Henri Matisse

1942 marked another year at the Hotel Régina in Nice, where Matisse continued to recover from cancer surgery.  Despite his state of convalescence, during this time Matisse executed an astounding number of drawings, causing the artist  to remark in a letter to his son, Pierre, "For a year now I've been making an enormous effort in drawing.  I say effort, but that's a mistake, because what has occurred is a floraison after fifty years of effort..." (Matisse, His Art and his Public, (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1951, p. 268). 

Matisse's unparalleled gift of drawing is best summed up by the artist's own words of 1939, "My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotion.  The simplification of the medium allows that. At the same time, these drawings are more complete than they may appear to some people who confuse them with a sketch.  They generate light; seen on a dull day or in direct light they contain, in addition to the quality and sensitivity of line, light and value differences which quite clearly correspond to colors.  These qualities are also evident to many in full light. They derive from the fact that the drawings are always preceded by studies made in a less rigorous medium than pure line, such as charcoal or stump drawing, which enables me 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" (as quoted in ed. Jack Flam, Matisse, A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 327).

The present work is one of a series of studies for the painting Michaela, which was completed on January 15, 1943 (Fig. 1).  It is one of a group of works painted by Matisse during this period depicting a dark-haired model seated to the left of a table with a still-life.

Fig. 1- Michaela, January, 1943, oil on canvas