Continental Europe - Portrait Prints

Young Woman is an original litograph, realized by Sandro Trotti in 1980s. Representing a young woman exalted by a wonderful contrast of colors, this original print is hand-signed in...

Kneeling Female Nude, Turning to the Right is a beautiful lithograph from the portfolio "Erotica" by Egon Schiele. It is a reproduction of the ho...

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

Jacques Villon - Woman - Original Etching Circa 1949 Signed in pencil and numbered Dimensions : 34.8 x 25 cm

Portrait of Adolph Menzel is a magnificent drypoint realized by Giovanni Boldini in 1897. Reference: Buzzoni / M. Toffanello, Museo Giovanni Boldini, G...

The work comes directly from the artist, is numbered out of limited edition of 20, signed and made on sealed paper. RAFAŁ OLBIŃSKI (born in 1943) He graduated from the Faculty of Ar...

Le Masque de la Mort Rouge is a phototype reproduction realized after Odilon Redon. They belong to the suite "Odilon Redon Peintre, Dessinateur et Graveur", published by Henri Felu...

Woman's Face is a lithograph realized by Franco Gentilini Perfect conditions. The artwork represents a face of woman in a greenish frame through soft a...

Kabuki actor is aWoodcut print realized in the early 20th Century after Utagawa Kunisada. Good condition and Beautiful colored woodblock print, included a cardboard passpartout. I...

Jean Cocteau ( 1889 -1963 ) " Orphée à la lyre " signed and dated jean Cocteau 1958 . marked and numbered (10/50) Edition originale de Jean Cocteau Atelier Madeline-Jolly 10/50 (u...

Nude Girl With Raised Arms is a beautiful lithograph from the portfolio " Erotica " after Egon Schiele. It is a reproduction of the homonym pencil drawing ...

Face is an original contemporary artwork realized by Franco Gentilini in 1970s. Mixed colored lithograph. Hand signed and numbered on the lower margin. Edition of XXVI/XXXV. Incl...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Actress Signed in the plate Dimensions: 65 x 44 cm Jean Cocteau Writer, artist and film director Jean Cocteau was one of the most influen...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Europe's Diversity Signed in the plate Dimensions: 33 x 46 cm Edition: 200 Luxury print edition from the portfolio of Sciaky 1961 Jean Coc...

Old Samurai is a Woodcut print realized in late 19 century after Utagawa Kunisada. Good condition and Beautiful colored woodblock print, included a cardboard passpartout (46x32 cm...

Portrait of Madame is an original artwork realized by Charles Waltner in the second half of the XX century. Etching on paper. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right corner of...

Garibaldi is a rare original Colored Lithograph, realized by Antonio Masutti in the 1960. The status of preservation Good. The artwork is depicted skillfully through confident and ...

Satyr from the series "Antiquities of Herculaneum" , is an etching on paper realized by Various Authors in the 18th Century. Monogrammed on the plate. Good conditions. The etching...

Leibovitz’s portrait of Keith Haring is one of her most iconic shots that made the artist auction record in 2016. The photograph is proof of one of Leibovitz central themes: subtle b...

Salvador Dali - The Grand Inquisitor - Original Signed Engraving Handsigned in pencil and Numbered Edition: F195/195 - Printer: Atelier Rigal. - ...

The gloves is an original lithograph on paper realized by Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Very good conditions except for some little foxings. Sheet dimension: 21.5 x 30.5 The artwork ...

Students is a Lithograph realized by Guido Gonin in the 19th Century. Good conditions. The artwork is depicted through soft strokes in a well balanced conditions.

"Figure" is an original Lithograph artwork realized by Ernesto Treccani. Hand-signed at the bottom. Numbered, edition XLII/L In excellent conditions. This is an original Artwork r...

Christmas is an original etching on paper realized by Gian Paolo Berto, in 1976. Good conditions . Hand-signed and numbered on the lower right, rare edition of 9/20. Sheet dimensi...

Ancient Roman Statue, from the series "Antiquities of Herculaneum", is an original etching on paper realized by Pietro Campana in the 18th century. Sig...

