HENRI MATISSE

(1869-1954)

Nu couché
Executed in May 1944

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Georges Matisse.

Provenance
Princess Helena Rubinstein of Gourielli, New York, Paris & London, and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, April 28, 1966, lot 796 (titled Odalisque).
Acquired at the above sale.

Literature
M. Malingue, Matisse dessins, Paris, 1949 (illustrated p. 56).

Matisse's oeuvre has been defined by the recumbent pose of an odalisque and remained one of his most archetypal figurations. This classic pose began appearing in Matisse's iconography during his highly inventive Fauve period of 1905-7 and continued to be a key component of the artist's lexicon throughout his career in all media: paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs and sculptures.

The figure of the odalisque, or concubine, was one of the most prevalent motifs of the nineteenth century that continued to be explored by Modernists of the twentieth century. The artistic trope harkens to Ingres' harem nudes and Delacroix's romanticist, orientalist masterworks. Matisse and Picasso, both of whom reinterpreted the theme in their distinctive styles, together attended Ingres' 1905 retrospective at the Salon d'Automne where Matisse and his contemporaries concurrently exhibited their Fauvist paintings for the first time.

Executed in May 1944, Nu couché is a stunning example of Matisse's progression from high-ornamentation to abandonment of the costumes and accessories to focus more intently on the female form. Matisse began depicting odalisques with fervor in the 1920s during his Nice period. These works are noted for the elaborate costumes, glittering jewelry, and sumptuous fabrics adorning the harem. In Nu couché, Matisse discards such decoration in lieu of focusing on the beauty and strength of his female figure. Here, he has deftly applied the charcoal with variations of intensity, creating a luscious, sinewy form for the figure. The gradations of black and grey create poignant contrasts with the cream sheet and exemplify Matisse's declaration that his "drawing[s] represent a painting executed with restricted means" (quoted in J. Golding, "Introduction" in The Drawings of Henri Matisse (exhibition catalogue), The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 14). He later reflected, "charcoal or stump drawing...allows me to consider simultaneously the character of the model, her human expression, the quality of surrounding light, the atmosphere and all that can only be expressed by drawing." He went on to describe his approach to the model: "The emotional interest they inspire in me is not particularly apparent in the representation of their bodies, but often rather by the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper and which forms its orchestration, its architecture" (quoted in J. Flam (ed.), Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 130-132).

Prior to 1935, Matisse considered drawings as subsidiary to paintings and a means to a greater end. From 1935 onward, however, Matisse held the medium in an entirely new regard: the artist became obsessed with drawing as a catalyst for invention and esteemed them as artworks in and of themselves. During this period he spent his mornings painting and his afternoons drawing. Scholar John Elderfield remarked: "Painting and drawing were separated activities, and line and colour functioned separately. This led Matisse to shift his attention, around 1937, to charcoal drawing, where line coalesced from areas of tonal shading... This, it seems, could help bring back line and areas of colour more closely together..." (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse (exhibition catalogue), The Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984, p. 118). The charcoal drawings became works "realized in their own terms, and without exception show Matisse's stunning mastery of this especially sensual medium. The tonal gradations are extraordinarily subtle, yet appear to have been realized very spontaneously, and the keen sense of interchange between linear figure and ground adds tautness and intensity to their compositions... At their best, they are emotionally as well as technically rich and show us a more mortal Matisse than his pure line drawings do" (ibid., pp. 118-119).

Matisse executed the present work using the estompe technique he developed to create a "synthesis of form and light," as Elderfield has described it. He continued, "In drawing, the great charcoal and estompe studies that dominate the years of 1922 to 1924 reveal the character of that synthesis, at least in its first fully realized state. This particular medium allowed [Matisse], he said, 'to consider simultaneously the character of the model, the human expression, the quality of surrounding light, atmosphere and all that can only be expressed by drawing.' The theme of these studies, then, is the synthesis of form and light.... Both media were particularly suited to investigation of how tonal modeling could be reconciled with his longstanding concern for the decorative flatness of the picture surface. They permitted him to create an extraordinarily wide range of soft, closely graded tones, ranging from transparent, aerated greys to dense and sooty blacks, that appear to adhere to the flatness of the sheet, and to release especially subtle effects of light from the luminous whiteness of the paper" (ibid., pp. 84-85).

This work is distinguished by its important early provenance. It previously was held in the collection of Princess Helena Rubinstein of Gourielli. Rubinstein was one of the first self-made female millionaires who transformed the cosmetics industry beginning in 1915. She was an avowed supporter of the arts, commissioning Salvador Dalí to design a powder compact in addition to a portrait of herself, and she decorated her spa with rugs by Joan Miró. She used her enormous financial success from her cosmetics company to create the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, establish the Helena Rubinstein traveling art scholarship in Australia, and award the Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize annually for portraiture made by Australian artists.