Provenance

Mme Georges Duthuit

French, 1894 - 1982

Explore Selected Works

Shapes cut from pieces of painted paper suggest a person and flowers on this abstracted, horizontal composition. Slivers, curving segments, and circles made with black paper make up the silhouetted body of a person to the right. A shape with four long fingers extending downward suggests a marigold-yellow skirt around the person’s hips. Four-petaled flowers in shades of aquamarine blue, butter yellow, shamrock green, red, fuchsia, and orange float around the person, mostly to the left. A few pairs of black slivers suggest flying birds. The canvas background is streaked with ivory white and pale peach.
Henri Matisse, La Négresse, 1952, paper collage on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.6.1

La Négresse

Henri Matisse · 1952 · paper collage on canvas ·  Accession ID  1973.6.1

The abstracted silhouette of a woman holding a tall jug is cut out of paper painted lapis blue in this vertical composition. The woman is on the right half of this composition. Her head, arms, breasts, torso, and upper legs are pieced together with blocky forms. Both arms reach up to support a tall, narrow amphora jug overhead. Four blue pomegranates to the left near the woman’s legs and torso are arranged in an arc, like an opening parenthesis. Most of the woman is against a yellowed rectangle of paper, which is itself affixed to the cream-white canvas. A blue band rises most of the height of the canvas near the right edge.
Henri Matisse, Woman with Amphora and Pomegranates, 1953, gouache on paper, cut and pasted on white paper, mounted on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.18.3

Woman with Amphora and Pomegranates

Henri Matisse · 1953 · gouache on paper, cut and pasted on white paper, mounted on canvas ·  Accession ID  1973.18.3