Bengt Lindström - Original Handsigned Engraving The Seven Deadly Sins. 76 x 56 cm Signed in pencil by Bengt Lindström Paris, ABCD, 1976. Original etching in color Limited edition 90 ex. This is the unique copy offered to Claude Manesse, The story of B. Lindström was collected by Frederick Towarnicki, assisted by Agathe Malet-Buisson. The engravings were drawn on the presses of Claude Manesse. Bengt Lindström (1925-2008) Bengt Lindström was born on September 3rd, 1925 in Storsjökapell, a small isolated village in the Swedish province of Norrland. The young child thus grew up in that vast, mythical and harsh expanse of mounts, glistening lakes and endless forests known as Lapland. His father was a primary school teacher who was fond of Lapps and who showed great interest in their ethnic group and culture. The child was only three days old when Lapp King Kroik, his godfather, administered the Baptism of the Earth, where the child is conveyed between two roots of a tree to grant him protection from the Gods. Lapps as well as local lumberjacks would occasionally abandon their silent ways to tell him and reveal the tales, legends and mysteries of the Great White North. 1935-1945 : He left Storsjökapell and headed to Härnösand, where he wrote short science-fiction novellas, became a renowned athlete and began to paint. 1944-1946 : Isaac Grünewald Art School in Stockholm, Sweden. Study drawing with Aksel Jörgensen at the Copenhagen Fine Arts School in Denmark. He realized his first two lithographs, Meditation and Le Modèle Etendu (The Stretched Model). 1947-1952 : He arrived in Paris. He travelled to Italy, where he visited Florence and Assisi, developing a deep fascination for Giotto and Cimabue. He was granted a scholarship by Swedish magazine Aftontidningen, which helped him move into a workshop in Arcueil, France. He began working on mosaics. 1953-1967 : He returned to Paris, once again taking up lithography and engraving, which holds a vital position in his work. He moved into a workshop in Rueil-Malmaison. This was the start of his collaboration with the Rive Gauche Gallery in Paris. London Tooth & Sons Gallery Director M. Cochrane purchased a large number of his works. He left the workshop in Rueil-Malmaison to settle in Savigny-sur-Orge, France. He began taking to figurative art with Masks, Gods and Monsters. He exhibited with the Nouvelle Figuration Group at the Mathias Feld Gallery. He also began working with the Ariel Gallery in Paris. 1968-1978 : Lindström completed a series of 10 lithographs about Scandinavian mythology. He also completed a series of drypoint works. An association with the Protée Gallery in Toulouse, France, led to exhibitions at the Protée Gallery II in Paris starting in 1984. He executed a large mural painting the Grand Hotel in Härnösand, Sweden. He also made two large frescoes for the Nacksta-Sundsvall covered market in Sweden. He took to sharing his working time between the workshop in Savigny-sur-Orge and the one in Sundsvall. He began collaboration that was to last several years with the ABCD Gallery in Paris, which provided exclusive publication for his engravings and strong ink work. Les Hommes du Nord (Men of the North) was the first of the major tapestries. He published a boxed set album, Eddan, Eddan, Eddan, illustrating Scandinavian mythology. Together with Jacques Putman, he completed two editions of bronze sculptures, Les Enfants Sauvages (The Wild Children). 1979-1982 : He worked on glass, making thirty dishes and goblets for renowned Swedish glassmaker Kosta Boda. He painted a car for Volvo, Sweden’s leading car manufacturer. Then, close to his birthplace, he painted gigantic tarpaulins over forty metres high, covering the slopes of the neighbouring Våladalen Mountain, as a protest against the building of a dam. This action caused a sensation and provoked fierce reactions. He also created small painted papier mâché sculptures, Têtes (Heads), as well as some gold and silver jewellery. 1983 : He exhibited seven monumental 3x2.5m works at the Art and History Museum in Stockholm: Les Grands Dieux Ase (The Great Aesir Gods), depicting the gods from Scandinavian mythology: Thor, Odin, Frej, Balder, Ymer, Loki and Unknown God, as well as acrylic paintings about the Valkyries. Les Grands Dieux was ultimately exhibited in a purpose-built chapel adjoining the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in 1996. He completed Thor’s Hammer, a monumental sculpture. 1985-1990 : He lived also in the Alicante region, where Spanish friends found him a new workshop. While there he completed Novelda, an album of lithographs featuring poems by Spanish poet Paco Pastor. He completed a new mural, 5mx5m, for the Västeras Science Institute in Sweden. He then started working with the San Carlo Gallery in Milan, Italy, which coordinated all of the Italian events. Major exhibitions and retrospectives were held in Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Spain. He created two boxed set albums, containing series of 10 aquatints, Monde Autre et Chamanes (Otherworld and Shamans), featuring poems by Michel Perrin. 1991-1994 : He went back to working in black and white, completing some very-large-format works. In Murano, in association with the San Carlo Gallery, he created Grands Verres (Large Glasses), a series of large vases and sculptures made of crystal. He painted Kåtan Mimi, an 8x9m Lapp tent, for the town of Arjeplog in Swedish Lapland. He completed a couple of 2m-high painted polyester sculptures, Lui et Elle (Him and Her). He then made a new series of crystal glasses and sculptures in Murano, Italy. He completed Présence (Presence), a new 3.5x2.7m tapestry for the municipality of Timrå, Sweden. He started on the Grands Initiés (Great Insiders) series, all large format and mixed black and white techniques. He finished the strong series about Norse gods. 1995-1996 : He moved into a new workshop in Paris. A retrospective was held at the Sundsvall Museum in Sweden, and on that occasion he painted a monumental 700-m² canvass, Le Géant sur la montagne (The Giant on the Mountain), which was hung all summer long on the mountain slope facing the town. He went on to complete a suite of six silkscreen prints on the same theme. Then he inaugurated the Y, a monumental sculpture. Lindström then completed Temps Zéro (Zero Time), a watch made for Swatch. One of his works, L’hiver (Winter), made the cover of the first 1996 issue of Telerama, the leading French weekly. In association with Sydkraft Sweden, he painted a fresco for the municipality of Örebro on a 17m-high tank with a surface area of 3,000 m², located at the crossroads of major Swedish motorways, by the entrance to the Åbyverket industrial estate. He also created a 6.5m-high Tången sculpture made of painted concrete in Ånge, which was inaugurated on September 3rd in the presence of their Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden. 1997-1999 : He began working on ceramics in Albisolla, Italy. He also completed a new 30m-high fresco for the town of Örebro, located close to the tank he had painted in 1996 near Åbyverket. The year saw the inauguration of the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre in Sweden, which harbours the collection of the Bengt and Michèle Lindström Foundation, featuring the entire engravings collection (about 800 works), as well as a selection of paintings and sculptures. He completed a 4x10m mural in the lobby of the University of Eskilstuna, Sweden, and also completed two monumental frescoes on the Akkats dam and a mural on the power station facing Jokkmokk in Swedish Lapland. 2000-2003 : He painted all of the sides of a semi-articulated lorry for Scania, Sweden’s main truck manufacturer. In Italy, he completed a new series of crystal sculptures with Adriano Bérengo. He finished the Great Prophets, a series of 2x2m oil on canvass works. Swiss publisher Ides et Calendes published a small but luxurious monograph, with text by Françoise Monnin. A notebook was also published, Le Visage dans l’Art de Bengt Lindström (Faces in the Art of Bengt Lindström). He completed a substantial series of large blue acrylic paintings, Femmes (Women). 2003 : Bengt fell ill and was unable to paint, but the exhibitions went on. 2004 : Saw the release of the film by Dag Jonzon and Hans Östbom, produced by Dell’arte AB and Östbom Filmbild, about the life of Bengt Lindström. Entitled Lindström - Le Diable de la couleur et de la forme (Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil), the film was produced thanks to support from Film Västernorrland, Länsstyrelsen Västernorrland and Sveriges Television. It was broadcast on Swedish television channels. That same year, the Midlanda Contemporary Arts Centre was closed as a result of municipal policy. 2005-2007 : The 6m-high sculpture Le Loup (The Wolf), made for PEAB, was inaugurated in Botkyrka-Stockholm. Lindström – The Colour and Form Devil was screened at the Paris Swedish Cultural Centre and released on DVD. The Michèle and Bengt Lindström Foundation was donated and transferred to the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden, where a special room was prepared to host Les Grands Dieux Ase. Edition of the 1998 Ceramics, created in association with Francis Dellile’s ”La Tuilerie” workshop. The Bengt Lindström Collection was inaugurated at, Murberget, the Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand, Sweden. He illustrated Sinfonietta för Juliana, a collection of poems by Italian poet and art critic Sebastiano Grasso. On January 29th, 2008, Bengt Lindström passed away at his home in Sweden. 2008-2012 : The Fondation Krimaro presents the first volume of the works of Bengt Lindström in his collection. Numerous exhibitions-tribute to the work are presented in major cities in Europe. 2012 : Retrospective - Black and White in the engravings - Museum of Härnösand, Murberget, Sweden. Main exhibitions 1952 Fair Réalités Nouvelles – New realities, Paris, France. 1953 Craven Gallery, Paris, France. 1954 Gummeson Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Fair Salon d’Octobre, Paris, France. 1958 Breteau Gallery, Paris, France. 1959 Autour du Spontanéisme – Around the sontaneity, Stockholm, Sweden. L’Europe Nouvelle – The new Europe, LaUnited Statesnne, Switzerland. 1960 Rive Gauche Gallery, Paris, France. 1961 Tooth Gallery, London, England. Le Zodiaque Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Fair Salon de Mai, Paris, France. 1962 Nouvelle Figuration – New Figuration , Mathias Fels Gallery, Paris, France, 1964 Nord-Sud – North-South, in several cities in Sweden. Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, 15 artists of my generation. Museum of Fine Arts in Gent, Belgium, Figuration-Défiguration – Figuration – Disfigurement. 1965 Rive Gauche Gallery. Paris, France. Nord Gallery, Lille, France. Birch Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark. 1966 Museum of Modern Art, Gothenburg, Sweden. 1967 Veranneman Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, United States. Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 23 peintres in Paris. 1968 Ariel Gallery, Paris, France, followed by six exhibitions until 1976. 1969 La Pochade Gallery, Paris, France. Protée Gallery, Toulouse, France, who exhibited him in Paris, Gallery Protée II, from 1984. 1973 Galliera Museum, Paris, France. 1974 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. 1982 Gallery Protée-Arco, Madrid, Spain and Fair Foire de Cologne, Germany. 1983 Historia Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, The Ase gods and the Valkyries. 1984 Gallery Arcano XXI, Lisbon, Portugal. Gallery Christian Cheneau, Paris, France. Museum Château comtal, Carcassonne, France. 1985 Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. 1986 Gallery Sala Gaspar, Barcelona, Spain. Gallery Juan Mordo-Arco, Madrid, Spain. Gallery Italia, Alicante, Spain. Museum of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. Gallery Three Continents, New-York, United States. Gallery Protée, Toulouse France, Autour du Roi Lear – Around King Lear. 1987 Gallery Kostel, Paris, France. Gallery Zwirner, Cologne, Germany. Gallery Leu, Rottach-Egern, Germany. 1988 Maison du Lot, Figeac, France. Gallery Protée, Paris, France. Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France 1989 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France, La terre des ancêtres - The Land pf the ancestors. Gallery Protée, Paris, France, Nomads. Gallery Raab, London, England. 1990 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. Centre Culturel de Brest, France. 1991 Gallery Michèle Sadoun, Paris, France. 1992 Archotèque, Saint-Denis, La Réunion, France. Museum of Vesoul, Vesoul, France. Gallery San Carlo, Milan, Italy. 1993 Gallery 111, Lisbon, Portugal. Tonnellerie du Cognac Monnet...

