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Art Subject: Photography
Pkropopoï (Hand-colored)
Located in Columbia, MO
Leonor Fini was born in Argentina in 1907 but travelled and lived in Europe with her mother from a young age. By 1931, she was in Paris, in the full swing of the Surrealist movement....
Category

20th Century Surrealist Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Ink, Etching

Maselinos Circeria Odissea - Lithograph by Tono Zancanaro - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Maselinos circeria odissea is a contemporary artwork realized in 20th century. Mixed colored lithograph. Includes frame. Hand signed and numbered on the lower margin. Edition of ...
Category

1970s Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Talleyrand - Etching by A. Ethiou - 1837
Located in Roma, IT
Talleyrand is an original Etching realized by A. Ethiou in 1837. Good conditions. The artwork is realized in a well-balanced composition. the artwork and belongs to the suite suite...
Category

1860s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Le Peintre Devant Le Village I (Mourlot 603)
Located in Aventura, FL
Le Peintre Devant Le Village I, 1969. Lithograph in colors on Arches paper. Hand signed lower right by Marc Chagall. Hand numbered 42/75 lower left. Mourlot 603. Published by Mae...
Category

1970s Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Paper, Lithograph

Consumed
Located in Philadelphia, PA
This archival illustrative photography pigment print on cotton rag by Andrew Pinkham measures 20in x 16in and is signed and numbered. This piece is part of a small edition of 10. ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Monica Litho (Good Witch)
Located in Columbia, MO
Benjamin Parks is a Kansas City based artist whose primary focus is painting large-scale portraits and figurative work, though he also produces illustrations, interactive installatio...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper, Lithograph, Monotype

Soult - Etching by Pierre François Tardieu - 1837
Located in Roma, IT
Soult is an Etching realized in 1837 by Pierre François Tardieu. Good conditions. The artwork is realized in a well-balanced composition. the artwork and belongs to the suite suite...
Category

1830s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Portrait of Piero Belli - Original Woodcut by A. Giuliani - Early 20th century
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of Piero Belli is an original woodcut print by Attilio Giuliani in the early 20th Century. Good conditions. The artwork is depicted through strong strokes in a well-balanc...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Framed Etching Print by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Located in Chesterfield, MI
Etching print by Jean Ingres Piece measures 28 in x 22 in x 1 Good condition
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Pair of Oriental Figures - Woodcut after Katsushika Hokusai - late 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Oriental figures is an original modern artwork realized after Katsushika Hokusai in the late 19th Century. Black and white woodcut print. Includes a gilded frame.
Category

Late 19th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Sadness - Etching by Albert Besnard - 1909
Located in Roma, IT
Sadness is an etching realized by Albert Besnard in 1909. Etching ex. 6/30. Slab dimension cm. 15 x 9,5. paper cm. 25 x 18. Pencil signature and date in the lower right part, date in the left part. Good conditions. Paul Albert Besnard (Parigi 1849 - 1934)born in Paris, was the son of an artist; his father, Louis Adolphe, was a painter and his mother, Louise Pauline Vaillant, was an esteemed miniaturist, a pupil of Lizinska de Mirbel. Besnard first studied drawing and painting with Jean-François Brémond and at 17 entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was taught by Alexandre Cabanel. In 1874 he won the Prix de Rome with the canvas "Death of Timofane, tyrant of Corinth", and during his stay at Villa Medici he had the opportunity to meet Franz Liszt and his pupil André Worsmer, whose portrait he painted in 1877. his stay in Italy and, in 1879he married the sculptor Charlotte Dubray, daughter of the sculptor Gabriel-Vital Dubray, with whom he moved to England for three years, until 1884, exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. At the Paris Salon of 1886 his "Portrait of Madame Roger Jourdain...
Category

Early 1900s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

French early 20th Century woodcut by Jean Emile Laboureur, golden hair mask
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
Jean Emile Laboureur (French, 1877-1943) Masque aux cheveux d'or (1912) Woodcut Signed `J E Laboureur’ (lower right) and stamped `The London Studio’ (l...
Category

