People Prints and Multiples

Lucien Coutaud, French (1904 - 1977) - Le Taureau Blanc IV, Year: 1957, Medium: Etching, Image Size: 7.75 x 5 inches, Size: 13 x 10 in. (33.02 x 25.4 cm), Description: From the col...

Original collotype lithograph of a woman undressing from Gustav Kilmt’s handzeichnungen (sketch) in 1922 by Thyrsos Verlag, Leipzig and Vienna, in an edition of 375. Klimt’s mastery of depth is most evident in the gentleness of his linework. Without the aid of shadow or the subtlety of values, the gestures of line allow the viewer a sense of a three-dimensional person or object. The meticulous lithographic process used to create Klimt’s Handzeichnungen portfolio ensures exceptionally crisp markings bearing a strong resemblance to the original sketches. This series showcases the quintessence behind Klimt’s signature visual style. This artwork arrives accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. Century Guild has curated collections of Gustav Klimt’s printed...

Georges LEPAPE Art Deco, Woman with a Rose Original etching and stencil Printed signature in the plate On vellum 16 x 22 cm (c. 6.5 x 9 in) Excellent condition

Artist: Warrington Colescott Title Out My Garden Window Year: 1969 Medium: Color drypoint, soft-ground etching, and aquatint, with roulette, vibrograver, à la poupée inking, found l...

Only 50 printed throughout the world, unlike O'Neill's silver gelatine editions available in many different sizes. Uncrossed unlike the silver gelatine version. Notice the collar on ...

Engraving after Paul Jouve From the work of Terrasse in 1948 490 copies Size etching: 23 x 18 cm Frame: 45 x 49 cm

PAUL GAUGUIN (French 1848 - 1903) DEAUX FEMMES MAORIES ACCROUPIES. 1894-5 (Kornfield 26: Guerin 87 ) Zincograph (Lithograph) on smooth, cream imitation Japan paper, edition 200. Pu...

Linen-backed original “ Suddenly Last Summer “ vintage movie poster. Excellent condition with restored original fold marks as issued during conservation linen-backing. NSS 60/4. ...

Kees VAN DONGEN (1877-1968) Paris : Parisian Club, 1927 Original etching Unsigned Limited to 225 copies On BFK Rives vellum 33 x 25 cm (c. 12.9 x 9.8 in) REFERENCE : Catalogue ra...

Yoshitomo Nara Harmless Kitty Offset print on paper Sheet size 51.5 × 36.4 cm

Teruta-hime is a woodcut print realized by Utagawa Kuniyoshi in 1842/43. Lifetime impression of chuban tate-e, it depicts Teruta-hime carrying a bucket of water through the snow, wi...

Paper Size: 12.25 x 16 inches ( 31.115 x 40.64 cm ) Image Size: 12.25 x 16 inches ( 31.115 x 40.64 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additi...

The Family  is a color lithograph on ivory paper, created by the Italian artist Umberto Brunelleschi (Montemurlo 1879- Paris 1949). Illustration for “Tales and Short Stories” by La ...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) Les Songes : The Meal, 1981 Original etching Unsigned On BFK Rives vellum 52 x 38 cm (c. 10 x 15 in) REFERENCE: Catalogue Raisonné Carmer #112 First state ...

An emblem of the Belle Époque's fascination with the exotic, this original 1890 poster by Jules Chéret—often called the father of the modern poster—captures the spirit of late 19th-c...

Galerie Le Long Paris, 2004 French Open Paper Size: 29.5 x 23.25 inches ( 75 x 59 cm ) Image Size: 29.5 x 23.25 inches ( 75 x 59 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A: Mint Shipping an...

In the realm of Belle Époque Paris, Jules Chéret emerges as a luminary, casting his artistic brilliance on the city's vibrant cultural scene. Known as the "father of the modern poste...

Erhu is a signed and numbered time-limited edition of giclée prints. The erhu, or spike fiddle, typically has two strings, but the instrument being played here is missing a tuning sp...

Medium: original woodcut. (Catalogue reference Roethel 106). Printed in 1975 on Arches paper for the "Homage to Kandinsky" special edition of the art revue XXe Siecle. Image size: 4 ...

Lithograph and stencil on papier a la cuve du moulin Richard de Bas paper, spécialement filigrané pour cette édition. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From ...

Artist: Itzchak Tarkay (1935-2012) Title: Afternoon Tea Year: Circa 2000 Medium: Silkscreen on wove paper Size: 26 x 31.5 inches Edition: 189/199, plus p...

Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa (La Joconde) Etching and engraving Copperplate by Charles Coppier after the painting of the same name With a portrait of the artist On Sommerset vellum, ...

Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire From the book by André Rouveyre, "Apollinaire " (Paris: Raisons d'Etre, 1952) Artist : Henri MATISSE 13 x 10 inches Edition: 151/330 References : Duthuit-Matisse Catalogue raisonné 31 MATISSE'S BIOGRAPHY YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born in a tiny, tumbledown weaver's cottage on the rue du Chêne Arnaud in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis at eight o'clock in the evening on the last night of the year, 31 December 1869 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis is in the extreme north of France near the Belgian border). The house had two rooms, a beaten earth floor and a leaky roof. Matisse said long afterwards that rain fell through a hole above the bed in which he was born. Matisse’s ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the convulsive social and industrial upheavals of the nineteenth century. Matisse grew up in a world that was still detaching itself from a way of life in some ways unchanged since Roman times. The coming of the railway had put Bohain on the industrial map, but people still traveled everywhere on foot or horseback. Matisse’s father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. Warmhearted, outgoing, capable and energetic, she was small and sturdily built with the fashionable figure of the period: full breasts and hips, narrow waist, neat ankles and elegant small feet. She had fair skin, broad cheekbones and a wide smile. "My mother had a face with generous features," said her son Henri, who always spoke of her with particular tenderness of the sensitivity. Throughout the forty years of her marriage, she provided unwavering, rocklike support to her husband and her sons. Matisse later said: "My mother loved everything I did." He grew up in nearby Bohain-en-Vermandois, an industrial textile center, until the age of ten, when his father sent him to St. Quentin for lycée. Anna Heloise worked hard. She ran the section of her husband's shop that sold housepaints, making up the customers' orders and advising on color schemes. The colors evidently left a lasting impression on Henri. The artist himself later said he got his color sense from his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Henri was the couple’s first son. The young Matisse was an awkward youth who seemed ill-adapted to the rigors of the North; in particular, he hated the gelid winters. He was a pensive child and by his own account he was a dreamy, frail and not outstandingly bright. In later life he never lost his feeling for his native soil, for seeds and growing things he had encountered in his youth. The fancy pigeons he kept in Nice more than half a century after he left home recalled the weavers' pigeon-lofts tucked away behind even the humblest house in Bohain. Matisse's childhood memories were of a stern upbringing. "Be quick!" "Look out!" "Run along!" "Get cracking!" were the refrains that rang in his ears as a boy. In later years when survival itself depended on habits of thrift and self-denial, the artist prided himself on being a man of the North. When Matisse in turn had children of his own to bring up, he chided himself for any lapse in discipline or open display of tenderness as weakness on his part. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. Although he considered law as tedious, he nonetheless passed the bar in 1888 with distinction and began his practice begrudgingly. Once Matisse finished school, his father, a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office. PAINTING: BEGINNINGS Matisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during the period of convalescence. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.” Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions. Matisse was so committed to his art that he later extended a warning to his fiancée, Amélie Parayre, whom he later married: “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.” Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. His drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father. Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. After a discouraging year at the Académie Julian, he left in disgust at the overly perfectionist style of teaching there. Afterwards he trained with Gustave Moreau, an artist who nurtured more progressive leanings. In both studios, as was usual, students drew endless figure studies from life. From Bouguereau, he learned the fundamental lessons of classical painting. His one art-schooled technical standby, almost a fetish, was the plumb line. No matter how odd the angles in any Matisse, the verticals are usually dead true. Moreau was a painter who despised the "art du salon", so Matisse was destined, in a certain sense, to remain an "outcast" of the art world. He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted. Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters having made four the French still-life master paintings in the Louvre. Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art. His first experimentations earned him a reputation as the rebellious member of his studio classes. In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime. In 1897 and 1898, he visited the painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh who had been a good friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Matisse also observed Russell's and other artists' stable marriages. This probably influenced him to find in Amélie Noellie Parayre, his future wife, his anchor. The Dinner Table (1897) was Matisse’s first masterpiece, and he had spent the entire winter working on the oeuvre. Though the Salon displayed the piece, they hung the work in a poor location, disgusted by what they considered its radical, Impressionist aspects. Caroline Joblaud was Matisse's early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline (also called Camille) gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse's marriage to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted contrary to conventional hostility such arrangements provoked. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life. MARRIAGE WITH AMÉLIE NOELLIE PARAYRE The Matisses of Bohain and the Parayres of Beauzelle had outwardly nothing in common, and there was no reason why Matisse and Amélie should ever have met. But in October 1897 Matisse went to a wedding in Paris and happened to sit next to her at the uproarious banquet that followed. There had been no banal flirtation between them, even when the wine flowed, each recognized the other as true metal, and when they got up from the table she held out her hand to Henri Matisse in a way that he never forgot. Matisse at that time was not yet the professorial figure of legend. He was known as a prankster, as a ribald and anti-clerical songster, and as someone who had once broken up a café concert performance just for the hell of it. Amélie's relatives operated at that time within a social, intellectual, and political context of which Matisse had had no previous experience. They stood for free thinking, for the separation of church and state, and for the secularization of the French educational system. Her family, better off that that of Matisse, provided the support he needed for the budding artist. When Matisse married Amélie in January 1898, they had been introduced only three months after. Amélie's Aunt Noélie and two of her brothers ran a successful women's shop called the Grande Maison des Modes. Before her marriage, Amélie had shown a gift for designing, making, and modeling hats for a fashionable clientele. In June 1899, she found a partner and opened a shop of her own on the rue de Châteaudun. This allowed Henri and herself to live, with Marguerite, in a tiny two-room apartment on the same street. Madame Matisse, fervently loyal, would play a fundamental role in the life and career of the artist for more than 40 years. Marguerite was to become her father's lifetime mainstay In 1902 disaster struck. Amélie’s parents were disgraced and financially ruined in a spectacular scandal of national scope, as the unsuspecting employees of a woman whose financial empire was based on fraud. Thanks to his early years in a lawyer's office, Matisse was able to busy himself to great effect in the organization of his father-in-law's defense. When all about him lost their heads, burst into tears, and felt more than sorry for themselves, Henri Matisse dealt with their problems one by one. The ordeal had taken its toll, in more than one way. His doctors ordered Matisse to go to Bohain and take two months' complete rest. Amélie had lost both her hat shop and the apartment on the rue de Châteaudun. For the first time, Henri, Amélie and the three children were united in Bohain, having nowhere else to go. Hillary Spurling, one of Matisse’s biographers, asserts that Amélie’s memories of that public disgrace nurtured a “suspicion of the outside world” that would always mark the Matisse family. The Matisse family formed a kind of hermetic unit which revolved around the artist’s work and profession. They fitted their activities according his breaks and work sessions. Silence was essential. Even during the years when Matisse lived mostly alone in Nice, an annual ritual of unpacking, stretching, framing and hanging ended with the whole family settling down to respond to the paintings. The conference might last several days. Then the dealers were admitted. Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). He was not always in peace with his family. He wrote that their views were not always in accord “which disturbs me considerably in my work, for which I require the most complete calm and from those how surround me, a serenity that I cannot find here. I intend to move to a village a few league away.” Pierre, his brother, Jean, and Marguerite remained close to their father through every vicissitude, and Matisse, in his last invalid years, was devoted to his several grandchildren. In 1899, at a time when his paintings displayed rebellious talent but not much clear direction, Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, he selected Jaguar Devouring a Hare a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye. Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations. Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, "In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most." By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes -- which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves -- Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life. Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. After years in poverty, Matisse went through his "dark period" (1902-03), moved briefly to naturalism, went back to a dark palette and told friends in 1903 that he had lost all desire to paint and had almost decided to give up. Fortunately, Matisse was able to earn some money painting a frieze for the World Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also traveled extensively in the early 1900s when tourism was still a new idea. Brought on by railroad, steamships, and other forms of transportation that appeared during the industrial revolution, travel became a popular pursuit. As a cultured tourist, he developed his art with regular doses of travel. FAUVISM Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work. In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity . Matisse hit his stride in the avant-garde art world in the first years of the new decade. He explored the modern art scene through frequent visits to galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Vollard, where he was exposed to work by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success. In 16 May 1905 he arrived in the charming Catalan port of Collioure, in the south of France. He soon invited the painter André Derain (1880-1954), 11 years his junior, to join him. By 1905, Matisse was considered spearhead the Fauve movement in France, characterized by its spontaneity and roughness of execution as well as use of raw color straight from the palette to the canvas. Matisse combined pointillist color and Cézanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism - a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes. When the Fauve summer drew to an end, Derain left Collioure with 30 paintings, 20 drawings and some 50 sketches, never to return, while Matisse departed some days later bringing back to Paris 15 finished paintings, 40 aquarelles, over 100 drawings. He returned Collioure in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1911 and 1914. The lure of the sun would prove always to have powers of restoration to the artist throughout his life particularly after periods of great emotional exertion. When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse's most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves' color "sticks of dynamite." The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse. This picture was bought be was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, a fact which had a very positive effect on Matisse who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work. Matisse continued his experiments in Collioure, visible in the painting The Open Window and the View of Collioure , also a characteristic work of Fauvism in its raw color and disregard for details. Both of these works of the landscape in the French Mediterranean present a distinct development towards the spontaneous and uninhibited style. Other than André Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck were also members of the Fauve movement. However, Matisse’s intimate friends among artists were mostly easygoing minor painters, such as Albert Marquet. Matisse’s temperamental aloneness made him prey to vertiginous depressions. He later recalled a breakdown that he underwent in Spain, in 1910: “My bed shook, and from my throat came a little high-pitched cry that I could not stop.” From the onset of is career women were from one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. His Joy of Life (1906) draws us into the world of hallucinatory vividness composed of nymphs set in an idyllic open fields dressed in pure color and sensual outline. Two women lounge in the sunlight while two more chat on the edge of the forest. One crouches to pick some flowers while her companion weaves a chain of them into her hair. A couple embraces each other while another group engages in a lively round-dance in the distance. In this way, Joy of Life depicts woodland nymphs engaging in a celebration of their life, their womanhood, and their sexuality. Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means. Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne. FAME The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to deter the rise of Matisse. From 1906 -1917 he lived in Paris and established his home, studio, and school at Hôtel Biron. Among his neighbors is sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer Isadora Duncan. Many of his finest works were created in this period, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. In fact, the aim of Matisse’s art was something less than revolutionary. In 1908, in a famous statement drawn from “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse declared as his ideal an art “for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” Matisse's personal habits were incredibly regular. On a typical day rose early and worked all morning with a second work session after lunch, followed by violin practice, a simple supper (vegetable soup, two hard-boiled eggs, salad and a glass of wine) and an early bedtime. In 1906, he created a series of 12 lithographs, all variations on the theme of a seated nude. He chose to share his graphic work with the public almost immediately. The lithographs were exhibited at the Druet Gallery in Paris the same year that they were produced, and the woodcuts were shown at the Salon des Independants in the spring of 1907. In 1907 Appolinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." Notwithstanding newly-won fame, Matisse's work continued to encounter vehement criticism and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Blue Nude was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913. Contrary to the fate of the Impressionists, Matisse and other Fauves were able to exhibit in art galleries. In 1908 Paul Cassirer, the German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, staged an exhibit of Matisse’s works in Berlin. In the same year the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York organized him one-man show in his tiny Manhattan gallery called 291 which effectively introduced