Salvador Dali - The Biblia Sacra was published in 1969 by Rizzoli of Rome - SIGNATURE : printed in the image - LIMITED : 1499 - SIZE : 19 x 13 3/4" - RE...

The Man from Maisinicu is a vintage screen print poster realized in 1974 for the movie poster The Man from Maisinicu directed by Manuel Pér...

Portrait of a Woman is an original lithograph on paper, realized by Franco Gentilini (Italian Painter, 1909-1981), in Late 20th Century. The state of preservation of the artwork is ...

Old Beggar Woman with a Gourd is an engraving on ivory-colored paper realized by Charles Amand Durand (1831-1905) after an etching by Rembrandt. This wonderful piece of art belongs t...

Portrait of Garibaldi is an original Modern Artwork realized in the Second Half of the 19th Century by an Anonymous artist. Lithograph on paper. Browing of paper due to the time a...

Pablo PICASSO Carmen, The Sleeping Woman, 1949 Original burin engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned On Montval wove paper 33 x 26 cm (12.9 x 10.2 in) REFERENCES : - Catal...

Pablo PICASSO Carmen, The Round Face, 1949 Original burin engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned On Montval wove paper 33 x 26 cm (12.9 x 10.2 in) REFERENCES : - Catalog r...

Pablo PICASSO Carmen, The Smiling Face, 1949 Original burin engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned On Montval wove paper 33 x 26 cm (12.9 x 10.2 in) REFERENCES : - Catalog...

Pablo PICASSO Carmen, The Moon Woman, 1949 Original burin engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned On Montval wove paper 33 x 26 cm (12.9 x 10.2 in) REFERENCES : - Catalog r...

Composition is an original lithograph on paper realized by Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Very good conditions except for some little foxings. Sheet dimension: 23.5 x 26 On both sides...

Nude Woman is an original mixed media on cardboard artwork by Leo Guida in the XX century. The state of preservation is good except for some foxings. Sheet dimension: 35 x 50 ONn...

Arabian Face is an authentic original colored etching artwork, realized by the Italian artist Giacomo Porzano (1925-2006). Hand-signed on the lower right in pencil and dated, number...

Female Portrait is an original Contemporary artwork realized in 1966 by the italian artist Leo Guida. Hand-signed and dated in pencil on the lower right corner: Leo Guida '66. Ori...

" le Bouquetin aux Aguets " . signed Jean Cocteau ; marked and numbered Edition originale de Jean Cocteau . Atelier Madeline & Jolly N° 3/10 (underneath ). partially glazed terrac...

Henri MATISSE Teeny Original linocut Printed signature in the plate On light wove paper 31 x 24 cm (c. 12.5 x 10 in) REFRENCES : Catalogue raisonne Duthuit #723 From the unsigned, ...

