Vermeer’s (1632–1675) painting “The Lacemaker” (1669–71) realized by Achille Isidore Gilbert (1828–1899) in 1883. Etching with drypoint on laid paper w...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Dufresne, Le Rêve, Dufresne, Collection Pierre Lévy (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph on vélin d'Arches paper Year: 1971 Paper Size: 20 x 26 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, Dufresne, VI, Colle...
Category

1970s Post-Impressionist Landscape Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Les Gens de Justice - Lithograph by Honoré Daumier - 1845
Located in Roma, IT
Lithograph realized by Daumier in 1845, belonging to the Series "Les Gens de Justice" Table no. 20 of the Series. Monogrammed in the plate. Very good condition. Ref. Delteil 1356
Category

1840s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Still Life - Offset Print after Giorgio Morandi - 1929
Located in Roma, IT
Still life is a vintage offset print, realized in 1929 reproducing the original watercolor by Giorgio Morandi. Very Good conditions.
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Offset

DRESSED UP Hand Drawn Lithograph, Abstract Fashion Drawing, Pop Art
Located in Union City, NJ
DRESSED UP is an original hand drawn lithograph by Peter Max printed in an edition of 280, using traditional hand lithography techniques on archival paper, 100% acid free. DRESSED UP...
Category

1980s Pop Art Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Vision /// French Romantic Classical Figurative Lady Woman Soldier Angel Litho
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836-1904) Title: "Vison" Portfolio: Gazette des Beaux-Arts *Issued unsigned Year: 1895 Medium: Original Lithograph on chine appliqué on wove paper Limited edition: approx. 1,500 Printer: Imprimeries Lemercier, Paris, France Publisher: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France Reference: Hediard No. 122 (IV/IV); Sanchez & Seydoux 1895-6, page 126 Sheet size: 11" x 7.38" Image size: 7.5" x 5.75" Condition: Some minor discoloration in margins. In excellent condition Notes: Original cover tissue sleeve mounted at left margin as issued. This lithograph was published by Gazette des Beaux-Arts. The Gazette des Beaux-Arts was a French art review, found in 1859 by Édouard Houssaye, with Charles Blanc as its first chief editor. Assia Visson Rubinstein was chief editor under the direction of George Wildenstein from 1928 until 1960. Her papers, which include all editions of the Gazette from this period, are intact at the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne in Dorigny. The Gazette was a world reference work on art history for nearly 100 years - one other editor in chief, from 1955 to 1987, was Jean Adhémar. It was bought in 1928 by the Wildenstein family, whose last representative was Daniel Wildenstein, its director from 1963 until his death in 2001. The review closed in 2002. Biography: Henri Fantin-Latour, in full Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour (born Jan. 14, 1836, Grenoble, France—died Aug. 25, 1904, Buré), French painter, printmaker, and illustrator noted for his still lifes with flowers and his portraits, especially group compositions, of contemporary French celebrities in the arts. Fantin-Latour’s first teacher was his father, a well-known portrait painter. Later, he studied at the school of Lecoq de Boisbaudran and attended the École des Beaux-Arts. He exhibited at the official French Salons, but in 1863 he also showed his work in the rebel Salon des Refusés. Although academic in manner, Fantin-Latour was independent in style. He had numerous friends among the leading French painters of his day, including J.-A.-D. Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, Édouard Manet, and Gustave Courbet. His portrait groups, often arranged in rows of heads and figures like 17th-century Dutch guild portraits...
Category

1890s Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Guillaume Apollinaire
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
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...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Portrait Head
Located in New York, NY
Lucian Freud Portrait Head 2001 Etching on Somerset Textured White paper 28 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches; 72 x 57 cm Edition of 46 Initialed and numbered in graphite (lower recto) Frame available upon request Published by Matthew Marks Gallery...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Many Cities from the Rilke Portfolio, Minimalist lithograph by Ben Shahn
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Ben Shahn, American (1898 - 1969) Title: Many Cities from the Rilke Portfolio Year: 1968 Medium: Lithograph on Arches, signed in the plate Edition: 750 Size: 22.5 x 17.75 in....
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Composition, Le Livre Blanc, Jean Cocteau
Located in Southampton, NY
Lithograph and stencil with hand coloring on vélin d'Arches paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: from the folio, Le Livre blanc, précédé d'u...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph, Stencil