Matisse the powerful American art market. In the first decade of his notoriety as the leader of the Fauves, Matisse was more admired by foreigners than by the French. It was, after all, the Russians and the Americans who acquired significant collections of his early work almost as quickly as it was created. The great Matisses we see in the Paris museums today were mostly acquired after the artist's death in lieu of death duties. It took the French a good deal longer to understand Matisse's greatness-longer, certainly, than the international cadre of aspiring talents that flocked to his classes when he was still one of the most controversial figures in the Paris avant-garde. In the summer of 1907, Matisse and his wife went on a long trip to italy "for work and Pleasure," visiting Venice and Padua, where they admired Giotto's frescos. In Florence the were the guests of the Steins in their villa in Fiesole. From this base matisse visited Arezzo, to study Piero della Francesca, and Siena, attracted by the early Sienese painters, especially, Duccio. PICASSO, GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE CONE SISTERS During the first decade of the 20th century Americans in Paris Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah took keen interest in Matisse's art. In addition, Gertrude Stein's two friends from Baltimore. Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their works.The Cone Sisters acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings. In April of 1906 during a gathering at the house of the legendary Gertrude Stein, Matisse was introduced to Pablo Picasso who was 11 years younger. Picasso and Matisse were poles apart aesthetically and their life styles were no less so. Matisse was markedly taller and more polished than the stocky, cocky Catalan, was then ruler of the turbulent Paris avant-garde art scene. The two were said to have always been looking over their shoulders at each other. It is well-known that after their rivalry grew, sides were taken. Picasso later said: "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he." One key difference between their pictorial concepts was that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Gertrude Stein, who loved stirring things up, wrote, "the feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisse-ites became bitter." Although Matisse dryly noted that "our disputes were always friendly," it should be pointed out that Picasso and his friends threw suction-cupped darts at Matisse's 1906 Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon, from 1907). While the rift between the two artists eventually healed, the one between their supporters remained. ACADEMIE MATISSE IN PARIS & SERGEI SHCHUKIN In 1909, with the Matisse family lived in a former convent on the Boulevard des Invalides, in Paris, where the artist conducted a painting school. His immense notoriety, which had been confirmed in 1905-06 by Joy of Life, a work which seemed to trash every possible norm of pictorial order and painterly finesse.His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were several of his most loyal students. Although it lasted for only three years (1908-11), and yet, during its brief existence the Académie Matisse became one of the principal crossroads of modern painting for a number of gifted European and American artists. Given the reputation Matisse had acquired as the"wild man" of modernist color, it must have come as a shock to some of his early students that the program of instruction he offered was remarkably conservative. As Jean Heiberg, the first Norwegian to enroll in the Académie, later wrote in a memoir: "The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, acquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, Mars and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable." Among Matisse’s students was Olga Meerson, a Russian Jew who had studied with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich and, already possessed of an elegant style, sought to remake herself under Matisse’s tutelage. Amélie suspected the worst. Perhaps a combination of Amélie’s jealousy and Meerson’s neediness caused a Matisse to end the connection, with bad feeling all around. Meerson moved to Munich, where she married the musician Heinz Pringsheim, a brother-in-law of Thomas Mann. Never having fulfilled her promise as a painter, she committed suicide in Berlin, in 1929. One of Matisse's biographers, with access to much of the artist's correspondence, contends that the artist, after his marriage, rarely, if ever, had sex with models, despite his apparent feelings for many. Two Russian art collectors stood out at the beginning of the 20th century: the cloth merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and the textile manufacturer Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Both acquired modern French art, developed a sensibility for spotting new trends, and publicized them in Russia. In this period, Matisse had initiated his fecund association with the Russian textile magnate and visionary collector, Sergei Shchukin. The artist created one of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission. Inspired by a circular dance-- perhaps a sardana - performed by fishermen at Collioure, this painting embodies the clash between the sacred and reality. Human hands link together, but they form a divine spirit. Moreover, Matisse all but abandoned perspective The work ’s flatness emphasizes the idea, colors, and material, a notion that made Matisse a model for Modernists. The other painting commissioned was Music, 1909. Shchukin was considered by some almost as a co-producer of some of the artist’s greatest works and was strongly commuted to the French painter’s work. Concerning the violent attacks on his friend, the Russian wrote to the artist: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.” By 1914 Shchukin’s house in Moscow contained thirty-seven Matisses. “He always picked the best,” the artist said. During the political revolution Lenin expropriated Shchukin collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain, in servants’ quarters, as caretaker and guide. He died in Paris, in 1936. The collection is now in the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums From about 1911 to 1915, Matisse struggled with the ideas of Cubism, an experiment he felt he was "not participating in" because it did not "speak to [his] deeply sensory nature." MOROCCO Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He is one of the first painters to take an interest in various forms of “primitive” art. His art was profoundly influenced by Easter art as well. Matisse first flirted with the idea of visiting Morocco after a trip to the Moorish part of Spain in the winter of 1910. This taste of the Moors incited a flame of hope that there would be greater inspiration to paint in Morocco. Furthermore, well aware of the exotic subjects in Morocco that had engendered a wealth of inspiration for the famous French painter Delacroix when he visited the country over eighty years before, Matisse felt Morocco would stimulate his painting genius in ways Europe could not. He strove for neither the picturesque nor the pornographic. In Morocco, Matisse seems to have had difficulties finding models who would pose for him, particularly women because of the law of the veil. Only Jewesses and prostitutes were exempt. Luckily, Matisse to have found the prostitute Zorah for the purpose although he did not paint her as a prostitute. Instead, in his first picture of her, Zorah en Jaune, sexual themes are most conspicuously absent from the canvas. As a prostitute used to exposing and flaunting her body, Zorah could have easily been painted nude or with less clothing to show herself off, but instead Matisse chooses to keep her clothed and posed with prudence. Unlike the primitive, nude Western women in the Fauve Joy of Life. Moroccan Zorah is clothed with respect and detail to her finer characteristics. He is developing his ability to paint with awareness of the non-sexual qualities of his subject, a movement away from Fauve women. Many of Matisse's Moroccan paintings are covered only in the thinnest washes of pigment, as if he wanted the texture of the unpainted canvas to show through so that it would add rawness to the browns and grays. Matisse's odalisques have