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Lot Essay
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
The present work comes from a group of drawings referred to as Matisse's Moroccan Sketchbooks. Only recently discovered in a European private collection prior to the 1990 Matisse in Morocco exhibition, they are believed to be from the artist's second trip to Tangiers in the fall of 1912, which extended into 1913. It was during this period that Matisse painted Le rifain assis, now in the collection of The Barnes Foundation. Speaking of the sketchbooks, Jack Cowart observed that "Matisse described his Riffian subject as magnificent, with eyes a bit savage, like a jackal, thinking him also a little feline. There is so little underdrawing on the canvases of his Moroccan figure paintings that such sketchbook drawings must show Matisse perfecting his eye and hand for the essentials of the human subject. His graphite or his pen and ink lines are his preparation for the images that will be made by the strokes of his brush" (op. cit., Matisse in Morocco, exh. cat., p. 130).
The present work comes from a group of drawings referred to as Matisse's Moroccan Sketchbooks. Only recently discovered in a European private collection prior to the 1990 Matisse in Morocco exhibition, they are believed to be from the artist's second trip to Tangiers in the fall of 1912, which extended into 1913. It was during this period that Matisse painted Le rifain assis, now in the collection of The Barnes Foundation. Speaking of the sketchbooks, Jack Cowart observed that "Matisse described his Riffian subject as magnificent, with eyes a bit savage, like a jackal, thinking him also a little feline. There is so little underdrawing on the canvases of his Moroccan figure paintings that such sketchbook drawings must show Matisse perfecting his eye and hand for the essentials of the human subject. His graphite or his pen and ink lines are his preparation for the images that will be made by the strokes of his brush" (op. cit., Matisse in Morocco, exh. cat., p. 130).