Bronze
In the process of creating five busts of Jeanne Vaderin between 1910 and 1916, Matisse radically reconfigured traditional representation of the human face. Jeannette I and II were created directly from the model, which is evident in their characteristic, hawklike profiles. These two works then served as templates for Jeannette III, IV, and V. As he progressed with the series, Matisse dramatically abstracted his subject, organizing the head into increasingly simplified chunks. In 1908 he explained that his goal in portraiture was not to achieve visual precision but rather to reveal the "essential qualities" of his sitters—qualities, he felt, that physical imitation could not capture.
2010.
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Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Pierre Matisse, 1952
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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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Henri Matisse
Gallery 506Henri Matisse’s audacious experimentation with form and color was inseparable from his dedication to an art of harmonious expression, an ambition lost on most of his contemporary viewers.
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