Still-life Prints

Signed, dated and titled. Initialed and dated lower right, each numbered 8/20, lower left. 9 x 6 image size, 22 x 15 in. sheet size. With the blindstamp of the Tamarind Institute pri...

Andre Minaux, French (1923–1986) Date: circa 1975 Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of EA Image Size: 22.5 x 16.5 inches Frame Size: 34 x 27 in...

Artist: Lowell Nesbitt (1933-1993) Title: Grapes on Navajo Rug Year: 1977 Edition: 145/175, plus proofs. Medium: Lithograph on Arches paper Size: 24 x 31 inches Condition: Good Inscription: Signed and numbered by the artist. LOWELL NESBITT (1933-1993) One of the most celebrated and most noted for his floral works of art. An artist with a highly personal style, Nesbitt made realistic studies of many themes throughout his career. His most well known series, and perhaps his most beautiful and poetic, are the more than four hundred works he created using the flower as theme. Since his first show in 1957, Nesbitt has had more than eighty one man shows. His painting, drawings and prints...

This artwork titled "Pomegranates" c.1970 is an original color aquatint on Japan paper by noted Indian artist Kaiko Moti, 1921-1989. It is hand signed and numbered XXII/LXXV in White pencil by the artist. The Size is 22 x 29.25 inches. Printed to the edge. It is in excellent condition, some hanging tape remaining on the back from a previous framing. About the artist: Born (Kaikobad Motiwalla) in Bombay, India on December 15, 1921, Moti was first educated at the Bombay School of Fine Arts but his talent led him onwards to study at the University College in London (on scholarship) and at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London, where he received a Master's degree in Painting and Sculpture. While still in London he studied under MacWilliam and Reginald Butler. Eventually moving to Paris in 1950, Moti attended the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere, Atelier Zadkine, to pursue his love of sculpture but lack of space soon compelled him to turn his attention to working on copper plates and he studied engraving with William Stanley Hayter...

Le masque à gaz, 1971, edition of 300. Signed "Arman" in pencil l.r., numbered in pencil l.l. Lithograph in purple and gold on paper, image size 25 3/8 x 19 3/8 in. (64.3 x 49.0 cm),...

Afternoon Delight Wicker front porch chair and furniture. Framed 19 X 23 image is 13 x 17. Lloyd van Pitterson was born in Jamaica, West Indies. H...

This photo-lithographic poster was printed at the Atelier Mourlot in Paris in 1982 with the permission of the Matisse estate to promote the works by Henri Matisse at the Galerie Dina...

Robert Kipness was an American painter and printmaker who’s work focused on forms and a pronounced moodiness. This print is signed, numbered, dated, and...

STILL LIFE WITH GRAPES is an original hand drawn, limited edition lithograph by the American artist Lowell Nesbitt (b.1933-1993). Printed on archival Arches paper, 100% acid free using hand lithography techniques. STILL LIFE WITH GRAPES is a modern fruit still life depicting two bunches of plump green and red grapes, and green pear displayed on an Southwest style geometric Aztec patterned textile as a background. STILL LIFE WITH GRAPES is an eye-appealing composition using vivid colors including warm red, black, gray, yellow gold, light green, purple, burgundy and white. Print size - 21.5 x 28.25 inches, unframed, excellent condition, very fine impression, pencil signed by Lowell Nesbitt Edition size - 175, plus proofs Year published - 1978 Lowell Blair Nesbitt (October 4, 1933 - July 8, 1993) was an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. He studied at Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Nesbitt worked in abstraction until Robert Indiana suggested in the early 1960s that he explore realism in his paintings. As subjects for his work he favored studio interiors, articles of clothing, piles of shoes, his Rottweiler, the Neo-Classical facades of 19th century cast iron buildings, and Manhattan's bridges. He was also famous for his enormous paintings and prints of roses, lilies, irises, and other flowers. He served as the official artist for the NASA Apollo 9, and Apollo 13 space missions; in 1976 the United States Navy commissioned him to paint a mural in the administration building on Treasure Island spanning 26 feet x 251 feet, then the largest mural in the United States; and in 1980 the United States Postal Service honored Lowell Nesbitt by issuing four postage stamps depicting his paintings. His first solo exhibition was mounted at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1958 and during his lifetime he had more than 130 solo exhibitions of his work at various galleries, museums, and universities, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Kent State University, the McNay Art Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Burpee Art Museum, and the Tyler Gallery...

