Nu - Odalisque au Coffret. Nude - Odalisque with a Casket by Henri Matisse, 1869-1954

Henri Matisse, 1869-1954
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Nu - Odalisque au Coffret. Nude - Odalisque with a Casket

Original lithograph in black ink. 1929. Signed in pencil. Numbered (3) in pencil from the edition of 50. (There were also 15 proof impressions. The stone was erased after the edition). Printed at the studio of Mourlot, 1929.
Provenance: Collection Henri Petiet.
Ref: Duthuit-Matisse - Matisse L'Oeuvre Gravé no 498.

Excellent very strong impression. On pale cream wove velin d'arches paper. Excellent condition. Full margins. Worked virtually to the full sheet size. Sheet: 19 3/4 x 26 ins
(502x660mm).

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One of the most beautiful qualities of Matisse?s drawing is the wonderful expressive flow of the line, in which a single stroke describes shape, movement and surface texture. The great appeal to him of the medium of lithography was that the nature of the chalk on the stone was to enrich the texture and sense of light in the line itself. This combination of flow, surface and form is beautifully expressed in ?Odalisque - Nu au Coffret?, but it also a study which has a very special quality of immediacy and freshness. Some of Matisse?s Odalisques are highly posed but in ?Nu au Coffret? it is as if the model was just arranging herself on the bed, adjusting the anklet, and the sculptural arrangement of body and limbs so captured Matisse that he caught an isolated unprepared moment

At the end of the 1920?s Matisse?s drawing style was moving from the rich contrasts of texture in the Moorish odalisques of a few years earlier towards a more simple use of pure line. The theme of the reclining nude still absorbed much of his thought but with a different emphasis. In the Moorish odalisques the arrangement of the limbs, and the smoothness of the skin surfaces, are contrasted to the rich textures of the draped clothing or veils. By the end of the decade, as here, the emphasis has moved to the linear pattern of the arrangement of the limbs, with the emotion and sensuality suggested by hints of background and subtle suggestions of the gleam of the skin.