Henri Matisse

Galerie Druet, Paris

Gustave Fayet, Paris (acquired from the above in March 1907)

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the above on January 16, 1908)

Bernhard Koehler, Berlin (acquired from the above on July 6, 1908)

Dr. and Mrs. F. E. Pryteck, New York (by 1952)

Stephen Hahn, New York

Private Collection, New York (circa 1980)

Sale: Christie's, New York, May 9, 2001, lot 21

Acquired at the above sale

 

Paris, Galerie Vollard, Exposition des oeuvres du peintre Henri Matisse, 1904, probably no. 21

Paris, Galerie Druet, Exposition Henri Matisse, 1906, no. 19, 20 or 21

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; San Francisco Museum of Art; and The Art Gallery of Toronto, Les Fauves, 1952-53, no. 90

Copenhagen, U.S. Embassy, Art in Embassies, 1961-63

Gaston Diehl, Henri Matisse, Paris, 1958, no. 8, illustrated pl. 8 (titled Village du midi)

Guy Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Henri Matisse, vol. 1, Paris, 1995, no. 50, illustrated p. 371

The painting is in excellent condition. Original canvas. The surface is in intact and in original state. Under ultra-violet light, very good condition, with just a few small scattered touches of inpainting in the sky, the largest 2 spots: 1 just in from the upper center edge and 1 to the right. The few other minor, scattered speaks to the upper left. The pigment in the painting in the street does fluoresce, under the ultra-violet lamp but this is the artist's original pigment
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Matisse painted La Rue à Arcueil, a splendid depiction of the suburban town just south of Paris, over the course of several months between 1903 and 1904.  This was the point in his career just before the dawning of Fauvism, and the artist was spending most of his time  studying the landscapes of the Midi (see fig. 2).  It was unusual for Matisse to have chosen Arcueil as the subject of this landscape, and the location depicted here was wrongly attributed to the south of France.  According to Wanda de Guébriant, when Galerie Druet sold this work in 1907 to Gustave Fayet for 500 francs, the picture was incorrectly described as Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez.  The gallery had confused the work with another in their stock and also presumed that the location for this picture was Saint-Tropez, given that Matisse had been there in 1904.  Later, when it became clear that the site depicted here was not Saint-Tropez, it was mislabeled again as Toulouse and assigned the incorrect date of 1899, when the artist was known to have stayed there.  But thanks to Mme. de Guébriant's research, we know that the location of this picture is, in fact, Arcueil and that it was painted between the summer of 1903 and the beginning of 1904. 

In the present work, Matisse brings the sunlight and fiery colors of the Mediterranean back to the northern city of Arcueil.  The street is empty, as if the scorching heat forced the villagers inside their houses.  The absence of human figures allows Matisse to explore the dynamic interplay of colorful planes.  As the artist describes, "The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.  I put down my tones without a preconceived plan.  If at first, and perhaps without my having been conscious of it, one tone has particularly seduced or caught me, more often than not once the picture is finished I will notice that I have respected this tone while I progressively altered and transformed all the others.  The expressive aspect of colors imposes itself on me in a purely instinctive way.  To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will be inspired only be the sensation that the season arouses in me: the icy purity of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the nuances of foliage (...) There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition.  Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely" (Jack Flam, Matisse, A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 80).

The year this work was completed marks a turning point in the artist's career and his decisive shift towards Fauvism.   This picture demonstrates the colorful direction that Matisse's art would take over the course of the next decade (see fig. 3) and also the influence of his style on the German Expressionist painters only a few years later (see fig. 4).  As described by John Elderfield in the Matisse Retrospective catalogue, "During an extended stay in Corsica and Toulouse in 1898-1899, he produced an important group of paintings in high key, arbitrary colors and with un-naturalistically broken or atomized forms.  The still lives in particular are constructed purely from the relationships between colors, whose descriptive function is only summarily indicated.  These 'proto-fauve' paintings suddenly reveal the nature of Matisse's genius as a colorist: his using color not to imitate light, but to create it (...) Until 1904, an architectonic style concerned with expressing volume as color through juxtaposed patches of different color...or through sculptural masses composed of variations of a single color...dominated his production" (John Elderfield, Henri Matisse, A Retrospective, New York, 1992, p. 81).

Jack Flam further discusses the evolution of Matisse's painting: "In 1904, after five full years under Cézanne's influence, he seems to have seen neo-impressionism as a means of distancing himself from Cézanne while retaining the essential elements of Cézannian painting.  The neo-impressionist system of small regular brushstrokes, for example, was an alternative to the system of small strokes that Cézanne had used before 1900 and with which Matisse was intimately familiar through Three Bathers. Matisse's translation of Signac's version of neo-impressionism gave him a chance to brighten his palette and to confront Cézanne from a position of strength by using stronger color and a very different kind of light.  The neo-impressionist style also allowed Matisse to use certain aspects of Cézannesque drawing and treatment of contour, such as the hatching around contours to fix objects and figures to the adjoining background, in a way that was no longer obviously Cézannesque" (Jack Flam, Matisse, The Man and his Art, 1869-1918, Ithaca and London, 1986, p. 120).

Fig. 1, Henri Matisse, Jardins du Luxembourg, oil on canvas, 1901-02, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Fig. 2, Henri Matisse, Vue de Collioure, oil on canvas, 1905, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Fig. 3, Henri Matisse, La Forêt à Fontainebleau, oil on canvas, 1909, Private Collection

Fig. 4, Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape at Murnau, oil on canvas, 1907, Private Collection