Signed lower right, 'Lavernia' for Angelina Lavernia (Spanish, b. 1925) with number and limitation, '5/375', inscribed lower left; blind stamped 'CG' for Collector's Guild lower left...

Artist: Kathryn Hadley – American Title: Emerging Pomegranates Year: 1998 Medium: Monoprint Sight size: 15 x 15 inches. Framed size: 33 x 29.75 inches Signature: Signed, dated lower right Condition: Very good Frame: Framed in original frame. Frame in fair to good condition This monoprint is by Kathryn Hadley, a California contemporary artist...

Georges Braque (after) Title: Grenade et Pipe from the Espace Portfolio Year: 1957 Year of Original: 1932 Medium: Pochoir (pigment print) on Richard de Bas, signed in the plate Edit...

JAPANESE AZALEAS is an original hand drawn lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Arches paper 100% acid free. JAPANESE AZALEAS portrays a botanical waterco...

La Bouteille is an original lithograph after a graphic work first realized by Georges Braque in 1911. Good conditions. Includes passepartout: 47 x 37 cm This print is from the port...

Papiers Collés is a mixed lithograph realized by George Braque in 1963 for the Art Magazine "Derrière Le Miroir" no. 138. Printed by Ateliers de Maeght, Paris, 1963. Good condition...

This beautiful early 20th-century aquatint is after an 18th-century engraving by Richard Earlom (1743-1822) of a work by the Dutch master, Jan Van Huysum (1682-1749). In the late 18...

Photorealist flower screenprint by American artist Lowell Blair Nesbitt, signed and numbered in pencil. Pink Camellia from the Stamps Series Lowell Blair Nesbitt, American (1933–199...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Le Sacre du Printemps MEDIUM: Lithograph on Japon Paper SIGNED: Hand Signed EDITION NUMBER: EA MEASUREMENTS: 22.25" x 30" YEAR: 1966 FRAMED: No ...

Artist: Hunt Slonem, American (1951 - ) Title: Three Deer Year: 1980 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: AP 30 Image Size: 24 x 32 inches Size: 26 in. ...

'14. Amanita vaginata var. fulva 14. Amanita vaginata var. plumbea' Antique French mushroom / fungi chromolithograph. From "Atlas des champignons de France, Suisse et Belgique," an...

'54. Hygrophorus chrysodon 55. Hygrophorus cossus 56. Hygrophorus hypothejus 57. Hygrophorus conicus' Antique French mushroom / fungi chromolithograph. From "Atlas des champignons ...

Artist: Hunt Slonem, American (1951 - ) Title: Shell Ginger Year: Circa 1980 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 175, AP 30 Ima...

Lowell Blair Nesbitt was an American painter and printmaker who’s work consists of unique and vivid depictions of flowers. Birds of Paradise (Brown) Lowell Blair Nesbitt, American (...

Abstract Flowers is an original modern artwork realized in the1970s by Franco Gentilini. Mixed colored lithograph Hand signed and dated on the lower margin. Edition of 35/100 Inc...

Artist: Lowell Nesbitt, American (1933 - 1993) Title: Red Poppies Year: 1979 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 175 Image Size: 37.5 x 29.5 inches Paper Size...

Screenprint in colors on Lenox Museum Board Frame: 43.5 x 32.5 in. Edition of 2000 (plus 200 APs) Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York Published by Committee 2000, Munich, Germany...

Still Life is an Original Lithograph on ivory-colored paper realized by Luc Albert Moreau. The artwork is in good condition. Hand-signed on the lower. Luc-Albert Moreau (1882-1948...