20th Century Cubist Portrait Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Desperation - Original Etching by John Hall - 1810
Located in Roma, IT
Desperation is an original artwork realized by Thomas Holloway for Johann Caspar Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind", London, Bensley, 1810. This artwork portrays a historical woman...
Category

1810s Old Masters Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Sam Shaw THE JOY OF MARILYN 1986 Exhibition Poster Marilyn Monroe White Swimsuit
Located in Union City, NJ
THE JOY OF MARILYN is a fine art exhibition poster by the renowned American photographer and film producer, Sam Shaw produced in 1986 in conjunction with Sam Shaw's photography exhibition in New York City. THE JOY OF MARILYN was printed in black and white duotone using offset lithography techniques on white satin finish paper, fine quality poster, copyright text printed below image on lower right. THE JOY OF MARILYN photo...
Category

1980s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Maggie
Located in London, GB
Silkscreen, 2016, on Somerset wove, signed and numbered from the edition of 25, published by Shapero Modern, London, printed by K2 Screens, London, imag...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Young British Artists (YBA) Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

LIVING FOR KICKS 2 Risograph Print Handsigned and Numbered by Prefab77
Located in Palm Desert, CA
Living For Kicks 2, 2013 by Prefab77 3 Color Risograph Print on Paper 16 1/2 × 11 7/10 in 41.9 × 29.7 cm Edition of 300 Signed, Numbered (21/300), and Stamped by the artist The roo...
Category

2010s Street Art Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

Boy with Cherries - Etching by H. Berengier - after E. Manet- Early 20th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Boy with Cherries is a modern artwork realized after Edouard Manet by Henri Bérengier. Black and white etching. Signature on plate. Proof printing before the print run. 17 x 15 cm dimensiones plate.
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

Self Portrait - Lithograph by Giorgio De Chirico - 1954
Located in Roma, IT
Edition of 90 copies, numbered and hand signed. Published in the general catalogue "G. de Chirico: Catalogo dell'Opera Grafica 1921-1969", by Alfonso Ciranna, Edizone La Medusa, Roma...
Category

1950s Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Portrait of G. Heidegger - Original Etching by William Sharp - 1810
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of G. Heidegger is an original artwork realized by William Sharp (1749 - 1824). Original Etching from J.C. Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, De...
Category

1810s Old Masters Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Shepard Fairey Warhol Collage Screenprint Contemporary Street Art Silver Edition
Located in Draper, UT
Original Illustration based on photograph by Karen Bystedt. Signed by Shepard Fairey and Karen Bystedt. "I’ve been a fan of Andy Warhol’s art since high school. At first, his works’...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

Henry MacBeth Raeburn RA RE (1860-1947) - Mezzotint, General Hay MacDowall
Located in Corsham, GB
A charming mezzontint after the portrait by Henry MacBeth Raeburn depicting General Hay MacDowall. Hay MacDowall was a Scottish officer in the British Army who was the sixth General ...
Category

Early 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Mezzotint

Mountaineer - Original Lithograph after Paul Gavarni - 1881
Located in Roma, IT
Mountaineers is an original lithograph artwork on ivory-colored paper, realized by the French draftsman Paul Gavarni (after) (alias Guillaume Sulpice Chevalier Gavarni, 1804-1866) in...
Category

1880s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Paper, Lithograph

Giuseppe Garibaldi - Lithograph - Late 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Portrait of Garibaldi is an original Modern Artwork realized in the Second Half of the 19th Century by an Anonymous artist. Lithograph on paper. Browing of paper due to the time a...
Category

Mid-19th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Alex Katz 'Olivia 1'
Located in New York, NY
"Olivia 1" by Alex Katz (2025) is a striking multicolored screen print on Museum quality fine art paper, signed and numbered in a limited edition of 50, showcasing Katz's iconic styl...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

Overture 2 BY CLARE GROSSMAN, Limited Edition Figurative Nude Print, Affordable
Located in Deddington, GB
Clare Grossman Overture 2 Limited edition of 70. A solar plate etching on Somerset 300gsm paper. Image Size: H 12.5 x W 17.5cm Sold Unframed Please note that insitu images are purely...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Feminist Nude Prints