been described as "elaborate fictions" in which the artist re-created the image of the Islamic harem using French models posed in his Nice apartment. The fabrics, screens, carpets, furnishings and costuming recalled the exoticism of the "Orient" and provided a theme for Matisse's preoccupation with the figure and elaborate patterns of exotic fabrics. Although Matisse's interest in textiles are evident in his compositions made during his 1906 trip to Morocco, it didn't begin as a typical European attraction to the exotic. It was already present to him as a descendent of generations of weavers, who was raised among weavers in Bohain-en-Vermandois, which in the 1880's and 90's was a center of production of fancy silks for the Parisian fashion houses. Like virtually all his northern compatriots, he had an inborn appreciation of their texture and design. He understood the properties of weight and hang, he knew how to use pins and paper patterns, and he was supremely confident with scissors. Matisse was known to be an avid collector of fabrics, from his days as a poor art student in Paris to the latter years of his life, when his Nice studio overflowed with Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colorful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens, and backcloths. Textiles soon became the springboard for his radical experiments with perspective and an art based on decorative patterning and pure harmonies of color and line. When he moved house, he also moved his fabrics, describing them as "my working library." He added to the collection all his life, from markets in Algeria, Morocco and Tahiti to the end-of-season sales of Parisian haute couture. The revitalizing spirit of Morocco would live on in the artist's imagination until the cutouts of the artist's last years. AFTER PARIS Matisse continued to evolve in unexpected directions even though never became an abstract painter (though some of his most adventurous works, such as the View of Notre Dame of 1914 or the Yellow Curtain of 1916 come close). His motifs were always recognizable, and the tension between the subject and the formal aspects of the painting was a central concept of his artistic ideal. Matisse moved to Nice in 1917 to distance himself from wartime activity, where bright, warm colors showed him "simpler venues which won’t stifle the spirit." His spirit became loyal to the "silver clarity of light" in Nice, and he returned to Paris only for a few months each summer. The years 1917–30 are known as his early Nice period, when his principal subject remained the female figure or an odalisque dressed in oriental costume or in various stages of undress, depicted as standing, seated, or reclining in a luxurious, exotic interior of Matisse's own creation. These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns. They emanate the atmosphere suggestive of a harem. In 1929, Matisse temporarily suspended easel painting and traveled to America to sit on the jury of the 29th Carnegie International and, in 1930, spent some time in Tahiti and New York as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Merion, Pennsylvania.He was especially thrilled with New York. An important collector of modern art, and owner of the largest Matisse holdings in America, Dr. Albert Barnes of Merion, commissioned the artist to paint a large mural for the two-story picture gallery of his mansion. Matisse chose the subject of the dance, a theme that had preoccupied him since his early Fauve masterpiece Joy of Life. Americans were prominent among Matisse's patrons throughout his career, beginning with the Steins (Leo Stein bought Joy of Life right out of the Salon in 1906) and including the Cone sisters of Baltimore and the notoriously cantankerous Barnes. The foundational Matisse monograph was written during his lifetime by another American, Alfred Barr. Also important in promoting Matisse's presence before the transatlantic public was the Manhattan gallery founded in 1931 by the artist's son, Pierre, who remained a prominent figure in the New York art world for almost six decades. In addition to his father, he represented Balthus, Calder, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miro, Tanguy and others, many of them also friends. Throughout his long and productive career, Matisse periodically refreshed his creative energies by turning from painting to drawing, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression. In his lifetime he also produced 12 illustrated books which were known as “livre d’artiste” (artist’s book), a specific type of illustrated book that became common in France around the turn of the century. These books were deluxe, limited editions, meant to be collected and admired as works of art, as well as, read. This process began when Swiss publisher Albert Skira first approached the modern master in 1930 to illustrate the work, Poesies, by 19th century French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé . Matisse responded to Skira’s invitation with great enthusiasm and that summer, devoted most of his attention to the commission while he was residing in Paris. The result was a collection of 29 beautiful etchings, of which the Museum will display 16. The subject matter, like the poems themselves, varies considerably, although many of the images reflect the artist’s vacation to the South Pacific. Matisse’s etchings of Mallarmé’s poems are considered among his greatest works in the print medium. In 1941, again for Skira, Matisse began one of his most complicated and successful printmaking projects, Florilege des Amours de Ronsard, illustrating the love poems of 16th century French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard’s subject and strong imagery lent themselves gracefully to Matisse’s favored themes of fruits, flowers, the female form and portraits. The artist selected the poems himself and translated the work from Renaissance French to contemporary French for the publication of the anthology DIVORCE & LATE FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS For all his long-lasting friendships with other artists, famous and obscure, Matisse's days and nights were absorbed by solitary labor. Playing the violin seemed a more intimate consolation for decades of critical abuse than the affections of his wife and children. Although their marriage was still somewhat fragile, the Matisses had decided to stay on in Nice when their lease expired at Place Charles-Félix in the summer of 1938. Matisse and his wife were separated in 1939 after 41 years when Amélie tried to dismiss the coolly efficient young Lydia Delectorskaya, an orphan refugee from Siberia, who had been hired as Amélie’s companion. However, the Matisses’ marriage ran afoul not of any romantic rival but for the artist’s wish to stand on his own. The first climax came years before in 1913, when Amélie sat more than a hundred times for the Portrait of Madame Matisse. A friend’s diary reported at the time. “Crazy! weeping! By night he recites the Lord’s Prayer! By day he quarrels with his wife!” The portrait, which was the last work to enter Shchukin’s collection, caused Matisse “palpitations, high blood pressure and a constant drumming in his ears.” Such frenzy was not rare when Matisse had difficulty with a painting. He referred to the painting years later in a letter to her as “the one that made you cry, but in which you look so pretty.” Amélie ceded routine leadership of the family to Marguerite. The 1913 portrait was his last painting of her. Matisse and his wife met the last time to discuss details of their legal separation, in July 1939. One of its key provisions was that everything would be divided equally between the couple. The meeting took place in Paris at the Gare St. Lazare and lasted thirty minutes, during which Amélie Matisse kept up a flow of small talk while her husband."My wife never looked at me, but I didn't take my eyes off her...," Matisse wrote on the night of that final encounter: "I couldn't get a word out.... I remained as if carved out of wood, swearing never to be caught that way again." "I'm going to try to isolate myself as if I were still absent,'' Matisse announced on his first return to Paris since the official separation from his wife, 'rarely leaving his apartment except for visits to the cinema (his first color film, starring Danny Kaye...