By Raoul Dufy 34.5" x 34.5" Silk Screen Print on wearable scarf

Still Life is an original artwork realized by Josè Guevara in the late 20th Century. Colored lithograph on paper. Edited by Fondazione Di Paolo. Hand-signed in pencil on the lower...

Sepia Aquatint. Edition 15/25 slice of watermelon on a table

From the Stoneman collection Arturo DI Stefano has shown work in many galleries worldwide including: *Purdy Hicks Gallery London 1998-99, *Eastbourne Clark Gallery, Florida 1991, ...

HALLELUJAH TO PEACE by the Israeli artist Moshe Castel (1909-1991) is a limited edition lithograph printed in 12 colors using traditional hand lithography techniques on archival Somerset paper 100% acid free. In HALLELUJAH TO PEACE, a three dimensional relief 3D effect is visible in the black writings and textural stone tablet achieved by using shades of dark blue gray and black with a bold cool red background accenting the stone tablet sacred writings. Castel creates a very aesthetically appealing and captivating contemporary interpretation of ancient Jewish symbolism. Print size - 21.75 x 29.5 inches, unframed, excellent condition, pencil signed by Moshe Castel Edition size - 150, plus proofs Year published - 1980 Printer - J K Fine Art Editions Co., NY Moshe Elazar Castel born in Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, in 1909, to Rabbi Yehuda Castel and his wife Rachel. The family was descended from Spanish Jews from Castile who immigrated to the Holy Land after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Castel attended his father’s school until the age of 13. He went on to study at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem, where he was encouraged by his teacher to study in Paris furthering his art education at the Academie Julian and Ecole de Louvre in Paris. He was greatly influenced by European masters Rembrandt, Velasquez, Delacroix and Courbert after spending his days copying their works hanging in the Louvre. Castel returned to Palestine at the onset of WWII. The subject of Castel’s early paintings were scenes of Sephardic Jews in the Holy Land. In 1947, Castel helped to found the "New Horizons" (Ofakim Hadashim) group together with Yosef Zaritsky, Yehezkel Streichman...

Homage to Jean Cocteau is a beautiful brown-ink lithograph on paper, realized in 1987 by the Italian artist Giancarlo Limoni . Hand-signed , dated, and titled "Omaggio a Cocteau/Limoni 87 " with a brown pencil on the lower margin. Edition 138 of 150 prints. This contemporary artwork representing an abstract composition is in excellent conditions. Giancarlo Limoni was born in Rome in 1947, where he lives and works. In 1975, he opened his first personal exhibition at the "Galleria della Trinità" in Rome. In 1983-84, he briefly studied at the Pastificio Cerere, where Fabio Sargentini...

Lithograph on Saunders Waterford, St Cuthberts Mill paper. Paper size: 22 x 30 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and numbered, 111/200, as issued. Notes: Published and printed in an e...

Image dimensions: 16.7 x 10.7 cm. This is an original etching realized by Luigi Bartolini in 1934. Hand signed in pencil on the lower right and titled on the lower left. Very good ...

Original poster designed by Pierre Mendell (1929 – 2008) & Klaus Oberer (*1937) promoting an exhibition 1988 at Die Neue Sammlung in Munich on "Italian ...

Image dimensions: 20.6 x 31 cm. Composition is a superb original offset print, reproducing the original watercolor by Giorgio Morandi. Signature by the artist is perfectly reproduc...

Richard Hricko has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and juried competitions, including the National Academy Museum in New York, Glynn Vivian Art Museum in Wales, and G...

"Sum of the Parts" - Abstract Etching in Ink on Paper (#3/20) Dark abstract print by Doris Ann Warner (American, 1925-2010). This piece is dark and saturated, with three rows of three similarly shaped objects. They are somewhat rectangular, but with rounded corners, like stacked rocks...

Lowell Blair Nesbitt was an American painter and printmaker who’s work consists of unique and vivid depictions of flowers. Tulips 2 Lowell Blair Nesbitt, American (1933–1993) Date: ...

Paul Sarkisian (1928-) 1971 Green Satchel Lithograph Silkscreen Print on calendred BFK Rives fine art paper. small edition of 12 from Tamarind print workshop with their blindstamp. H...

