Henri Matisse, 1869-1954

The present work is typical of the artist’s focus on pure line drawing during his Nice period. This quickly executed and technically assured work with its reduced linearity and confident, rhythmic notations evinces a sense of absolute sureness, of being drawn with fluency and ease. It is a fine example of the artist’s virtuoso economy of line, his freedom and variety of mark making and his simplification of form.

In Femme Assise dans un Interieur, Matisse eschews shading and modelling relying on line alone to lend solidity and weight to this indolent female figure. She is characteristic of the artist’s preferred subject matter in this period, leaning seductively against the ornate and decorative interior. The languorous Mediterranean environment is conjured up with ease by the delicately repeated arabesques - influenced by the artist’s stay in Morocco - and the figure’s absorption into the light of the paper that results from the sparseness of line. It is an image of palpable sensuality, infused with the exotic flavours of his contemporaneous images of odalisques in middle-eastern harems.