Henri Matisse

Cahiers d'Art, 1945-1946, Paris, 1946, illustrated p. 192

The present work is executed in charcoal and estompe, a technique which Matisse began using in the early 1920s and applied primarily to his portraiture. In his article Notes d’un peintre sur son dessin, published in 1939, Matisse described the advantages of this medium which allowed him “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” (John Elderfield, The drawings of Matisse, London, 1984, p. 84).

The sitter, Lucienne Bernard, was the widow of the poet Roger Bernard who fought with the French resistance and was killed in action during World War II.

Fig.1 Henri Matisse drawing a different portrait of  Mrs. Lucienne Bernard in Vence, 1944 (photograph by Mossolova)