Drawing Portrait Prints

Artist: Ben Shahn, Lithuanian/American (1898 - 1969) Title: Skowhegan Year: 1965 Medium: Wood Engraving, signed in pencil Edition: 200 (unnumbered) Image Size: 9 x 8 inches Size: 16 ...

The conversation is an original lithograph artwork on ivory-colored paper, realized by the French draftsman Paul Gavarni (after) (alias Guillaume Sulpice Chevalier Gavarni, 1804-1866...

Mary Sister of Martha is an original etching artwork realized by Thomas Holloway for Johann Caspar Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of...

Portraits is an artwork realized by Thomas Holloway (1748 - 1827). Original Etching from J.C. Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to promote the Knowledge and the Love of Man...

GEOGRAPHY, EAST Year: 1992 Medium: 2-color, soft ground etching Paper Size: 28 x 25 inches (71 x 64 cm) Plate Size: 19 x 18 inches (48 x 46 cm) Edition: 60 Price: $6,000 Suite of f...

Lithograph of a figure of a woman by Jim Smyth (American, b. 1938). Numbered, titled, signed and dated "3/12", "Study 8", "Smyth 74” along the bottom edge. Unframed. Jim Smyth has studied at the Academia de Belle Arti in Fiorenza, Italy, Ecole des BeauxArts in Geneva, New York Academy, and the Art Students League. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in Fine Art. Although academically trained, Smyth practices and teaches a more impressionistic style of painting, focusing on the Alla Prima technique. He is particularly knowledgeable about drawing, perspective, color theory and the human figure, his passion. Smyth, with extensive academic knowledge, has a profound love of all human representations as illustrated by his humorous quick sketches from life. He also practices and teaches oil painting and pastels. When not in Provence, or Southeastern France, Smyth teaches intensely in art schools, art centers and several colleges in the Bay Area. He is a beloved instructor and his classes fill in quickly as he is very knowledgeable. On his return to the United States, he began studying with Mr. Alanson Appleton at the College of San Mateo, San Mateo, California. Smyth was a founding member of the Appletree Etchers, Inc., an etching print shop organized by Mr. Appleton and his students to develop and promote color intaglio. Smyth served as Master Printer at the studio for many years perfecting the techniques of intaglio and developing the color theories of Mr. Appleton as applied to the deeply etched plate. Smyth received his degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972 and holds the California Community College Certificate and an Adult Education Certificate. Smyth was invited to teach "Anatomy for Artists" at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California, as a result of his many years of dissection of the cadaver and developed the course of study of Perspective for the college. During this period, he began teaching Life Drawing at the Pacific Art League of Palo Alto, Palo Alto, California. During the following thirty years Smyth has taught an average of twelve classes per week at the Pacific Art League of Palo Alto, the Palo Alto Art Center and the Burlingame Recreation Department among others in all phases of drawing and painting. He has conducted many workshops for the California Academy of Painters in many aspects of drawing and painting. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor of Drawing at the College of San Mateo, San Mateo, California. He is an authority on the materials of painting and drawing, techniques of traditional drawing and painting, color theory, perspective and anatomy for artists. In his career in Life Drawing, Smyth has made over two hundred thousand drawings from the model. In addition to studies at Berkeley, Smyth has studied at the College of San Mateo, Foothill College, De Anza College, Mission College, and West Valley College, all in California. One of the pivotal points in his career was studying with Mr. Maynard Dixon Stewart at the University of San Jose, California. He spent a year at the New York Academy of Art where he was offered a full scholarship and at the Art Students League of New York. He concurrently attended classes at the National Academy of Design in New York. Among others, Smyth studied with M. Andrejivec, Ted Schmidt, Elliot Goldfinger, Gary Fagin, Ted Jacobs, Leo Neufeld, David Leffel, Jack Ferragasso, Jim Childs and Everett Raymond Kinstler and Kim English. Smyth has also studied with the noted painter and colorist, Ovanes Berberian...

Salvador Dali - Flung out like a Fag-end by the Big- - Original Signed Engraving Handsigned in pencil and Numbered Edition: F195/195 - Printer: Atelier Rigal. - Paper: Rives vellum ...

Pulp Fiction Set: Limited edition Fine Art Giclee 3 print set inspired by the characters from Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction": Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield, Bruce Willis...

Early 20th Century Miniature Etching, Portrait of an Old Woman by Ralph Sweet Compelling early 20th century small-scale figurative etching of an old...

To reach. Flamenco dancer. 2006. 3/10. Paper, lithography, 72x54.5 cm Dancing woman figure

Artist: Dan May (American, 1955-) Title: "Portrait of Elegant Lady II" *Signed by May in pencil lower left Year: 1991 Medium: Original unique Monoprint on unbr...

