L’homme endormi
Henri Matisse
L’homme endormi
aquatint
1936
An original hand-signed Henri Matisse aquatint print.
(The Sleeping Man)
1936
Original aquatint printed in black ink on wove paper.
Hand-signed in pencil in the margin lower right Henri Matisse.
A superb impression of the definitive state, from the edition of 150, numbered in pencil in the margin also lower right (there were 24 additional impressions numbered in Roman numerals, as well as 5 épreuves d’artiste [artist’s proofs],and 1 épreuve d’essai [trial proof], for an overall edition of 180).
Catalog: Duthuit-Matise 771; Fribourg 348
Image Size: 9 5/8 x 6 ¾ inches
Sheet Size: 13 1/8 x 10 inches
The present work, “L’Homme endormi”, is an understated yet innovative portrait. Unlike the Henri Matisse’s bright fauvist paintings, this black and white work, rendered in 1936, focuses intently on line and shape. However, a lack of color, does not impede the artist’s ability to render both form and personality in this serene image.
Henri Matisse was one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century. Matisse’s use of unmodulated color, inventive figuration, and decorative patterns helped redefine many of the formal tenets of painting. “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter,” he once said. Born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, he took to art relatively late in life after initially pursuing law. First studying painting under Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts, he quickly adopted the Pointillist ideas espoused by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. With Pointillism as a point of departure, Matisse developed a radical method of using pure color to express light in what became known as Fauvism. In the decades that followed, the artist spent much of his time in the South of France, painting models dressed as odalisques and the ocean views he saw from his hotel room. Late in his career, while bedridden, Matisse produced a number of cutout paper works. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery in London, among others.
