Henri Matisse

A gift from the artist to the grandfather of the present owner

Matisse’s sensuous Jeune femme allongée (Nézy) depicts one of his favorite models, Nézy Hamid Chawat, who personified the type of beauty that most captivated Matisse while he was living in the south of France. Nézy would appear in many of Matisse’s paintings of the 1930s and 1940s wearing vibrantly coloured clothing – a wardrobe choice that engaged the painter’s fascination with ornately patterned fabric. Here, the bold lines and delight in beauty that radiate from this portrait attest to the artist's abiding spirit and generosity of vision, despite the hardships he had been suffering, as he incessantly worked from his bed recovering from two operations. Jeune femme allongée (Nézy) was given by Matisse to one his doctors, Professeur Wertheimer, who was involved in his operations and visited the artist frequently. It must have been on of these visits that the present work was dedicated to him.

Jeune femme allongée (Nézy) relates to the large group of charcoal and pen and ink drawings executed by Matisse between 1941 and 1942 and which were published in 1943 as the portfolio Dessins: Thèmes et Variations, with a preface by Louis Aragon. Even Matisse, ordinarily so dissatisfied, was impressed by the quality and quantity of his work. He wrote to his son Pierre in New York: '... 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 ... ' (quoted in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse, His Art and His Public, New York, 1951, p. 268).