Materials

Paper, Etching

Tim Southall, Lili Marlene, Limited Edition Screen print, Celebrity Art
Located in Deddington, GB
Tim Southall Lili Marlene Limited Edition Screen print Edition of 50 Size: H 40cm x W 30cm Sold Unframed (Please note that in situ images are purely an indication of how a piece may ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Screen

Late 19th century color lithograph art nouveau ornate bookplate female subject
Located in Milwaukee, WI
In 1897, Alphonse Mucha created illustrations for "Ilsee, Princesse de Tripoli." This double-sided print is a rare proof of an original color lithograph before any text from the story was added. This is a special edition print from edition 252 and is 12/35 on Chinese paper. 4.25" x 5.0625" image 20.75" x 17.5" frame Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in what is now the Czech Republic. His career began in decorative painting for theater scenery...
Category

1890s Art Nouveau Prints and Multiples

Materials

Lithograph

Pierre-Auguste Renoir "La danse à la campagne
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) "La danse à la campagne" Conceived 1883 Soft ground Etching on paper Image: 8-5/8 x 5-1/4 inches (21.9 x 13.3 cm) (plate) Sheet size : 1...
Category

Late 18th Century Impressionist Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Etching

The Surgeon’s Photograph by Mychael Barratt, limited edition woodcut print
Located in Deddington, GB
The Surgeon’s Photograph by Mychael Barratt [2022] limited_edition and hand signed by the artist Woodcut Print on Paper Edition number of 50 Image size: H:50 cm x W:49 cm Complete S...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Prints

Materials

Paper, Woodcut

Bob Marley, Happy Birthday, Mr. Brainwash, Limited Edition, Large Format
Located in Draper, UT
Mr. Brainwash Bob Marley’s 74th Birthday Limited Edition Screen Print with Watercolor from 2019. Iconic, beloved artist, Bob Marley is a pioneer and legend of Reggae music. "One Lov...
Category

2010s Street Art Portrait Prints

Materials

Spray Paint, Watercolor, Archival Paper, Stencil

(Title Unknown) Man-Limited Edition Print, Signed by the Artist
Located in Chesterfield, MI
Limited Edition Lithograph (available is multiple editions and AP-Artist Proof). Pencil-signed, numbered and dated by the artist. Good/Fair Condition.
Category

1970s Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

S. LOEB (SOLOMON LOEB)
Located in Portland, ME
Zorn, Anders. S. LOEB (SOLOMON LOEB). H&H76, Asplund 115, Delteil 113. Etching, 1897. Unsigned (signed in the plate). Apparently the 2d or 4th State of 4. All of the states are descr...
Category

Late 19th Century Realist Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Melville, by Jos Sances
Located in Palm Springs, CA
Screen print portraying Herman Melville, based on Asa Twitchell’s portrait. Behind Melville rises the Bay of Naples, echoing the author’s travels, while below, a dramatic whaling sce...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Screen

BY THE SEA
Located in Aventura, FL
Giclee on canvas. Hand signed and numbered on front by the artist. Canvas image size 40 x 30 in. Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity included. Edition of ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Portrait Prints