Anton Maria Zanetti is a beautiful original etching and burin on laid paper, realized by the Spanish artist Joannes de Plano (active in 1770-1780), as the inscription reports aroind the oval portrait. Below image, at left the inscription: Anton: Mariae Zanetti se ipsum delineavit; below image, at right: Joannes de Plano sculpsit; below image, at center: Anton Mariae Zanetti Alexandr: f: / Artis Pictoriae, at Linguae Graecae peritiss: / Per XLII annos a publ: D. Marci Bibliotheca benemerenti / Hic dormit in Domino / Ano LXXIII Aetatis suae...

Original Lithograph - Pablo Picasso "Le Peintre et son Modèle" - Original Lithograph from "Picasso Lithographe IV" Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm 1964...

Jean Cocteau - Parametabolismes - Original Lithograph Signed "Jean Cocteau" in the plate and dated 1956 in the plate. 39 x 29 cm Edition: 500 Hand numbered Stamp signed lower right

Woman In Red is a beautiful colored lithograph realized by the Italian artist Pompeo Borra (Milan, 1898-1973). Edited by La Nuova Foglio, Macerata. Hand-signed in pencil "P. Borra"...

L’Ecuyer (The Squire) is an engraving made by the Parisian artist Louis-Marin Bonnet, realized in the second half of 1700 in Paris. Inside the matrix, the title is engraved on the lower center, whilst “L. Bonnet direx” is engraved on the lower right. The state of preservation is somewhat good, except for fungal foxing spread on the sides of the figure and some small stains, one of which is more evident on the lower center of the image. The right margin of the paper is fringed with tiny tears. Louis-Marin Bonnet lived from 1736 to 1793 in Paris. He was a painter and engraver, and as such he invented one of the first color-printing methods with many matrices, with a pastel-like effect. In 1769, he published a treatise titled Le Pastel en gravure inventé, et execute par Louis Bonnet...

Le Petit Maitre (The Small Master) is an engraving made by the Parisian artist Louis-Marin Bonnet and realized in the second half of 1700 in Paris. Inside the matrix, the title is engraved on the lower center, whilst “A Paris, chez Bonnet rue St. Jacques” appears on the lower right. The state of preservation is somewhat good, except for fungal foxing spread on the left margin and some stains, of which one is more visible on the higher left of the image. The higher, lower, and left margins are fringed and present tiny tears. Louis-Marin Bonnet lived from 1736 to 1793 in Paris. He was a painter and engraver, and as such he invented one of the first color-printing methods with many matrices, with a pastel-like effect. In 1769, he published a treatise titled Le Pastel en gravure inventé, et execute par Louis Bonnet...

Pablo PICASSO Carmen, Woman in Profile, 1949 Original aquatint engraving (Atelier Lacourière, Paris) Unsigned Dated in the plate On Arches vellum 49 x 35 cm (c. 19.2 x 13.7 in) REF...

