Description

Edition of 950, published in Paris by Martin Fabiani in 1943. All prints are signed and dated in the plate. A copy of the numbered justification page will accompany each print.

In April of 1942, Matisse wrote to his daughter, Marguerite Duthuit:

“For a year I have made a very considerable effort, one of the most important of my life. I have perfected my drawing and made surprising progress, like ease and sensibility liberally expressed, with a great variety of sensation and a minimum of means. It’s like a flowering. And it’s one of the things for which I wanted to continue living [Matisse was recovering from a major operation]. I did an abundant quantity of drawings that are completely surprising. They will be reproduced in a book measuring roughly 25 by 35 centimetres. They are made up of a series of which the initial drawing for each series is a charcoal study giving way to a series of pen or pencil drawings emerging like perfumes from the original. There will be 150 of 180 reproductions, 1000 copies available to students and 100 collector’s editions, but all done very carefully. A fellow who took over Vollard Publishing is seeing to it.”