Materials

Canvas, Giclée

BY THE SEA
$1,256 Sale Price
30% Off
Jewish Student
Located in Surfside, FL
Maybe her name doesn’t ring a bell. Like everyone else who ever went into the old Mooresville Post Office at 305 N. Main St., across the street from the bank, I would look at the large mural over the door to the postmaster’s office — now the school district superintendent’s office — read the name of the artist, and wonder who she was. Alicia Wiencek (April 23, 1918- Feb. 17, 1961) has remained something of an enigma, at least locally. I set about finding more regarding the artist. The first clue I found about her came from a small, 1937 article in the old Mooresville Enterprise: “Miss Alicia Wiencek of New York City will paint the mural for the local [post office] building. She was in the city several days last week, looking over the various industries and talking with a number of ‘old–timers’ about Mooresville’s early history and present trend of development. She visited a number of places of business, the cotton gins and the mills, seeming to be impressed with the importance of the cotton industry, so that it is believed cotton will at least have its share of the subject matter of the decoration. “The mural will cover the space above the entrance to the postmaster’s office, a space of about 8 by 4 feet. It is not known whether Miss Wiencek will do the work here, or whether she will bring it with her completed, upon her return.” Fine, but what happened to her after she did the mural in Mooresville? What other works did she complete? Where might one go to view them? How long did Miss Wiencek stay in the Mooresville area, absorbing local color and sights? Alicia was born in Chicopee, Mass., and was apparently of Polish descent. She studied at the Art Students League in New York City. One of her instructors there was Ernest Feine (1894-1965), a naturalized citizen of German birth who was both a painter and a printmaker. He was also known for his fine murals and frescoes. Ernest, with Alicia as his assistant, worked on two murals, one for the post office in Canton, Mass., and one in Washington, D.C., in the Department of the Interior Building. The two must have worked well together, for Feine divorced his first wife and married Alicia on Aug. 13, 1945, in Connecticut. Of the two artists, Ernest is the more famous. But back to Mooresville. The official title of her oil-on-canvas work in Mooresville is “The Cotton Industry in North Carolina.” It is interesting to note that the post office building was completed and in use by August 1937, several months before Alicia received the government contract for the mural. Her work was part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, a Works Progress Administration project to put artists and writers to work during the Great Depression. The old Mooresville Post Office Building is one of several in the same style in North Carolina built according to the town’s population. The old post offices in Beaufort, Laurinburg, Marion, Siler City, Wake Forest...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Murat - Etching by Emile Giroua - 1837
Located in Roma, IT
Murat is an original Etching realized by Emile Giroua in 1837. Good conditions. The artwork is realized in a well-balanced composition. the artwork and belongs to the suite suite "...
Category

1830s Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Etching

After Pontormo's "Two Men With a Passage" from Cicero's "On Friendship"
Located in Saint Louis, MO
Kehinde Wiley After Pontormo's "Two Men With a Passage" from Cicero's "On Friendship", 2009 Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle fine art paper Framed Dimensions: 38 3/8 x 32 7/8 inch...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Archival Paper, Inkjet

THEN FOR THREE MINUTES, OR MAYBE FOUR
Located in Aventura, FL
Hand signed and numbered by the artist. Image size approx 17.25 x 13.25 inches. Frame size approx 30 x 26 inches. From the edition of 200. Artwork is in excellent condition. Cert...
Category

1970s American Impressionist Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Lithograph

"Teeny" lithograph by Henri Matissse
Located in Hinsdale, IL
HENRI MATISSE (1869 – 1954) Teeny Duthuit-Garnaud 723 Linocut, c. 1938 From an edition of 1500 Image Size: 12.2” x 9.5” Published in The Homage to Henri Matisse Published by Galerie d’Art Contemporain de Paris Matisse's striking linocut shows Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp, the second wife of artist and pioneer of the ready-made, Marcel Duchamp. She was married to Pierre Matisse, Henri Matisse's eldest son, first and they had three children, Jacqueline, Paul and Peter. They separated in 1949 but Matisse was incredibly fond of his daughter-in-law until his death in 1954. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) is primarily known as the founder of the Fauvist movement, a result of Impressionism, whose works fundamentally altered the course of Modern Art in the late 20th Century. Innovative in his original treatment of the human figure and an expressive use of color, Matisse forged his own pictorial language. Matisse's career can be divided into several stylistic periods, but he remained focused on discovering “the essential character of things” through his art. Matisse considered his drawing to be a very intimate means of expression. The method of artistic execution — whether it was charcoal, pencil, crayon, etcher’s burin, lithographic tusche or paper cut — varied according to the subject and personal circumstance. His favorite subjects were evocative or erotic — the female form, the nude figure or a beautiful head of a favorite model. Matisse’s etchings...
Category

1930s Fauvist Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph, Linocut

Double Portrait (1906)-Offset Lithograph, edition of 1000, with COA
Located in Chesterfield, MI
PAUL CÉZANNE (French, 1839-1906). Offset Lithograph, edition of 1000. Measures 19.5 x 23.5 inches Framed. The image is in Excellent Condition. The frame, mat and casing show signs of...
Category

Early 1900s Portrait Prints

Materials

Offset

Araf Omne Vivium
Located in San Francisco, CA
Arturo Rivera Araf Omne Vivium Serigraph 36.61 x 22.44 in Edition 5 of 100 Serigraph by Mexican artist Arturo Rivera. Edition 5 of 100. Certificate of authenticity included. This pr...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Screen

