Henri Matisse

Executed in 1937, Nu devant le miroir combines the two most important elements of Matisse’s art: the female figure and patterning and decoration.  It belongs to a series of pen and ink drawings executed in 1935 and 1937, which, as John Elderfield explains, “are among the finest achievements of [Matisse’s] draughtsmanship.  Some of the individual sheets are breathtaking in their assurance and audacity, and almost without exception, they realize... [the] decorative assimilation of the figure into the decorated unity of the sheet.” (J. Elderfield, The Drawings of Henri Matisse (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1985, p.113).

Discussing another work in this series, John Elderfield writes: “The theme of the artist and his model and their reflected images…returns in this composition. It is one of the rare instances in which the artist’s presence becomes clearly apparent, and asserts the importance of the creator.  The line, seemingly spontaneous and free, yet rationally controlled, creates a vigorous decorative background design and, through variation of contour, conveys differentiation of planes.  The arabesque defining the model’s form brings out the luminous power of space enclosed by line and also activates the space.  The whiteness of the paper, which suggests the volumes of the body through linear articulation of unshaded surface, generates light” (J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 271).

Fig. I Matisse drawing from life at his studio in Villa Alesia, 1939 (photograph by Brassaï).