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - La Comédie Humaine Lithograph from 1954. Dimensions of work: 35.5 x 26.5 cm Publisher: Tériade, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition. Fast and s...

Artist: Walasse Ting Title: Grape Flavor Year: 1979 Print - Lithograph on Somerset paper   21'' x 28.75'' Edition: Signed in pencil and marked 198/200 Image size: 17.5" x 26" inches ...

Three iconic Leon Bakst costume designs for Le Dieu Bleu ( The Blue God ) a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine and written by Cocteau. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1912. It tells the story of a girl who tries to dissuade her fiancé from becoming a priest and is thereafter tormented by demons; but she is eventually saved by the Blue God, a part performed by Vaslaw Nijinsky, the greatest male dancer of his time. Fokine’s choreography and Bakst’s costumes drew upon Siamese dance and Hindu sculpture. These three prints are vintage reproductions quite unlike the reproductions of today. They each have the look of original watercolors and are backed on heavy grey rag paper with a hand painted gold border. Properly framed they will definitely look like the original drawing. The size of the actual prints varies slightly but the background paper size is consistently 10.5 x 15.5. Born in Russia in 1866, Léon Bakst belonged to a young generation of European artists who rebelled against 19th-century stage realism, sparking a revolution in theatre design. His fame lay in the sets and costumes he designed for Serge Diaghilev’s (1872 – 1929) legendary dance company the Ballets Russes, and his huge pageant spectaculars for the dancer and patron of the performing arts, Ida Rubinstein...

