Oil on canvas
Not on view
Describing Gourds in 1945, Matisse recalled that he had created "a composition of objects that do not touch—but nonetheless participate in the same intimacy." Its surface reveals that he achieved this effect after repeatedly adjusting and transposing forms. The austerity and monumentality of the canvas are complementary to The Moroccans, also of 1916. These qualities may have helped Matisse develop the luminous aspects of the larger canvas. In Gourds, he explained, he began "to use pure black as a color of light and not as a color of darkness."
Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917, July 18–October 11, 2010.
Provenance Research Project
This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.
1916 – February 22, 1917, Henri Matisse, Paris
February 22, 1917 – March 17, 1917, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, purchased from the artist
March 17, 1917 – ?, Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, purchased from Bernheim-Jeune
1926 – 1931, Paul Guillaume, Paris
By 1931 – 1935, Léonide Massine, New York
1935, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, New York, purchased from Léonide Massine through Marie Harriman Gallery, New York
1935 – 1947, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired as a gift from Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
1947 – 1952, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acquired from The Museum of Modern Art
1952, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, repurchased from the Metropolitan Museum
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Henri Matisse
French, 1869–1954 428 works onlineThroughout his decades-long career as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, Henri Matisse continuously searched, in his own words, “for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means.
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