Jacques Villon - Man- Original Etching 1949 Signed in the plate Dimensions : 44.5 x 32.5 cm

PREMIER is an original hand pulled color lithograph by the Russian-born French artist Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) known by the pseudonym Erté. Erté, who is best known for his elegant fashion designs which capture the Art Deco period in which he worked. One of his earliest successes was designing for the French dancer Gaby Deslys...

Artist: Raphael Soyer Title: Woman's Head Portfolio Medium: 2 Lithographs, 1 printed in color & 1 black/white Original paper portfolio cover Signed: Hand Signed Edition: From the ed...

Artist: Pablo Picasso Title: Head of a Woman with Closed Eyes (Plate XXII) Portfolio: Carmen Medium: Etching on Montval wove paper Year: 1949 Edition: 289 Frame Size: 22" x 19" Sheet...

Salvador Dali - Don Quixote Reading - Original Lithograph Joseph FORET, Paris, 1957 PRINTER : Atelier Mourlot. SIGNATURE : plate signed by Dali. LIMITED : 197 copies. SIZE : 41 x ...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau From "Théâtre" Portfolio, 1957 Edition: 207 / 8800 Dimensions: 22.5 x 15.5 cm Jean Cocteau Writer, artist and film director Jean Cocteau was on...

- with the stamped signature on the lower right, as issued - numbered 15/50 - dated in the plate 29.3.71 - from the Suite 156 - published by Galerie Louise ...

From a series of wood engravings by Eric Gill. To see them or our other Modern British Art, 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 artist you want. Initial Letter 'H' for The Canterbury Tales (1929) - The Doctor's Tale Woodblock Print Published Hague & Gill 1934 in an unnumbered edition of 300 23x21cm Following Chichester Technical and Art School, Gill moved to London in 1900 to train with the ecclesiastical architects W D Caroe. Finding architecture somewhat pedestrian he took stonemasonry lessons at Westminster Technical Institute and calligraphy lessons at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, coming under the influence of Edward Johnson, the designer of the London Underground's own typeface. In 1903 he ceased his attempts to become an architect, instead becoming a monumental mason, letter-cutter and calligrapher. Based in Ditchling, he began direct carving of stone figures, the semi-abstract figures taking their influence from mediaeval statuary, mixed with influences from Classical statuary from the Greeks and Romans, with a little post-Impressionism added in. With major commissions from Westminster Cathedral for its Stations of the Cross (1914), a series of War Memorials including the Grade II* memorial in Trumpington, and three of the sculptures for Charles Holden's 1928 headquarters of London Underground at 55 Broadway, St James's, and a series of sculptures for the new 1932 Broadcasting House. The list continues. Never one to rest on his laurels, he was at the same time engaged in typographical adventures. He had collaborated with Edward Johnson on the latter's initial thoughts on his London Transport typeface, but in 1925 designed Perpetua on his own, and Gill Sans between 1927-30. For the Golden Cockerel Press he created, in 1929, a bolder typeface to complement wood engravings. And of course Gill was publishing decorated...

Young Woman With Long Hair is an original hand drawn (not digitally or photo reproduced) limited edition lithograph by the artist Raphael Soyer - Russian/American Social Realism Painter, 1899-1987. Printed at JK Fine Art Editions Co. using traditional hand lithography techniques on archival Arches printmaking paper 100% acid-free rag. Young Woman With Long Hair is a sensitive, realistically drawn portrait of a dark brown haired young woman wearing a white short sleeved blouse...

Artist: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (German, 1884-1976) Title: "Weiblicher Kopf (Female Head)" Portfolio: Das Spiel Christa vom Schmerz der Schönheit des Weibes (The Play Christa from the Pain of the Beauty of the Woman) *Issued unsigned Year: 1918 Medium: Original Woodcut Engraving on wove paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer: Fritz Voigt, Berlin, Germany Publisher: Verlag Die Aktion, Berlin, Germany Reference: Schapire No. 224, page 46; Jentsch No. 35. Rifkind No. 2563; Lang No. 300; Reed No. 118 Overall size with attached page: 8.5" x 10.63" Sheet size: 8.5" x 5.38" Image size: 4.88" x 3.5" Condition: Toning to sheet (as normal). In very good condition Very rare Notes: Provenance: private collection - Oxnard, CA. Comes from a complete originally bound 48 page folio with 9 original woodcut engravings by Schmidt-Rottluff. Text by Alfred Brust. Presently attached to its accompanying page. The cover and title pages in pictures are not included, only for reference/provenance. There is an example of this work in the permanent collection of the Brücke Museum, Berlin, Germany. Biography: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (born December 1, 1884, Rottluff, near Chemnitz, Germany—died...

Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918), AUSTRIA “ART CANNOT BE MODERN, ART IS PRIMORDIALLY ETERNAL.” -SCHIELE Defiantly iconoclastic in life and art, Egon Schiele is esteemed for his masterful...

Screen print in colors on Essex Offset Kid Finish paper. Hand signed and numbered by Andy Warhol. Published by Dr. Frank Braun, Düsseldorf. Hand numbered AP 21/35. From the Artist Proof edition (outside the main edition of 250). Frame size approx 31 x 23 inches. The artwork is in excellent condition. Gallery Art issued COA included. All reasonable offers will be considered. Andy Warhol’s Saint Apollonia...

Signed and numbered from the edition of 10. Yuji Hiratsuka was born 1954 in Osaka, Japan. In 1985 he moved to the United States to pursue graduate degrees in printmaking at New Mexi...

Red Grooms’ “Ruckus Manhattan” in the mid-1970s humorously transformed Grand Central Terminal into a 3-D caricature of New York City. “I wanted to do a novelistic portrait of Manhatt...

Hockney, David. YVES MARIE. S.A.C. 159. Lithograph, 1974. Edition of 75, plus 24 proofs. Printed in New York by William Law, on Rives BFK paper and published by Petersburg Press. 30 ...

19.5" x 16" Unframed Limited Edition Letterpress on Deckled Edge Paper of 450 Edition number is 312/450 Hand Signed by Shepard Fairey 2021

"Judy Garland" Legendary Film and Recording Star. Gay Icon. 20th Century Litho Judy - All Star Variety - Garland. 15 1/2 x 12 inches Signed and numbered 19/150 in pencil, lower marg...

"Phantom of the Opera, Journey" Broadway Musica lAndrew Lloyd Webber Tony Awards Al Hirschfeld (American, 1903-2003). A signed and numbered limited edition lithograph on rag paper. "The Journey" a caricature depiction from "The Phantom of the Opera...

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) Ice Skating, from Grandpa and Me Suite Offset lithograph print, hand signed in pencil, numbered AP E 9/10 27 x 23 in. (sight), 34.75 x 30 in. (frame). ...

Original lithograph by Mexican artist Emilio Amero (1901-1976) created 1950. Titled: “Mujer Escuchando La Concha (Woman with Shell). Edition size is 15 of 125. Signed in pencil lower left. In excellent condition. Image size: 12 1/4"h x 9 3/4"w. Presents in a 4-ply museum mat measuring 20"h x 16"w. Born in the village of Ixtlahuaca, in the state of Mexico, Emilio Amero counts Spaniards and Otomi Indians among his ancestors. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Mexico City. In 1911 he began his studies in art at the Academy of San Carlos. He also studied drawing privately with Antonio Gomez, a family friend and well-known newspaper artist. At the academy in 1917, he became acquainted with Diaz de Leon, Rufino Tamayo, Ramon Alva de la Canal, Enrique Ugarte, and Leopoldo Mendez-all students there at the time. Later he joined the open air school in Coyoacan, founded and directed by Alfredo Ramos Martinez...

Greta Garbo Swedish American Movie Film Star Goddess Hollywood Mid 20th Century Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) Greta Garbo Plate Size: 13 7/8 x 9 3/4 Paper Size:...

"Jeune Fille" is an original sepia etching by Marie Laurencin. The artist's stamped signature is in the lower right. This piece features a delicate portrait of a young girl. 13" x 9 7/8' paper 9" x 5 1/2" image 20 7/8" x 17 3/8" frame Marie Laurencin (October 31, 1883 - June 8, 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres. She then returned to Paris and continued her art education at the Académie Humbert, where she changed her focus to oil painting. During the early years of the 20th century, Laurencin was an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde. A member of both the circle of Pablo Picasso, and Cubists associated with the Section d'Or, such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri le Fauconnier and Francis Picabia, exhibiting with them at the Salon des Indépendants (1910-1911) and the Salon d'Automne (1911-1912). Laurencin's works include paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. She is known as one of the few female Cubist painters, with Sonia Delaunay, Marie Vorobieff, and Franciska Clausen...

This lithograph titled Card Players 16/100, created by renowned artist Kenneth Miller Adams (1897-1966) around 1959, captures a lively interior scene of several male figures engrossed in a card game. The print is an exceptional example of Adams' figurative work, showcasing his skill in portraying dynamic social moments. The lithograph is presented in a sleek black frame with archival materials, and the outer dimensions of the framed piece are 25 ⅝ x 31 ¼ x 1 ⅛ inches. The image sight size is 18 ½ x 24 ¼ inches. This piece remains in excellent condition, clean, and well-preserved. Please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available—please reach out for a quote. About the Artist: Kenneth Miller Adams, born in Kansas in 1897, began his art career in Topeka in 1913, studying under artist G.M. Stone. He later continued his education at the Art Institute of Chicago before serving in World War I. After his service, Adams studied at the Art Students League in New York City and then traveled abroad to immerse himself in Italian and French art. In 1924, Adams returned to Kansas, where his friend Andrew Dasburg encouraged him to move to Taos, New Mexico. There, Adams became the youngest and final member of the Taos Society...