Rita - Lithograph by Bernard Buffet­ - 1960
Located in Roma, IT
Color lithograph realized by Buffet in 1960. Hand signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 59/125; numbered in pencil. Burnishing of the sheet on edges.
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Virgil Comforts Dante - Woodcut - 1963
Located in Roma, IT
Virgil Comforts Dante - Hell, Plate-2- Divine Comedy is a woodcut print realized in 1963 for a series illustrating the Medieval poem of the "Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri. Not ...
Category

1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Toulouse-Lautrec, Composition, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Circus (after)
Located in Fairfield, CT
Medium: Lithograph on vélin paper, hinged on archival backing paper, as issued Year: 1967 Paper Size: 17.32 x 14.17 inches (backing paper size) Inscription: Signed in the plate and u...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Pool Slide, Las Vegas, Nevada - American pop art color photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Pool Slide, from Richard Heeps Dream in Color series. This fun original artwork really shows Richard's unique eye as a photographer, creating this kitsch pop-art picture from an Amer...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

VILLAGE SCENE / TOWN FESTIVAL
By Herbert Gurschner
Located in Santa Monica, CA
HERBERT GURSCHNER (Austrian / English (1901-1975) VILLAGE SCENE / TOWN FESTIVAL ca.1924 Color woodcut 4 ¾ x 5 3/8” Signed in pencil. Good strong colors. On thin paper. Faint darkeni...
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut, Linocut

Actor Iwai Shigaku as Somenoi in "Denka chaya adauchi"
Located in Middletown, NY
Actor Iwai Shigaku as Somenoi in "Denka chaya adauchi" (Revenge at the Denka Teahouse), by Shigeharu, Ryusai (also called Kuniyoshi) Tokyo: Horie Ichiba Wataki, 1835. Woodcut on la...
Category

Early 19th Century Edo Portrait Prints

Materials

Laid Paper, Handmade Paper, Woodcut

Portrait of Clemency - Etching by Thomas Holloway - 1810
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of Clemency is an original artwork realized by Thomas Holloway (1748 - 1827). Original Etching from J.C. Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to promote the Knowledge...
Category

1810s Old Masters Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Rocking Horse - Etching by Zivko Djak - 1973
Located in Roma, IT
Rocking horse is an original Artwork realized in 1973 by Zivko Djak (1942-2011). Original black and white etching Good conditions. Includes frame: 32 x 1.5 x 26 cm Hand signed and dated on the lower right margin Numbered on the lower left. Edition of 75. Image Dimensions: 12 x 10 cm Zivko Djak (1942-2011). One of the most important Serbian artists...
Category

1970s Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Original 'Germany Fly TWA Jets' vintage travel poster Trans World Airlines
Located in Spokane, WA
Original David Klein, Germany Fly TWA Jets (Smaller format)—professional acid-free archival linen backing; ready to frame. The image of this original travel to Germany scene features an old cathedral in the background and a wrought iron decorative 'rathauskeller' wine sign. The statue in the center holding the two birds spewing water. About the fountain: Gänsemännchenbrunnen (The Geeseman Fountain) depicting Philip Melanchthon, anonymous (presumed cast by Pankraz Labenwolf), ca. 1526, Nuremberg, Germany During the 1950s and 1960s, David Klein designed and illustrated dozens of posters for Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines (TWA). They remain the iconic images of the Jet Set Era. Up, up and away! David Klein was an American artist, best known for his influential work in advertising. Klein is best remembered for the iconic travel images he created for Howard Hughes and Trans World Airlines (TWA) during the 1950s and 1960s. TWA (Trans World Airlines) was formed in 1924 as Transcontinental & Western Air. The airline's first route was New York to Los Angeles, soon followed by multiple National routes. The airline expanded to serve Europe, the Middle East and Asia after WWII when the company was under the control of Howard Hughes, owner from 1939 until 1961. Hughes was a dominant force in expanding and promoting his company's routes. The economy was vastly improving, and travel by air for business and...
Category

1960s American Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Offset

Natura Morta - Lithograph by Concetto Pozzati - 1990s
Located in Roma, IT
The print is a lithograph with a print run of 150 copies, in very good condition. The lithograph print bears the print number in the lower left margin and the artist's hand signatur...
Category

1990s Abstract Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

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