Image was created by Banksy for Greenpeace to highlight deforestation issues. Features famous cartoon characters blindfolded in the midst of a destroyed forest. Very limited distribu...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Departure of The Fisherman MEDIUM: Lithograph SIGNED: Hand Signed EDITION NUMBER: 32/150 MEASUREMENTS: 25.75" x 38" YEAR: 1965 FRAMED: No CONDIT...

Lucien Coutaud, French (1904 - 1977) - Le Taureau Blanc V, Year: 1957, Medium: Etching, Image Size: 7.75 x 5 inches, Size: 13 x 10 in. (33.02 x 25.4 cm), Description: From the coll...

Medium: lithograph (after the original lithograph poster). This poster was executed in 1939 by Raoul Dufy. The lithograph offered here was printed by Mourlot in 1959, reproducing the...

after Henri MATISSE Edition of 200 with the printed signature, as issued 76 x 56 cm With stamp of the Succession Matisse References : Artvalue - Succession Matisse

'Eglise de L'abbaye de St Denis', tinted lithograph by Felix Benoist (1818-1896). From a series of lithographs depicting the famous buildings of Paris - 'Paris dans sa Splendeur', p...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, Untitled (Nude Dancer in Modernist Stage-setting), lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 20 in pencil. Number 20 of Volume ...

This Egypt poster was created circa 1960 by the gifted American artist David Klein (1918 -2005) for TWA. The image is dominated by a camel head with a very colorful tassel decorated ...

Savo Radulović, Serbian American (1911 - 1991) - Exodus, Medium: Hand colored Lithograph, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, Edition: 20, Image Size: 9.5 x 14.25 inches, Size...

Plants are things of beauty, but they have a purpose beyond decoration. This piece invites quiet reflection on human’s relationship with plants. I love history and stories and was in...

Original linen-backed 1974 Spoleto poster. Roman Polanski directed Alban Berg's opera LuLu at the Spoleto Festival, which was conducted by Christopher K...

Leonetto Cappiello's original "Je ne fume que le Nil" poster, created in 1916 and printed by Vercasson in Paris, for Papier à Cigarettes Joseph Bar...

Constantin Terechkovitch, Russian (1902 - 1978) - Girls with Dachshund, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 91/150, Image Size: 25.5 x 19.75 inches, Size: 28....

Beautiful figurative giclée and watercolor limited edition print titled "The Aunties", a homage to the classical figurative sculpture The Three Graces, by Anne Ormsby, a Aptos, Calif...

Original poster: HEAD OUT TO OZ, artist: James McMullan. Size 24" x 37". Rolled, Not folded; very good to excellent lithograph condition. Year: ...

This large poster for the Harvard University Art Museums features a stunning reproduction of an artwork by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood...

Pierre AMBROGIANI (1907-1985) Dancing Sailors, 1974 Original Lithograph (Gourdon Workshop) Signed with the artist's stamp On vellum Arches 38 x 28 cm (c. 14.9 x 11 in) Excellent co...