Original Lithograph - Henri Matisse - Apollinaire Artist : Henri MATISSE 13 x 10 inches Edition: 151/330 References : Duthuit-Matisse Catalogue raisonné 31 MATISSE'S BIOGRAPHY YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born in a tiny, tumbledown weaver's cottage on the rue du Chêne Arnaud in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis at eight o'clock in the evening on the last night of the year, 31 December 1869 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis is in the extreme north of France near the Belgian border). The house had two rooms, a beaten earth floor and a leaky roof. Matisse said long afterwards that rain fell through a hole above the bed in which he was born. Matisse’s ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the convulsive social and industrial upheavals of the nineteenth century. Matisse grew up in a world that was still detaching itself from a way of life in some ways unchanged since Roman times. The coming of the railway had put Bohain on the industrial map, but people still traveled everywhere on foot or horseback. Matisse’s father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse, was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. Warmhearted, outgoing, capable and energetic, she was small and sturdily built with the fashionable figure of the period: full breasts and hips, narrow waist, neat ankles and elegant small feet. She had fair skin, broad cheekbones and a wide smile. "My mother had a face with generous features," said her son Henri, who always spoke of her with particular tenderness of the sensitivity. Throughout the forty years of her marriage, she provided unwavering, rocklike support to her husband and her sons. Matisse later said: "My mother loved everything I did." He grew up in nearby Bohain-en-Vermandois, an industrial textile center, until the age of ten, when his father sent him to St. Quentin for lycée. Anna Heloise worked hard. She ran the section of her husband's shop that sold housepaints, making up the customers' orders and advising on color schemes. The colors evidently left a lasting impression on Henri. The artist himself later said he got his color sense from his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Henri was the couple’s first son. The young Matisse was an awkward youth who seemed ill-adapted to the rigors of the North; in particular, he hated the gelid winters. He was a pensive child and by his own account he was a dreamy, frail and not outstandingly bright. In later life he never lost his feeling for his native soil, for seeds and growing things he had encountered in his youth. The fancy pigeons he kept in Nice more than half a century after he left home recalled the weavers' pigeon-lofts tucked away behind even the humblest house in Bohain. Matisse's childhood memories were of a stern upbringing. "Be quick!" "Look out!" "Run along!" "Get cracking!" were the refrains that rang in his ears as a boy. In later years when survival itself depended on habits of thrift and self-denial, the artist prided himself on being a man of the North. When Matisse in turn had children of his own to bring up, he chided himself for any lapse in discipline or open display of tenderness as weakness on his part. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. Although he considered law as tedious, he nonetheless passed the bar in 1888 with distinction and began his practice begrudgingly. Once Matisse finished school, his father, a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office. PAINTING: BEGINNINGS Matisse’s discovery of his true profession came about in an unusual manner. Following an attack of appendicitis, he began to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during the period of convalescence. He said later, “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.” Matisse’s mother was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his own emotions. Matisse was so committed to his art that he later extended a warning to his fiancée, Amélie Parayre, whom he later married: “I love you dearly, mademoiselle; but I shall always love painting more.” Matisse had discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. His drastic change of profession deeply disappointed his father. Two years later in 1891 Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. After a discouraging year at the Académie Julian, he left in disgust at the overly perfectionist style of teaching there. Afterwards he trained with Gustave Moreau, an artist who nurtured more progressive leanings. In both studios, as was usual, students drew endless figure studies from life. From Bouguereau, he learned the fundamental lessons of classical painting. His one art-schooled technical standby, almost a fetish, was the plumb line. No matter how odd the angles in any Matisse, the verticals are usually dead true. Moreau was a painter who despised the "art du salon", so Matisse was destined, in a certain sense, to remain an "outcast" of the art world. He initially failed his drawing exam for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but persisted and was finally accepted. Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters having made four the French still-life master paintings in the Louvre. Although he executed numerous copies after the old masters he also studied contemporary art. His first experimentations earned him a reputation as the rebellious member of his studio classes. In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime. In 1897 and 1898, he visited the painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh who had been a good friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Matisse also observed Russell's and other artists' stable marriages. This probably influenced him to find in Amélie Noellie Parayre, his future wife, his anchor. The Dinner Table (1897) was Matisse’s first masterpiece, and he had spent the entire winter working on the oeuvre. Though the Salon displayed the piece, they hung the work in a poor location, disgusted by what they considered its radical, Impressionist aspects. Caroline Joblaud was Matisse's early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline (also called Camille) gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse's marriage to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted contrary to conventional hostility such arrangements provoked. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life. MARRIAGE WITH AMÉLIE NOELLIE PARAYRE The Matisses of Bohain and the Parayres of Beauzelle had outwardly nothing in common, and there was no reason why Matisse and Amélie should ever have met. But in October 1897 Matisse went to a wedding in Paris and happened to sit next to her at the uproarious banquet that followed. There had been no banal flirtation between them, even when the wine flowed, each recognized the other as true metal, and when they got up from the table she held out her hand to Henri Matisse in a way that he never forgot. Matisse at that time was not yet the professorial figure of legend. He was known as a prankster, as a ribald and anti-clerical songster, and as someone who had once broken up a café concert performance just for the hell of it. Amélie's relatives operated at that time within a social, intellectual, and political context of which Matisse had had no previous experience. They stood for free thinking, for the separation of church and state, and for the secularization of the French educational system. Her family, better off that that of Matisse, provided the support he needed for the budding artist. When Matisse married Amélie in January 1898, they had been introduced only three months after. Amélie's Aunt Noélie and two of her brothers ran a successful women's shop called the Grande Maison des Modes. Before her marriage, Amélie had shown a gift for designing, making, and modeling hats for a fashionable clientele. In June 1899, she found a partner and opened a shop of her own on the rue de Châteaudun. This allowed Henri and herself to live, with Marguerite, in a tiny two-room apartment on the same street. Madame Matisse, fervently loyal, would play a fundamental role in the life and career of the artist for more than 40 years. Marguerite was to become her father's lifetime mainstay In 1902 disaster struck. Amélie’s parents were disgraced and financially ruined in a spectacular scandal of national scope, as the unsuspecting employees of a woman whose financial empire was based on fraud. Thanks to his early years in a lawyer's office, Matisse was able to busy himself to great effect in the organization of his father-in-law's defense. When all about him lost their heads, burst into tears, and felt more than sorry for themselves, Henri Matisse dealt with their problems one by one. The ordeal had taken its toll, in more than one way. His doctors ordered Matisse to go to Bohain and take two months' complete rest. Amélie had lost both her hat shop and the apartment on the rue de Châteaudun. For the first time, Henri, Amélie and the three children were united in Bohain, having nowhere else to go. Hillary Spurling, one of Matisse’s biographers, asserts that Amélie’s memories of that public disgrace nurtured a “suspicion of the outside world” that would always mark the Matisse family. The Matisse family formed a kind of hermetic unit which revolved around the artist’s work and profession. They fitted their activities according his breaks and work sessions. Silence was essential. Even during the years when Matisse lived mostly alone in Nice, an annual ritual of unpacking, stretching, framing and hanging ended with the whole family settling down to respond to the paintings. The conference might last several days. Then the dealers were admitted. Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). He was not always in peace with his family. He wrote that their views were not always in accord “which disturbs me considerably in my work, for which I require the most complete calm and from those how surround me, a serenity that I cannot find here. I intend to move to a village a few league away.” Pierre, his brother, Jean, and Marguerite remained close to their father through every vicissitude, and Matisse, in his last invalid years, was devoted to his several grandchildren. In 1899, at a time when his paintings displayed rebellious talent but not much clear direction, Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, he selected Jaguar Devouring a Hare a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye. Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations. Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, "In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most." By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes -- which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves -- Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life. Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. After years in poverty, Matisse went through his "dark period" (1902-03), moved briefly to naturalism, went back to a dark palette and told friends in 1903 that he had lost all desire to paint and had almost decided to give up. Fortunately, Matisse was able to earn some money painting a frieze for the World Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also traveled extensively in the early 1900s when tourism was still a new idea. Brought on by railroad, steamships, and other forms of transportation that appeared during the industrial revolution, travel became a popular pursuit. As a cultured tourist, he developed his art with regular doses of travel. FAUVISM Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work. In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity . Matisse hit his stride in the avant-garde art world in the first years of the new decade. He explored the modern art scene through frequent visits to galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Vollard, where he was exposed to work by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Matisse’s first solo exhibition took place in 1904, without much success. In 16 May 1905 he arrived in the charming Catalan port of Collioure, in the south of France. He soon invited the painter André Derain (1880-1954), 11 years his junior, to join him. By 1905, Matisse was considered spearhead the Fauve movement in France, characterized by its spontaneity and roughness of execution as well as use of raw color straight from the palette to the canvas. Matisse combined pointillist color and Cézanne’s way of structuring pictorial space stroke by stroke to develop Fauvism - a way less of seeing the world than of feeling it with one’s eyes. When the Fauve summer drew to an end, Derain left Collioure with 30 paintings, 20 drawings and some 50 sketches, never to return, while Matisse departed some days later bringing back to Paris 15 finished paintings, 40 aquarelles, over 100 drawings. He returned Collioure in the summers of 1906, 1907, 1911 and 1914. The lure of the sun would prove always to have powers of restoration to the artist throughout his life particularly after periods of great emotional exertion. When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d'Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse's most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves' color "sticks of dynamite." The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse. This picture was bought be was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, a fact which had a very positive effect on Matisse who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work. Matisse continued his experiments in Collioure, visible in the painting The Open Window and the View of Collioure , also a characteristic work of Fauvism in its raw color and disregard for details. Both of these works of the landscape in the French Mediterranean present a distinct development towards the spontaneous and uninhibited style. Other than André Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck were also members of the Fauve movement. However, Matisse’s intimate friends among artists were mostly easygoing minor painters, such as Albert Marquet. Matisse’s temperamental aloneness made him prey to vertiginous depressions. He later recalled a breakdown that he underwent in Spain, in 1910: “My bed shook, and from my throat came a little high-pitched cry that I could not stop.” From the onset of is career women were from one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. His Joy of Life (1906) draws us into the world of hallucinatory vividness composed of nymphs set in an idyllic open fields dressed in pure color and sensual outline. Two women lounge in the sunlight while two more chat on the edge of the forest. One crouches to pick some flowers while her companion weaves a chain of them into her hair. A couple embraces each other while another group engages in a lively round-dance in the distance. In this way, Joy of Life depicts woodland nymphs engaging in a celebration of their life, their womanhood, and their sexuality. Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means. Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne. FAME The decline of the Fauvist movement, after 1906, did nothing to deter the rise of Matisse. From 1906 -1917 he lived in Paris and established his home, studio, and school at Hôtel Biron. Among his neighbors is sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer Jean Cocteau, and dancer Isadora Duncan. Many of his finest works were created in this period, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. In fact, the aim of Matisse’s art was something less than revolutionary. In 1908, in a famous statement drawn from “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse declared as his ideal an art “for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” Matisse's personal habits were incredibly regular. On a typical day rose early and worked all morning with a second work session after lunch, followed by violin practice, a simple supper (vegetable soup, two hard-boiled eggs, salad and a glass of wine) and an early bedtime. In 1906, he created a series of 12 lithographs, all variations on the theme of a seated nude. He chose to share his graphic work with the public almost immediately. The lithographs were exhibited at the Druet Gallery in Paris the same year that they were produced, and the woodcuts were shown at the Salon des Independants in the spring of 1907. In 1907 Appolinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." Notwithstanding newly-won fame, Matisse's work continued to encounter vehement criticism and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Blue Nude was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913. Contrary to the fate of the Impressionists, Matisse and other Fauves were able to exhibit in art galleries. In 1908 Paul Cassirer, the German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, staged an exhibit of Matisse’s works in Berlin. In the same year the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York organized him one-man show in his tiny Manhattan gallery called 291 which effectively introduced Matisse the powerful American art market. In the first decade of his notoriety as the leader of the Fauves, Matisse was more admired by foreigners than by the French. It was, after all, the Russians and the Americans who acquired significant collections of his early work almost as quickly as it was created. The great Matisses we see in the Paris museums today were mostly acquired after the artist's death in lieu of death duties. It took the French a good deal longer to understand Matisse's greatness-longer, certainly, than the international cadre of aspiring talents that flocked to his classes when he was still one of the most controversial figures in the Paris avant-garde. In the summer of 1907, Matisse and his wife went on a long trip to italy "for work and Pleasure," visiting Venice and Padua, where they admired Giotto's frescos. In Florence the were the guests of the Steins in their villa in Fiesole. From this base matisse visited Arezzo, to study Piero della Francesca, and Siena, attracted by the early Sienese painters, especially, Duccio. PICASSO, GERTRUDE STEIN AND THE CONE SISTERS During the first decade of the 20th century Americans in Paris Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah took keen interest in Matisse's art. In addition, Gertrude Stein's two friends from Baltimore. Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their works.The Cone Sisters acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings. In April of 1906 during a gathering at the house of the legendary Gertrude Stein, Matisse was introduced to Pablo Picasso who was 11 years younger. Picasso and Matisse were poles apart aesthetically and their life styles were no less so. Matisse was markedly taller and more polished than the stocky, cocky Catalan, was then ruler of the turbulent Paris avant-garde art scene. The two were said to have always been looking over their shoulders at each other. It is well-known that after their rivalry grew, sides were taken. Picasso later said: "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he." One key difference between their pictorial concepts was that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lives, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Gertrude Stein, who loved stirring things up, wrote, "the feeling between the Picassoites and the Matisse-ites became bitter." Although Matisse dryly noted that "our disputes were always friendly," it should be pointed out that Picasso and his friends threw suction-cupped darts at Matisse's 1906 Portrait of Marguerite (which Picasso had obtained in a trade for his own Pitcher, Bowl and Lemon, from 1907). While the rift between the two artists eventually healed, the one between their supporters remained. ACADEMIE MATISSE IN PARIS & SERGEI SHCHUKIN In 1909, with the Matisse family lived in a former convent on the Boulevard des Invalides, in Paris, where the artist conducted a painting school. His immense notoriety, which had been confirmed in 1905-06 by Joy of Life, a work which seemed to trash every possible norm of pictorial order and painterly finesse.His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1911 until 1917. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were several of his most loyal students. Although it lasted for only three years (1908-11), and yet, during its brief existence the Académie Matisse became one of the principal crossroads of modern painting for a number of gifted European and American artists. Given the reputation Matisse had acquired as the"wild man" of modernist color, it must have come as a shock to some of his early students that the program of instruction he offered was remarkably conservative. As Jean Heiberg, the first Norwegian to enroll in the Académie, later wrote in a memoir: "The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, acquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, Mars and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable." Among Matisse’s students was Olga Meerson, a Russian Jew who had studied with Wassily Kandinsky in Munich and, already possessed of an elegant style, sought to remake herself under Matisse’s tutelage. Amélie suspected the worst. Perhaps a combination of Amélie’s jealousy and Meerson’s neediness caused a Matisse to end the connection, with bad feeling all around. Meerson moved to Munich, where she married the musician Heinz Pringsheim, a brother-in-law of Thomas Mann. Never having fulfilled her promise as a painter, she committed suicide in Berlin, in 1929. One of Matisse's biographers, with access to much of the artist's correspondence, contends that the artist, after his marriage, rarely, if ever, had sex with models, despite his apparent feelings for many. Two Russian art collectors stood out at the beginning of the 20th century: the cloth merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and the textile manufacturer Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Both acquired modern French art, developed a sensibility for spotting new trends, and publicized them in Russia. In this period, Matisse had initiated his fecund association with the Russian textile magnate and visionary collector, Sergei Shchukin. The artist created one of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission. Inspired by a circular dance-- perhaps a sardana - performed by fishermen at Collioure, this painting embodies the clash between the sacred and reality. Human hands link together, but they form a divine spirit. Moreover, Matisse all but abandoned perspective The work ’s flatness emphasizes the idea, colors, and material, a notion that made Matisse a model for Modernists. The other painting commissioned was Music, 1909. Shchukin was considered by some almost as a co-producer of some of the artist’s greatest works and was strongly commuted to the French painter’s work. Concerning the violent attacks on his friend, the Russian wrote to the artist: “The public is against you, but the future is yours.” By 1914 Shchukin’s house in Moscow contained thirty-seven Matisses. “He always picked the best,” the artist said. During the political revolution Lenin expropriated Shchukin collection in person but allowed Shchukin to remain, in servants’ quarters, as caretaker and guide. He died in Paris, in 1936. The collection is now in the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums From about 1911 to 1915, Matisse struggled with the ideas of Cubism, an experiment he felt he was "not participating in" because it did not "speak to [his] deeply sensory nature." MOROCCO Like many avant-garde artists in Paris, Matisse was receptive to a broad range of influences. He is one of the first painters to take an interest in various forms of “primitive” art. His art was profoundly influenced by Easter art as well. Matisse first flirted with the idea of visiting Morocco after a trip to the Moorish part of Spain in the winter of 1910. This taste of the