Rittersporn und Fingerhut (Larkspur and Foxglove) Color woodcut, printed on wove paper with mica flecks, 1916 Signed lower right (see photo) Inscribed lower left (see photo) Reference: Merx 276 Condition: good-very good One spot of staining on the far left edge of the composition (see photo) Color very fresh and vibrant Full sheet as issued Image size: 19 x 13 3/8 inches Carl Thiemann...

Untitled (Poem Flowers) Lowell Blair Nesbitt, American (1933–1993) Date: 1974 Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 29/100 Size: 23.5 x 33.5 in. (59.69 x 85.09 cm)

Lithograph on Saunders Waterford, St Cuthberts Mill paper. Paper size: 21.75 x 29.5 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and numbered, 145/200, as issued. Notes: Published by Atelier Dum...

Abstracted drypoint etching by Tomoya Uchida (Japanese, 20th Century). Two cottonballs on the stalk sit in a minimalist space. Titled "II Cottonballs" along the bottom edge. Signed and dated "T. Uchida - 89" in the lower right corner. Presented in a new light grey mat with foamcore backing. Tomoya Uchida (Japanese, b. 1947) was born in Tsuyama City in the Okayama prefecture in Japan. He graduated from Doshisha University, Kyoto, in 1970, and went on to become the artist-in-residence at the KALA Institute of Prints in Berkeley, CA, in 1989. He then moved to Australia, where he studied under Prof. Jorg Schmeisser...

Hand signed and numbered. Edition of 125 prints. Ref.: Catalogue D.Vallier pag.284 Passepartout included : 69 x 49 cm Very good conditions. Georges Braque (Argenteuil, 1882 – Paris...

Homage to Jean Cocteau is a beautiful brown-ink lithograph on paper, realized in 1987 by the Italian artist Giancarlo Limoni. Hand-signed, dated, and titled "Omaggio a Cocteau/Limon...

Complete Set of 6 Guggenheim Museum Retrospective Limited Edition Robert Rauschenberg porcelain plates dated 1997. Each plate features a different screen-printed image of Rauschenber...

Delightfully detailed starfish at the shore by unknown artist J. Brown (20th Century). A starfish sits atop a rock at the edge of the water. The scene is rendered with great detail, ...

Photorealist flower screenprint by American artist Lowell Blair Nesbitt, signed and numbered in pencil. Tiger Lily Lowell Blair Nesbitt, American (1933–1993) Date: 1978 Screenprint,...

Relish by Ralph Goings, American (1928–2016) Date: circa 1990 Screenprint, Signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 195,AP 55 Size: 25 in. x 38 in. (63.5 cm x 96.52 cm)

“Margaritas” is a lithograph created by Emilio Sanchez in 1997. This impression is signed, titled, and inscribed "12/50" - the 12 print from an edition of 50 impressions. The printed image size is 12.50 x 14.25 inches (31.3 x 35.7 cm) and the paper size is 18 x 20.13 inches - all four paper edges are decked adding a nice option when framed. This print came to us directly from the Emilio Sanchez Estate (circular estate stamp is on verso). Stamped on verso "Estate of Emilio Sanchez." “Best known for his architectural paintings and lithographs, Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) explored the effects of light and shadow to emphasize the abstract geometry of his subjects. His artwork encompasses his Cuban heritage...

Together with "Les Musiciennes" one of the largest and most sought after lithographs by Le Corbusier – a purist still-life –, printed by Mourlot on Arches after a collage by LC. Pr...