Jeune Fille A La Voilette-Poster. Printed in France.
Located in Chesterfield, MI
Poster. Measures 23.75 x 18 inches and is Unframed. Good Condition.
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Alan Litho (Shaman)
Located in Columbia, MO
Benjamin Parks is a Kansas City based artist whose primary focus is painting large-scale portraits and figurative work, though he also produces illustrations, interactive installatio...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper, Lithograph, Monotype

Becquet
Located in Storrs, CT
J. Becquet, Sculptor (The Fiddler). 1859. Drypoint. Kennedy 52 state iv; Glasgow 62. state i. 10 1/8 x 7 1/2 (sheet 15 5/16 x 9 3/4). Series: "Sixteen Etchings or Scenes on the Thame...
Category

Mid-19th Century American Impressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Drypoint, Etching

18th C. Portrait of Edward Stanley from Henry VIII's Court after Holbein Drawing
Located in Alamo, CA
This is an 18th century engraved portrait of "Edward Stanley" created by Francesco Bartolozzi (1728–1815), after a drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497- 1543) in the 16th century. Holbein was the official artist in the court of King Henry VIII. Bartolozzi used both etching and stipple engraving techniques to create the work which was published by John Chamberlaine in London in 1793 in "The Book of Imitations of Original Drawings by Hans Holbein in the Collection of His Majesty". Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby...
Category

Late 18th Century Old Masters Portrait Prints

Materials

Engraving, Etching

Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Apollinaire
Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
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...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Prints

Materials

Linocut

Linder - Soul Meets Soul on Lovers' Lips (2nd Edition)
Located in London, GB
Linder Soul Meets Soul on Lovers' Lips, 2025 Giclee print on 310gsm Hahnemühle PhotoRag Bright White archival pure cotton paper Edition of 75 hand-signed and numbered by the artist c...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Giclée

The Last Sitting: Marilyn With Pearls (hand signed C-Print)
Located in Aventura, FL
C-print on paper. Hand signed lower front, hand signed and dated on verso by Bert Stern. Hand numbered 12/72 on verso. Artwork size: 11.75 x 13.875 inches. Frame size: approx. 18...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print, Paper

'Portrait of James Caulfield' by William Hogarth, Etching
Located in Oklahoma City, OK
This 21" x 18" etching was produced by William Hogarth in the mid-18th century. The work has been newly matted and framed with archival materials. The subject, identified as James Caulfield, 4th Viscount, 1st Earl of Charlemont (1728-1799), became commander in chief of the Irish Volunteers...
Category

1780s Realist Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching

Old Master Print Heads of Two Apostles after Raphael
Located in Rochester, NY
Early 19th century print on laid paper. Two apostles after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino). Good color. Some subtle wrinkles to the paper. Framed. 
Category

Early 19th Century Old Masters Figurative Prints

Materials

Paper

"Townwoman Dressed For Housework" from "Costumes of Morocco", Gouache on Paper
Located in Detroit, MI
"Citadine en Tenue de Ménagère" translated to "Townwoman Dressed For Housework" is plate number 9 in Jean Besancenot's stunning portraits and depictions of the people of Morocco from...
Category

1940s Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Holbein Hand-colored Portrait of Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury for Henry VIII
By (After) Hans Holbein The Younger
Located in Alamo, CA
This framed hand colored stipple engraving and etching portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry VII and his son King Henry VIII was created by Francesco Bartolozzi (1728–1815) after a drawing and a painting by Hans Holbein (1497-1543), who was Henry VIII's court painter. The print was published in London by John Chamberlaine in 1795. The print was created utilizing stipple engraving and etching techniques by the Italian artist Francesco Bartolozzi, who was employed as the royal engraver by King George III of England. The publisher, John Chamberlaine, was Keeper of the King's Drawings and Medals. The inscription beneath the portrait reads" "In His Majesty's Collection", "Engraved by F. Bartolozzi R A Historical Engraver to His Majesty'' in the lower right, and ''From an original drawing by Hans Holbien'' in the lower left. The original painting by Holbein is displayed at Lambeth Castle and the original drawing is in the art collection at Windsor Castle. The engraving is held by many museums, including: The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Portrait Gallery, The Chicago Art Institute and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. This portrait depicts Archbishop William Warham facing to his right, wearing a black cap covering his ears and fur trimmed clerical robes. The print is presented in a decorative gold-colored wood frame with a blue-grey fabric mat. The frame measures 26.5" x 20.13" x 1". The print is in excellent condition. William Warham (1450-1532) was the last of the pre-Reformation archbishops of Canterbury, serving under King Henry VII and then under King Henry VIII. He was a quiet, unassuming intellectual whose career ended with a strong and brave stance against the divorce of King Henry VIII and the king's resultant withdrawal of England from the Catholic church and his draconian actions against the clergy. As Lord Chancellor...
Category