Moors incited a flame of hope that there would be greater inspiration to paint in Morocco. Furthermore, well aware of the exotic subjects in Morocco that had engendered a wealth of inspiration for the famous French painter Delacroix when he visited the country over eighty years before, Matisse felt Morocco would stimulate his painting genius in ways Europe could not. He strove for neither the picturesque nor the pornographic. In Morocco, Matisse seems to have had difficulties finding models who would pose for him, particularly women because of the law of the veil. Only Jewesses and prostitutes were exempt. Luckily, Matisse to have found the prostitute Zorah for the purpose although he did not paint her as a prostitute. Instead, in his first picture of her, Zorah en Jaune, sexual themes are most conspicuously absent from the canvas. As a prostitute used to exposing and flaunting her body, Zorah could have easily been painted nude or with less clothing to show herself off, but instead Matisse chooses to keep her clothed and posed with prudence. Unlike the primitive, nude Western women in the Fauve Joy of Life. Moroccan Zorah is clothed with respect and detail to her finer characteristics. He is developing his ability to paint with awareness of the non-sexual qualities of his subject, a movement away from Fauve women. Many of Matisse's Moroccan paintings are covered only in the thinnest washes of pigment, as if he wanted the texture of the unpainted canvas to show through so that it would add rawness to the browns and grays. Matisse's odalisques have been described as "elaborate fictions" in which the artist re-created the image of the Islamic harem using French models posed in his Nice apartment. The fabrics, screens, carpets, furnishings and costuming recalled the exoticism of the "Orient" and provided a theme for Matisse's preoccupation with the figure and elaborate patterns of exotic fabrics. Although Matisse's interest in textiles are evident in his compositions made during his 1906 trip to Morocco, it didn't begin as a typical European attraction to the exotic. It was already present to him as a descendent of generations of weavers, who was raised among weavers in Bohain-en-Vermandois, which in the 1880's and 90's was a center of production of fancy silks for the Parisian fashion houses. Like virtually all his northern compatriots, he had an inborn appreciation of their texture and design. He understood the properties of weight and hang, he knew how to use pins and paper patterns, and he was supremely confident with scissors. Matisse was known to be an avid collector of fabrics, from his days as a poor art student in Paris to the latter years of his life, when his Nice studio overflowed with Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colorful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens, and backcloths. Textiles soon became the springboard for his radical experiments with perspective and an art based on decorative patterning and pure harmonies of color and line. When he moved house, he also moved his fabrics, describing them as "my working library." He added to the collection all his life, from markets in Algeria, Morocco and Tahiti to the end-of-season sales of Parisian haute couture. The revitalizing spirit of Morocco would live on in the artist's imagination until the cutouts of the artist's last years. AFTER PARIS Matisse continued to evolve in unexpected directions even though never became an abstract painter (though some of his most adventurous works, such as the View of Notre Dame of 1914 or the Yellow Curtain of 1916 come close). His motifs were always recognizable, and the tension between the subject and the formal aspects of the painting was a central concept of his artistic ideal. Matisse moved to Nice in 1917 to distance himself from wartime activity, where bright, warm colors showed him "simpler venues which won’t stifle the spirit." His spirit became loyal to the "silver clarity of light" in Nice, and he returned to Paris only for a few months each summer. The years 1917–30 are known as his early Nice period, when his principal subject remained the female figure or an odalisque dressed in oriental costume or in various stages of undress, depicted as standing, seated, or reclining in a luxurious, exotic interior of Matisse's own creation. These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns. They emanate the atmosphere suggestive of a harem. In 1929, Matisse temporarily suspended easel painting and traveled to America to sit on the jury of the 29th Carnegie International and, in 1930, spent some time in Tahiti and New York as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Merion, Pennsylvania.He was especially thrilled with New York. An important collector of modern art, and owner of the largest Matisse holdings in America, Dr. Albert Barnes of Merion, commissioned the artist to paint a large mural for the two-story picture gallery of his mansion. Matisse chose the subject of the dance, a theme that had preoccupied him since his early Fauve masterpiece Joy of Life. Americans were prominent among Matisse's patrons throughout his career, beginning with the Steins (Leo Stein bought Joy of Life right out of the Salon in 1906) and including the Cone sisters of Baltimore and the notoriously cantankerous Barnes. The foundational Matisse monograph was written during his lifetime by another American, Alfred Barr. Also important in promoting Matisse's presence before the transatlantic public was the Manhattan gallery founded in 1931 by the artist's son, Pierre, who remained a prominent figure in the New York art world for almost six decades. In addition to his father, he represented Balthus, Calder, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miro, Tanguy and others, many of them also friends. Throughout his long and productive career, Matisse periodically refreshed his creative energies by turning from painting to drawing, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression. In his lifetime he also produced 12 illustrated books which were known as “livre d’artiste” (artist’s book), a specific type of illustrated book that became common in France around the turn of the century. These books were deluxe, limited editions, meant to be collected and admired as works of art, as well as, read. This process began when Swiss publisher Albert Skira first approached the modern master in 1930 to illustrate the work, Poesies, by 19th century French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé . Matisse responded to Skira’s invitation with great enthusiasm and that summer, devoted most of his attention to the commission while he was residing in Paris. The result was a collection of 29 beautiful etchings, of which the Museum will display 16. The subject matter, like the poems themselves, varies considerably, although many of the images reflect the artist’s vacation to the South Pacific. Matisse’s etchings of Mallarmé’s poems are considered among his greatest works in the print medium. In 1941, again for Skira, Matisse began one of his most complicated and successful printmaking projects, Florilege des Amours de Ronsard, illustrating the love poems of 16th century French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard. Ronsard’s subject and strong imagery lent themselves gracefully to Matisse’s favored themes of fruits, flowers, the female form and portraits. The artist selected the poems himself and translated the work from Renaissance French to contemporary French for the publication of the anthology DIVORCE & LATE FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS For all his long-lasting friendships with other artists, famous and obscure, Matisse's days and nights were absorbed by solitary labor. Playing the violin seemed a more intimate consolation for decades of critical abuse than the affections of his wife and children. Although their marriage was still somewhat fragile, the Matisses had decided to stay on in Nice when their lease expired at Place Charles-Félix in the summer of 1938. Matisse and his wife were separated in 1939 after 41 years when Amélie tried to dismiss the coolly efficient young Lydia Delectorskaya, an orphan refugee from Siberia, who had been hired as Amélie’s companion. However, the Matisses’ marriage ran afoul not of any romantic rival but for the artist’s wish to stand on his own. The first climax came years before in 1913, when Amélie sat more than a hundred times for the Portrait of Madame Matisse. A friend’s diary reported at the time. “Crazy! weeping! By night he recites the Lord’s Prayer! By day he quarrels with his wife!” The portrait, which was the last work to enter Shchukin’s collection, caused Matisse “palpitations, high blood pressure and a constant drumming in his ears.” Such frenzy was not rare when Matisse had difficulty with a painting. He referred to the painting years later in a letter to her as “the one that made you cry, but in which you look so pretty.” Amélie ceded routine leadership of the family to Marguerite. The 1913 portrait was his last painting of her. Matisse and his wife met the last time to discuss details of their legal separation, in July 1939. One of its key provisions was that everything would be divided equally between the couple. The meeting took place in Paris at the Gare St. Lazare and lasted thirty minutes, during which Amélie Matisse kept up a flow of small talk while her husband."My wife never looked at me, but I didn't take my eyes off her...," Matisse wrote on the night of that final encounter: "I couldn't get a word out.... I remained as if carved out of wood, swearing never to be caught that way again." "I'm going to try to isolate myself as if I were still absent,'' Matisse announced on his first return to Paris since the official separation from his wife, 'rarely leaving his apartment except for visits to the cinema (his first color film, starring Danny Kaye, was a revelation).'' After her dismissal, Delectorskaya shot herself in the chest with a pistol, remarkably with only a slight effect. Soon after the artist and his wife were legally separated Delectorskaya was back. She arrived with a bouquet of white daisies and blue cornflowers from her Aunt’s garden on July 15th, St Henry’s Day. Their working collaboration was to last right up to Matisse’s death in 1954. Her will throughout was indomitable; she typed, kept records and meticulous accounts and paid the household bills. She also organized Matisse’s correspondence and coordinated his business affairs with an iron grip as well as being his studio assistant and muse. And when called upon, even scoured the countryside on her bike for provisions during the war. Matisse claimed that his entire household came to a standstill in her absence which, in the light of what Lydia accomplished is anything, if not an understatement. In the face of the family’s icy resentment, the Russian said of Matisse, “He knew how to take possession of people and make them feel they were indispensable. That was how it was for me, and that was how it had been for Mme. Matisse.” Life with Matisse must have been taxing but it had been Amélie’s chosen vocation, through years of their studio-centered homes. Her central role in the artist's life was security, which Shchukin’s patronage provided, along with a sizable house in Issy-les-Moulineaux, where the family moved in 1909. However, in this period Matisse was increasingly absent. In 1930, his travels took him to the United States, where he was thrilled by New York, and to Tahiti. Matisse found that Tahiti was "both superb and boring . . . There the weather is beautiful at sunrise and it does not change until night. Such immutable happiness is tiring." He dived off the reefs and never forgot the colors of the madrepores and the absinthe-green water; these appear in cut-outs like Polynesia, 1946, or The Bird and the Shark, 1947, as images of a spectacular and, on the whole, beneficent nature. In September of 1940 he employed a temporary stand-in for his regular night nurse...

