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Ensayo del lote
Executed in May 1948, La Chevelure belongs to the remarkable final decade of Henri Matisse’s career, a period in which drawing assumed an increasingly central role in his artistic practice. Working in the South of France, Matisse continued to explore the relationship between the human figure, decorative pattern and pictorial space, concerns that had occupied him throughout his career. At this time, he was developing the radically simplified language that would find its fullest expression in the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, whose commission began to occupy him increasingly from 1948 onward. Drawing was fundamental to these investigations. In sheets such as the present work, Matisse isolated the human figure from the chromatic abundance of his interiors, exploring instead how line and subtle tonal modulation could achieve the same qualities of balance, rhythm and expressive economy.
The sitter has been identified by the Archives Matisse as Tati, a young woman from Sardinia who had already appeared in the artist’s paintings of the preceding year. She was one of two half-sisters who served as models for Matisse’s celebrated interiors of 1947, including Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia). In the present work, Matisse returns to this familiar model, removing the richly patterned furnishings and decorative surroundings of his earlier compositions to concentrate entirely on the expressive possibilities of the figure. Tati’s luxuriant hair sweeps dramatically across the upper register of the sheet, meeting the elongated arc of her raised arm and enclosing the quiet, frontal geometry of her face. Her distinctive features and abundant hair become the principal elements of the composition, transformed through Matisse’s assured handling into a harmonious interplay of line, form and movement.
Matisse achieved this remarkable combination of monumentality and intimacy through charcoal and estompe, using the latter to rub and diffuse the charcoal into passages of soft, atmospheric tone. Dark, assured contours establish the almond-shaped eyes, nose, mouth, hair and dramatically extended arm, while the blended charcoal beneath the chin and across the neck and torso gives the figure a subtle physical presence. The technique allowed Matisse to move fluidly between line and modeled tone without sacrificing the immediacy he prized in drawing: areas left almost untouched are as active as the darkest marks. At once an intimate portrait and an exercise in formal distillation, La Chevelure exemplifies Matisse’s lifelong pursuit of an expressive language in which the greatest economy of means could yield the richest visual effect.
The sitter has been identified by the Archives Matisse as Tati, a young woman from Sardinia who had already appeared in the artist’s paintings of the preceding year. She was one of two half-sisters who served as models for Matisse’s celebrated interiors of 1947, including Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia). In the present work, Matisse returns to this familiar model, removing the richly patterned furnishings and decorative surroundings of his earlier compositions to concentrate entirely on the expressive possibilities of the figure. Tati’s luxuriant hair sweeps dramatically across the upper register of the sheet, meeting the elongated arc of her raised arm and enclosing the quiet, frontal geometry of her face. Her distinctive features and abundant hair become the principal elements of the composition, transformed through Matisse’s assured handling into a harmonious interplay of line, form and movement.
Matisse achieved this remarkable combination of monumentality and intimacy through charcoal and estompe, using the latter to rub and diffuse the charcoal into passages of soft, atmospheric tone. Dark, assured contours establish the almond-shaped eyes, nose, mouth, hair and dramatically extended arm, while the blended charcoal beneath the chin and across the neck and torso gives the figure a subtle physical presence. The technique allowed Matisse to move fluidly between line and modeled tone without sacrificing the immediacy he prized in drawing: areas left almost untouched are as active as the darkest marks. At once an intimate portrait and an exercise in formal distillation, La Chevelure exemplifies Matisse’s lifelong pursuit of an expressive language in which the greatest economy of means could yield the richest visual effect.