Late 18th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Engraving, Etching

Portrait of a girl writing on a slate.
Located in Middletown, NY
Etching with extensive hand coloring in watercolor on white wove paper, 13 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches (347 x 271 mm); sheet 24 x 17 inches (608 x 430 mm), full margins. In good condition wi...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Watercolor, Etching

TOM SAWYER LEMME SEE HIM, HUCK. MY, HE'S PRETTY STIFF
Located in Aventura, FL
Collotype in colors on paper. Unsigned. Title and copyright info in typeset lower margin. Artwork is in excellent condition. All reasonable offers will be considered.
Category

1970s American Impressionist Portrait Prints

Materials

Paper

Russell Young, Jimi Hendrix Mug Shot, acrylic screen on canvas
Located in Chatsworth, CA
This piece is an original acrylic screen print on canvas created by Russell Young in 2007. Russell Young is a British Pop artist known for his large-scale silkscreen paintings of cu...
Category

Early 2000s Pop Art Portrait Prints

Materials

Canvas

"Debbie Harry, Max's Kansas City, 1976"
Located in North Adams, MA
Silkscreen and diamond dust on canvas Dimensions: 22" x 30" An edition of 25 Signed and numbered by the Artist Bob Gruen is one of the most well-known and respected photographers in Rock and Roll. By the mid 1970's he was already regarded as one of the foremost documenters of the scene working with major artists such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Kiss and others, also covering the emerging New Wave and Punk bands including The New York...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Prints

Materials

Canvas, Screen

Painted Man, American Realist Lithograph by Joseph Hirsch
Located in Long Island City, NY
Joseph Hirsch, American (1901 - 1981) - Painted Man, Year: 1963, Medium: Lithograph, signed in pencil, Edition: 250, Image Size: 9.25 x 9 inches, Size: 14 x 13 in. (35.56 x 33.0...
Category

1960s American Realist Portrait Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Marilyn with Red Roses
Located in New York, NY
An iconic photograph taken by the photographer in 1962 and printed from the original negative as a digital pigment print in 2011, Bert Stern's Marilyn with Red Roses is twice hand-si...
Category

20th Century Portrait Prints

Materials

Digital Pigment

Nancy outside in july XXII (Ten Layers of Grey) - Original handsigned etching
Located in Paris, IDF
Jim DINE (1935) Nancy outside in july XXII (Ten Layers of Grey), 1981 Original etching with aquatint (Crommelynck workshop) Signed in pencil Numbered 18 / 28 On BFK Rives vellum 91 ...
Category

1980s American Modern Portrait Prints

Materials

Etching, Aquatint

FLEURS DEVANT LA FENETRE (MOURLOT 478)
Located in Aventura, FL
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper. Hand signed and numbered by Marc Chagall. Mourlot 478. Edition 5/50 (there were also 25 artist’s proofs numbered in Roman numerals). Image size 17.75 x 16.5 inches. Sheet size 26.25 x 21 inches. Frame size approx 33 x 28 inches. Artwork is in excellent condition. All reasonable offers will be considered. About the Artist: Marc Chagall (French/Russian, 1887–1985) was an artist whose work anticipated the dream-like imagery of Surrealism. Over the course of his career, Chagall developed the poetic, amorphous, and deeply personal visual language evident in paintings like I and the Village...
Category

1960s Surrealist Figurative Prints

Materials

Paper, Etching

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