Homme assis

Homme assis dates from 1900 and is an intimate portrait created during a decade which is considered to have been the apogee of the artist’s oeuvre. It was during the 1900s that Matisse explored various ways of rendering the world, tying in with his Pointillist and then his Fauve painting styles. The present work presciently anticipates some of the most radical aspects of the artist’s oeuvre such as the intensity and concentration that marked his use of colour in his Fauve pictures translated here in the assured sense of line.

The portrait is rendered with such a rich palette of vibrant colour, applied with thick, lavish brushstrokes that model the sitter and the background within the rich painterly surface. Together, these innovative formal characteristics marked the beginning of Matisse’s development towards the notorious Fauve canvases that were first exhibited four years later, in 1905.

Matisse's understanding of Cézanne had an impact on the rendering of Homme assis. It was above all Paul Cézanne who served as the artist’s great hero at this time. The most prized work in Matisse's small collection was Cézanne's Trois baigneuses, circa 1879-1882 (Rewald, no. 360; gift of Matisse to the Musée de la ville de Paris), which he acquired from Vollard in 1899. Flam noted that ‘Matisse's use of Cézannian devices helped him to create a more dynamic and fluid pictorial ensemble than he had done earlier and to give increased emphasis to the structural and expressive qualities of paint as such’ (J. Flam, Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869-1918, Ithaca and London, 1986). ‘If Cézanne is right, then I am right’ Matisse claimed. ‘And I knew that Cézanne had made no mistake’ (quoted in J. Flam, Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869-1918, Ithaca and London, 1986).

The present work has a remarkable provenance as it has been in the artist’s family collection for over a hundred years before being acquired by the current owner.