Screenprint in colours, 1969, on wove paper, signed in ball-point pen and numbered with a rubber stamp, verso, 91 from the edition of 250 (there were also 26 artist's proofs lettered...

after Henri Matisse - Acrobat Edition of 200 with the printed signature, as issued 80 x 60 cm Posthumous edition after the original paper cut-out with stamp of the Succession Matisse References : Artvalue - Succession Matisse MATISSE'S BIOGRAPHY YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born in a tiny, tumbledown weaver's cottage on the rue du Chêne Arnaud in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis at eight o'clock in the evening on the last night of the year, 31 December 1869 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis is in the extreme north of France near the Belgian border). The house had two rooms, a beaten earth floor and a leaky roof. Matisse said long afterwards that rain fell through a hole above the bed in which he was born. Matisse’s ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the convulsive social and industrial upheavals of the nineteenth century. Matisse grew up in a world that was still detaching itself from a way of life in some ways unchanged since Roman times. The coming of the railway had put Bohain on the industrial map, but people still traveled everywhere on foot or horseback. Matisse’s father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. Warmhearted, outgoing, capable and energetic, she was small and sturdily built with the fashionable figure of the period: full breasts and hips, narrow waist, neat ankles and elegant small feet. She had fair skin, broad cheekbones and a wide smile. "My mother had a face with generous features," said her son Henri, who always spoke of her with particular tenderness of the sensitivity. Throughout the forty years of her marriage, she provided unwavering, rocklike support to her husband and her sons. Matisse later said: "My mother loved everything I did." He grew up in nearby Bohain-en-Vermandois, an industrial textile center, until the age of ten, when his father sent him to St. Quentin for lycée. Anna Heloise worked hard. She ran the section of her husband's shop that sold housepaints, making up the customers' orders and advising on color schemes. The colors evidently left a lasting impression on Henri. The artist himself later said he got his color sense from his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Henri was the couple’s first son. The young Matisse was an awkward youth who seemed ill-adapted to the rigors of the North; in particular, he hated the gelid winters. He was a pensive child and by his own account he was a dreamy, frail and not outstandingly bright. In later life he never lost his feeling for his native soil, for seeds and growing things he had encountered in his youth. The fancy pigeons he kept in Nice more than half a century after he left home recalled the weavers' pigeon-lofts tucked away behind even the humblest house in Bohain. Matisse's childhood memories were of a stern upbringing. "Be quick!" "Look out!" "Run along!" "Get cracking!" were the refrains that rang in his ears as a boy. In later years when survival itself depended on habits of thrift and self-denial, the artist prided himself on being a man of the North. When Matisse in turn had children of his own to bring up, he chided himself for any lapse in discipline or open display of tenderness as weakness on his part. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. Although he considered law as tedious, he nonetheless passed the bar in 1888 with distinction and began his practice begrudgingly. Once Matisse finished school, his father, a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office. PAINTING: BEGINNINGS Matisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during the period of convalescence. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.” Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions. Matisse was so committed to his art that he later extended a warning to his fiancée, Amélie Parayre, whom he later married: “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.” Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. His drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father. Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. After a discouraging year at the Académie Julian, he left in disgust at the overly perfectionist style of teaching there. Afterwards he trained with Gustave Moreau, an artist who nurtured more progressive leanings. In both studios, as was usual, students drew endless figure studies from life. From Bouguereau, he learned the fundamental lessons of classical painting. His one art-schooled technical standby, almost a fetish, was the plumb line. No matter how odd the angles in any Matisse, the verticals are usually dead true. Moreau was a painter who despised the "art du salon", so Matisse was destined, in a certain sense, to remain an "outcast" of the art world. He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted. Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters having made four the French still-life master paintings in the Louvre. Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art. His first experimentations earned him a reputation as the rebellious member of his studio classes. In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime. In 1897 and 1898, he visited the painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh who had been a good friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Matisse also observed Russell's and other artists' stable marriages. This probably influenced him to find in Amélie Noellie Parayre, his future wife, his anchor. The Dinner Table (1897) was Matisse’s first masterpiece, and he had spent the entire winter working on the oeuvre. Though the Salon displayed the piece, they hung the work in a poor location, disgusted by what they considered its radical, Impressionist aspects. Caroline Joblaud was Matisse's early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline (also called Camille) gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse's marriage to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted contrary to conventional hostility such arrangements provoked. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life. MARRIAGE WITH AMÉLIE NOELLIE PARAYRE The Matisses of Bohain and the Parayres of Beauzelle had outwardly nothing in common, and there was no reason why Matisse and Amélie should ever have met. But in October 1897 Matisse went to a wedding in Paris and happened to sit next to her at the uproarious banquet that followed. There had been no banal flirtation between them, even when the wine flowed, each recognized the other as true metal, and when they got up from the table she held out her hand to Henri Matisse in a way that he never forgot. Matisse at that time was not yet the professorial figure of legend. He was known as a prankster, as a ribald and anti-clerical songster, and as someone who had once broken up a café concert performance just for the hell of it. Amélie's relatives operated at that time within a social, intellectual, and political context of which Matisse had had no previous experience. They stood for free thinking, for the separation of church and state, and for the secularization of the French educational system. Her family, better off that that of Matisse, provided the support he needed for the budding artist. When Matisse married Amélie in January 1898, they had been introduced only three months after. Amélie's Aunt Noélie and two of her brothers ran a successful women's shop called the Grande Maison des Modes. Before her marriage, Amélie had shown a gift for designing, making, and modeling hats for a fashionable clientele. In June 1899, she found a partner and opened a shop of her own on the rue de Châteaudun. This allowed Henri and herself to live, with Marguerite, in a tiny two-room apartment on the same street. Madame Matisse, fervently loyal, would play a fundamental role in the life and career of the artist for more than 40 years. Marguerite was to become her father's lifetime mainstay In 1902 disaster struck. Amélie’s parents were disgraced and financially ruined in a spectacular scandal of national scope, as the unsuspecting employees of a woman whose financial empire was based on fraud. Thanks to his early years in a lawyer's office, Matisse was able to busy himself to great effect in the organization of his father-in-law's defense. When all about him lost their heads, burst into tears, and felt more than sorry for themselves, Henri Matisse dealt with their problems one by one. The ordeal had taken its toll, in more than one way. His doctors ordered Matisse to go to Bohain and take two months' complete rest. Amélie had lost both her hat shop and the apartment on the rue de Châteaudun. For the first time, Henri, Amélie and the three children were united in Bohain, having nowhere else to go. Hillary Spurling, one of Matisse’s biographers, asserts that Amélie’s memories of that public disgrace nurtured a “suspicion of the outside world” that would always mark the Matisse family. The Matisse family formed a kind of hermetic unit which revolved around the artist’s work and profession. They fitted their activities according his breaks and work sessions. Silence was essential. Even during the years when Matisse lived mostly alone in Nice, an annual ritual of unpacking, stretching, framing and hanging ended with the whole family settling down to respond to the paintings. The conference might last several days. Then the dealers were admitted. Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). He was not always in peace with his family. He wrote that their views were not always in accord “which disturbs me considerably in my work, for which I require the most complete calm and from those how surround me, a serenity that I cannot find here. I intend to move to a village a few league away.” Pierre, his brother, Jean, and Marguerite remained close to their father through every vicissitude, and Matisse, in his last invalid years, was devoted to his several grandchildren. In 1899, at a time when his paintings displayed rebellious talent but not much clear direction, Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, he selected Jaguar Devouring a Hare a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye. Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations. Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, "In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most." By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes -- which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves -- Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life. Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. After years in poverty, Matisse went through his "dark period" (1902-03), moved briefly to naturalism, went back to a dark palette and told friends in 1903 that he had lost all desire to paint and had almost decided to give up. Fortunately, Matisse was able to earn some money painting a frieze for the World Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also traveled extensively in the early 1900s when tourism was still a new idea. Brought on by railroad, steamships, and other forms of transportation that appeared during the industrial revolution, travel became a popular pursuit. As a cultured tourist, he developed his art with regular doses of travel. FAUVISM Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work. In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity . Matisse hit his stride in the avant-garde art world in the first years of the new decade. He explored the modern art scene through frequent visits to galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Vollard, where he was exposed to work by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success. In 