Jay Leno NBC Tonight Talk Show Host Emmy Award Time Magazine Cover Caricature Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003) Jay Leno Sight Size: 19 x 16 inches Etching with aquatint Signed lower righ...

Jean Cocteau White Book - Autobiography about Cocteau's discovery of his homosexuality. The book was first published anonymously and created a scandal. Original Handcolored Lithograp...

Artist: Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) Title: "Louise and Else Heyerdahl" *Signed by Munch in pencil lower right Year: 1920 Medium: Original Lithograph on heavy cream wove paper...

WOMAN WITH RAISED ARM Year: 2020 Medium: Archival pigment ink on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm fine art paper Size: 58 x 42 in (147 x 107 cm) Edition: 50 Price: $5,000 David Sa...

Jean Jansem - Original Etching Title: Loneliness Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition of 175 Paper: vélin de Rives 1974

Artist: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (German, 1884-1976) Title: "Männlicher Kopf von vorn, nach rechts gewandt (Male Head Facing Right)" Portfolio: Das Spiel Christa vom Schmerz der Schönhe...

Lithograph on vélin des papeteries Lafúma paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Le manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau, orné de dessins a la ...

Lithograph on vélin a la forme des papeteries d'Arches paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the volume, Repli, Gravures de Henri Matisse, 1947. Publ...

Customs - Persian palanquins is a lithograph on paper realized in 1862. Titled on the lower. The artwork belongs to the Suite Uses and customs of all the peoples of the universe : ...

"Marley was sometimes fiery, sometimes joyful, sometimes contemplative, but always visionary and poetic. I love this intimate, thoughtful moment Dennis captured and I’m honored to tr...

Artist: Henri Matisse Title: Dedicace Portfolio: Poesies Antillaises Medium: Lithograph Year: 1972 Edition: 250 Sheet Size: 14 7/8" x 11 1/8" Image...

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) " Pêcheur provençal " Signed , dated and inscribed Jean Cocteau . certified ( with original certificate 1962.) partially glazed white earthenware plate co...

Jean Jansem - Original Etching Title: Saint Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Edition of 175 Paper: vélin de Rives 1974 Jean Jansem was born in 1920 at Seuleuze in Asia Minor and spent his ear...

"L'Atelier Mourlot Title Page" is an original color lithograph by Pablo Picasso. It depicts a simplified smiling face in blue, red, yellow, and green with the text "Mourlot Workshop"...

Raoul Dufy - Church - Original Etching Dimensions: 13 x 10". Edition of 200 1940 Edition Les Bibliophiles du Palais, Paris Unsigned and unumbered as issued

Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Apollinaire 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, was a revelation).'' After her dismissal, Delectorskaya shot herself in the chest with a pistol, remarkably with only a slight effect. Soon after the artist and his wife were legally separated Delectorskaya was back. She arrived with a bouquet of white daisies and blue cornflowers from her Aunt’s garden on July 15th, St Henry’s Day. Their working collaboration was to last right up to Matisse’s death in 1954. Her will throughout was indomitable; she typed, kept records and meticulous accounts and paid the household bills. She also organized Matisse’s correspondence and coordinated his business affairs with an iron grip as well as being his studio assistant and muse. And when called upon, even scoured the countryside on her bike for provisions during the war. Matisse claimed that his entire household came to a standstill in her absence which, in the light of what Lydia accomplished is anything, if not an understatement. In the face of the family’s icy resentment, the Russian said of Matisse, “He knew how to take possession of people and make them feel they were indispensable. That was how it was for me, and that was how it had been for Mme. Matisse.” Life with Matisse must have been taxing but it had been Amélie’s chosen vocation, through years of their studio-centered homes. Her central role in the artist's life was security, which Shchukin’s patronage provided, along with a sizable house in Issy-les-Moulineaux, where the family moved in 1909. However, in this period Matisse was increasingly absent. In 1930, his travels took him to the United States, where he was thrilled by New York, and to Tahiti. Matisse found that Tahiti was "both superb and boring . . . There the weather is beautiful at sunrise and it does not change until night. Such immutable happiness is tiring." He dived off the reefs and never forgot the colors of the madrepores and the absinthe-green water; these appear in cut-outs like Polynesia, 1946, or The Bird and the Shark, 1947, as images of a spectacular and, on the whole, beneficent nature. In September of 1940 he employed a temporary stand-in for his regular night nurse...

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