After Pablo Picasso The Human Comedy - Lithograph after an original drawing, as published in the journal "Verve" Printed signature and date Dimensions: 32...

Paul CEZANNE (1839-1906) Armand Guillaumin Hanged Original Etching Unsigned On laid paper, 32 x 25 cm (c. 13 x 10 in) REFERENCES: - Catalogue Raisonné Venturi #1159 - Catalogue Rai...

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

Edition of 50 Ger Doornink's limited editions are based on a high resolution scan of the original artwork. They are printed on archival Hahnemühle German Etching paper. This techniq...

Robert Longo, Eric, NYC Contemporary, 21st Century, C-Print, Limited Edition, Portrait, Man C-Print Edition of 100, plus 20 APs 25,5 x 18,5 cm (10 x 7.2 in.) Signed and numbered, a...

Marc Chagall, Original Lithograh depicting an instant of the Bible. Technique: Original lithograph in colours On the reverse: another black and white original lithograph Year: 1960...

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Church of St. Stephen in Vienna is a lithograph made by Auguste Wahlen in 1844. Good condition. Drawing in black and white. At the center of the artwork is the original title " Ch...

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Jean Cocteau - Marine Mountains - Original Lithograph Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Edition: 200 In Rives From: COCTEAU. — VERDET (André). Montagnes marines. S. l. (Paris), Les Messagers du...