16 May 1905 he arrived in the charming Catalan port of Collioure, in the south of France. He soon invited the painter André Derain (1880-1954), 11 years his junior, to join him. By 1905, Matisse was considered spearhead the Fauve movement in France, characterized by its spontaneity and roughness of execution as well as use of raw color straight from the palette to the canvas. Matisse combined pointillist color and Cézanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism - a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes. When the Fauve summer drew to an end, Derain left Collioure with 30 paintings, 20 drawings and some 50 sketches, never to return, while Matisse departed some days later bringing back to Paris 15 finished paintings, 40 aquarelles, over 100 drawings. He returned Collioure in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1911 and 1914. The lure of the sun would prove always to have powers of restoration to the artist throughout his life particularly after periods of great emotional exertion. When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse's most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves' color "sticks of dynamite." The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse. This picture was bought be was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, a fact which had a very positive effect on Matisse who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work. Matisse continued his experiments in Collioure, visible in the painting The Open Window and the View of Collioure , also a characteristic work of Fauvism in its raw color and disregard for details. Both of these works of the landscape in the French Mediterranean present a distinct development towards the spontaneous and uninhibited style. Other than André Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck were also members of the Fauve movement. However, Matisse’s intimate friends among artists were mostly easygoing minor painters, such as Albert Marquet. Matisse’s temperamental aloneness made him prey to vertiginous depressions. He later recalled a breakdown that he underwent in Spain, in 1910: “My bed shook, and from my throat came a little high-pitched cry that I could not stop.” From the onset of is career women were from one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. His Joy of Life (1906) draws us into the world of hallucinatory vividness composed of nymphs set in an idyllic open fields dressed in pure color and sensual outline. Two women lounge in the sunlight while two more chat on the edge of the forest. One crouches to pick some flowers while her companion weaves a chain of them into her hair. A couple embraces each other while another group engages in a lively round-dance in the distance. In this way, Joy of Life depicts woodland nymphs engaging in a celebration of their life, their womanhood, and their sexuality. Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means. Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne. FAME The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to deter the rise of Matisse. From 1906 -1917 he lived in Paris and established his home, studio, and school at Hôtel Biron. Among his neighbors is sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer Isadora Duncan. Many of his finest works were created in this period, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. In fact, the aim of Matisse’s art was something less than revolutionary. In 1908, in a famous statement drawn from “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse declared as his ideal an art “for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” Matisse's personal habits were incredibly regular. On a typical day rose early and worked all morning with a second work session after lunch, followed by violin practice, a simple supper (vegetable soup, two hard-boiled eggs, salad and a glass of wine) and an early bedtime. In 1906, he created a series of 12 lithographs, all variations on the theme of a seated nude. He chose to share his graphic work with the public almost immediately. The lithographs were exhibited at the Druet Gallery in Paris the same year that they were produced, and the woodcuts were shown at the Salon des Independants in the spring of 1907. In 1907 Appolinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." Notwithstanding newly-won fame, Matisse's work continued to encounter vehement criticism and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Blue Nude was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913. Contrary to the fate of the Impressionists, Matisse and other Fauves were able to exhibit in art galleries. In 1908 Paul Cassirer, the German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, staged an exhibit of Matisse’s works in Berlin. In the same year the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York organized him one-man show in his tiny Manhattan gallery called 291 which effectively introduced Matisse the powerful American art market. In the first decade of his notoriety as the leader of the Fauves, Matisse was more admired by foreigners than by the French. It was, after all, the Russians and the Americans who acquired significant collections of his early work almost as quickly as it was created. The great Matisses we see in the Paris museums today were mostly acquired after the artist's death in lieu of death duties. It took the French a good deal longer to understand Matisse's greatness-longer, certainly, than the international cadre of aspiring talents that flocked to his classes when he was still one of the most controversial figures in the Paris avant-garde. In the summer of 1907, Matisse and his wife went on a long trip to italy "for work and Pleasure," visiting Venice and Padua, where they admired Giotto's frescos. In Florence the were the guests of the Steins in their villa in Fiesole. From this base matisse visited Arezzo, to study Piero della Francesca, and Siena, attracted by the early Sienese painters, especially, Duccio. PICASSO, GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE CONE SISTERS During the first decade of the 20th century Americans in Paris Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah took keen interest in Matisse's art. In addition, Gertrude Stein's two friends from Baltimore. Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their works.The Cone Sisters acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings. In April of 1906 during a gathering at the house of the legendary Gertrude Stein, Matisse was introduced to Pablo Picasso who was 11 years younger. Picasso and Matisse were poles apart aesthetically and their life styles were no less so. Matisse was markedly taller and more polished than the stocky, cocky Catalan, was then ruler of the turbulent Paris avant-garde art scene. The two were said to have always been looking over their shoulders at each other. It is well-known that after their rivalry grew, sides were taken. Picasso later said: "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he." One key difference between their pictorial concepts was that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Gertrude Stein, who loved stirring things up, wrote, "the feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisse-ites became bitter." Although Matisse dryly noted that "our disputes were always friendly," it should be pointed out that Picasso and his friends threw suction-cupped darts at Matisse's 1906 Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon, from 1907). While the rift between the two artists eventually healed, the one between their supporters remained. ACADEMIE MATISSE IN PARIS & SERGEI SHCHUKIN In 1909, with the Matisse family lived in a former convent on the Boulevard des Invalides, in Paris, where the artist conducted a painting school. His immense notoriety, which had been confirmed in 1905-06 by Joy of Life, a work which seemed to trash every possible norm of pictorial order and painterly finesse.His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were several of his most loyal students. Although it lasted for only three years (1908-11), and yet, during its brief existence the Académie Matisse became one of the principal crossroads of modern painting for a number of gifted European and American artists. Given the reputation Matisse had acquired as the"wild man" of modernist color, it must have come as a shock to some of his early students that the program of instruction he offered was remarkably conservative. As Jean Heiberg, the first Norwegian to enroll in the Académie, later wrote in a memoir: "The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, acquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, Mars and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable." Among Matisse’s students was Olga Meerson, a Russian Jew who had studied with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich and, already possessed of an elegant style, sought to remake herself under Matisse’s tutelage. Amélie suspected the worst. Perhaps a combination of Amélie’s jealousy and Meerson’s neediness caused a Matisse to end the connection, with bad feeling all around. Meerson moved to Munich, where she married the musician Heinz Pringsheim, a brother-in-law of Thomas Mann. Never having fulfilled her promise as a painter, she committed suicide in Berlin, in 1929. One of Matisse's biographers, with access to much of the artist's correspondence, contends that the artist, after his marriage, rarely, if ever, had sex with models, despite his apparent feelings for many. Two Russian art collectors stood out at the beginning of the 20th century: the cloth merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and the textile manufacturer Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Both acquired modern French art, developed a sensibility for spotting new trends, and publicized them in Russia. In this period, Matisse had initiated his fecund association with the Russian textile magnate and visionary collector, Sergei Shchukin. The artist created one of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission. Inspired by a circular dance-- perhaps a sardana - performed by fishermen at Collioure, this painting embodies the clash between the sacred and reality. Human hands link together, but they form a divine spirit. Moreover, Matisse all but abandoned perspective The work ’s flatness emphasizes the idea, colors, and material, a notion that made Matisse a model for Modernists. The other painting commissioned was Music, 1909. Shchukin was considered by some almost as a co-producer of some of the artist’s greatest works and was strongly commuted to the French painter’s work. Concerning the violent attacks on his friend, the Russian wrote to the artist: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.” By 1914 Shchukin’s house in Moscow contained thirty-seven Matisses. “He always picked the best,” the artist said. During the political revolution Lenin expropriated Shchukin collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain, in servants’ quarters, as caretaker and guide. He died in Paris, in 1936. The collection is now in the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums From about 1911 to 1915, Matisse struggled with the ideas of Cubism, an experiment he felt he was "not participating in" because it did not "speak to [his] deeply sensory nature." MOROCCO Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He is one of the first painters to take an interest in various forms of “primitive” art. His art was profoundly influenced by Easter art...

'Pitch Weed (Madia Saliva, Mol)' Colour lithograph, 1909.

Unsigned. On Japanese paper.

Artist: Michael Knigin, American (1942 - 2011) Title: Eye of the Storm Year: 1971 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 136/200 ...