The 1932 original poster after A.M. Cassandre for Dubo Dubon Dubonnet is one of the most iconic pieces of advertising art from the early 20th century. Designed by the renowned French artist Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, this poster is a striking example of modernist commercial design that revolutionized the way products were promoted in the 1930s. The playful, rhythmic slogan “Dubo Dubon Dubonnet” has become synonymous with the drink, elevating Dubonnet to a cultural symbol of France’s post-war glamour. Dubonnet, originally created in 1846 as a medicinal tonic, was transformed into one of the most celebrated aperitifs in France by the time the 1932 poster...

Lithograph on vélin Lafuma paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good Condition; never framed or matted. Notes: From the volume, Dessins de Henri-Matisse, 1925. Published by Édi...

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 'Dancing', lithograph, 1928, edition 30, Davis L-29. Signed, dated, and numbered '8/30' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, printed on cream chine appliqué on heavy off-white wove backing; the full sheet with wide margins (1 3/8 to 4 7/8 inches), in excellent condition. Printed by Desjobert, Paris. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Impressions of this work are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum (Japan). ABOUT THIS WORK The French economy boomed from 1921 until the Great Depression reached Paris in 1931. This period called 'Les années folles' or the 'Crazy Years', saw Paris reestablished as a capital of art, music, literature, and cinema. Paris in the 1920s and 1930s was the home and meeting place of some of the world's most prominent painters, sculptors, composers, dancers, poets, and writers. For those in the arts, it was, as Ernest Hemingway described it, "A moveable feast". Paris was home to an exceptional number of galleries, art dealers, and a network of wealthy patrons who offered commissions and held salons. Pablo Picasso, perhaps the most famous artist in Paris, shared renown with a remarkable group of others, including the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, the Belgian René Magritte, the Italian Amedeo Modigliani, the Russian émigré Marc Chagall, the Catalan and Spanish artists Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Juan Gris, and the German surrealist...

Coloured lithograph on paper, edited in 1969. Limited edition of 90 copies, numbered as 54/90 in lower left corner. Paper size: 61 x 81 cm Framed size: 76 x 96 cm Very good conditio...

Original poster, with the magnificent colors, realized by Pierre Commarmond 🇫🇷 (1897-1983) who was a French painter and poster designer. He notably realized numerous posters for t...

Amicalement is a hand-colored etching and drypoint, signed by Chas Laborde on the lower right margin. Hand-titled on the lower left margin. This original print is hand-colored with t...

Original pochoir process print. Paris, Galerie Lutetia, circa 1920.

"Tomorrow my fair one shall have a dove…(M.538)" is one of twelve lithographs that Marc Chagall created for the portfolio "In the Land of the Gods" from 1967. The title refers to wri...

Original Some Like it Hot vintage movie poster. A Qualcuno Piace Caldo". Linen-backed Italian size 39" x 55", in Good condition. Ready to frame. The images are of the exact poster you will receive. These Italian vintage movie...

Original Durham, England 1953 British Railways vintage poster. Conservation linen backed in excellent condition; it is ready to frame. This vintage poster features a modern mid-century design that adds nostalgia and charm to any space. The image on the poster is an original 1953 artwork by Anthony Frank Kersting, showcasing two women sitting under a tree by the river, engaged in fishing. Durham England Theme: The poster highlights the beauty of Durham, England, with the iconic Durham cathedrals showcased prominently in the center of the image, surrounded by white clouds. Perfect for Decoration: This vintage poster is perfect for decorating any space, whether it's your home, office, studio, or any other area that could benefit from a touch of vintage charm. Unique Collectible: As an original vintage poster, this unique collectible can add value to any vintage art collection...

The 1897 original exhibition poster by Henry Thiriet for Pierrefort Estampes et affiches is a beautiful example of late 19th-century French graphic design. Created to promote an exhi...

Etching on wove Arches paper. Hand signed and numbered in ink. Edition of 125 prints. Published by Editions Albert Skira, Paris, in 1930. Very good condition. Catalogue Bloch no. 132.

A young apprentice geisha from Kyoto poses before a gold leaf screen. She is both alluring and slightly distant at the same time, not an easy balance for an artist to convey. This p...

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - La Comédie Humaine Lithograph from 1954. Dimensions of work: 35.5 x 26.5 cm Publisher: Tériade, Paris. The work is in Excellent condition. Fast and s...

Alphonse Mucha worked mainly as a poster artist and became an influential figure of Art Nouveau in late 1890s, when poster illustrations were emerging as popular art form and new pri...

DOB: MYXOMYCETE Date of creation: 2017 Medium: Offset lithograph with cold stamp on paper Edition: 300 Size: 68 x 68 cm Condition: In mint conditions, brand new and never framed Obse...

The circa 1990 original advertising poster by Philippe Sommer for Liquoristerie de Provence introduces Versinthe, a unique liquor infused with absinthe plants. Limited to just 550 co...