Henri Manguin

Following the death of Gustave Moreau, the beloved teacher of Manguin, Albert Marquet and Henri Matisse, the three young artists sought to pool their resources, constructing a makeshift studio in the garden of Manguin’s home at 61 rue Boursault. The three worked together, intermittently hosting other avant-garde artists, and during the winter of 1904-05 hired a model from whom they each drew and painted from life. According to artist André Dunoyer de Segonzac, “The Three M’s were talked about incessantly at the beginning of the century, three young men noted for their independence of their art. Matisse, Marquet, Manguin…” (A. Segonzac in Pierre Cabane, Henri Manguin, 1964, p. 53).

Singled out as the strongest of a new crop of artists showing at the Salon d’automne in 1904 by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, Manguin, Marquet, Matisse and Camoin banded together, “The four of them worked that autumn with Jean Puy in Manguin’s collapsible studio behind the apartment on the rue Boursault. Marquet and Manguin responded once again to Matisse’s Divisionist enthusiasm: all three painted each others and their nude model with a gaiety and gusto that owed more to Luce’s slapdash style as Divisionist than to Signac’s rigor. Winter was the season of intrigue, cabals and furious lobbying behind the scenes as different art-world factions drummed up support on the various committees that would control who showed what and how at next year’s exhibitions. Charles Guérin enlisted Matisse in December for the Salon d’Automne’s planning meeting, instructing him to bring Manguin, Marquet and any other sympathizers he could muster” (Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908, New York, 1998, p. 295).

In 1957, the director of the Musée national d’art moderne convinced a donor to assist with the acquisition of a trio of paintings, “For the sum of 20,000,000 francs, three paintings were purchased which represent the same model in Manguin’s studio, painted by three different artists during the winter of 1904-1905. They are Matisse’s Marquet peignant un nu dans l’atelier de Mangiun, 1904-05 (fig. 2 ); Manguin’s Nu dans l’atelier, 1904-05, originally attributed to Matisse; and Marquet’s Matisse dans l’atelier de Manguin, 1904-05 (fig. 1).” (Didier Schulmann, “The Marquet Affair,” From Fauvism to Impressionism: Albert Marquet, An Exhibition from the Centre Pompidou, Paris, (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2001, p. 19) These three works mark not only a significant art historical moment but form the cornerstone of the Fauve collection now in the Centre Pompidou. The present work is of this same series, painted at this watershed moment just before the term Fauve was to be officially coined.

Writing of the three artists, Hilary Spurling notes, “The one lasting gain he (Matisse) brought away from the school was his alliance with two younger boys, Henri Manguin and Albert Marquet, who were the first close friends he made among painters outside his home circle. From now on the three worked side by side, swapping advice, criticizing and comparing their respective canvases, urging each other on, indoors and out, in Paris and on the Mediterranean coast, throughout the struggles that convulsed the French art world, and painting itself, in the years to leading up to and away from the Fauve summer of 1905.” (Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908, New York, 1998, p. 80)

Baron Eberhard von Bodenhausen (1868-1918), the first owner of the present work, was a wealthy German industrialist whose collection of modern art, specifically Neo-Impressionism, included extraordinary works by van Gogh, Signac and Cross. He acquired a study for La Coiffure, 1904-05, by Manguin in March 1906 (Sainsaulieu, no. 132) and it was perhaps at the same time the present work was purchased from the artist.

Fig. 1 Albert Marquet, Matisse dans l'atelier de Manguin, 1905, oil on canvas, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Fig. 2. Henri Matisse, Marquet peignant un nu dans l'atelier de Manguin, Winter 1904-05, gouache and watercolor on paper, Centre Pompidou, Paris