Matisse’s Exhibitions
Karen K. Butler and Claudine Grammont
This document lists the main exhibitions in the exhibition histories of the works by Matisse in Matisse in
the Barnes Foundation, edited by Yve-Alain Bois and published by the Barnes Foundation in association with
Thames & Hudson (2015). © 2017 The Barnes Foundation.
Paris: Galerie Druet. Exposition Henri-Matisse. March 19–April 7, 1906
Houses (Fenouillet) (cat. no. 1[?]), Small Jar (cat. no. 2)
The Exposition Henri-Matisse was the only exhibition of Matisse’s work at the Galerie
Druet, and it was the second monographic show of Matisse’s work after Exposition des
œuvres du peintre Henri Matisse, the exhibition of forty-five paintings at the Ambroise
Vollard gallery that had taken place almost two years earlier, from June 1–18, 1904.
Conceived as a complement to that year’s Salon des Indépendants, where Matisse
exhibited just one painting, Le Bonheur de vivre (cat. no. 5), it opened one day earlier
than that show (March 20–April 30). It contained no less than fifty-five paintings, from
both the 1898–99 Corsica/Toulouse period—probably including Houses (Fenouillet)—and
the recent time in Collioure, as well as drawings, lithographs, woodcuts, and three
sculptures (two plasters and one bronze). It also included a group of ten still lifes listed
only as “Natures mortes,” one of which was Small Jar. Overshadowed by Le Bonheur
de vivre, the show was almost ignored by the press, although it was from this show
that Sarah and Michael Stein, who would become important collectors of Matisse’s
work, bought their oil study for Le Bonheur de vivre (1905; Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen).
Paris: Grandes Serres de la Ville de Paris. Salon des Indépendants. March
20–April 30, 1906
Le Bonheur de vivre (cat. no. 5)
This exhibition is discussed in the entry for Le Bonheur de vivre.
Paris: Grand Palais. Salon d’Automne. October 6–November 15, 1906
The Sea Seen from Collioure (cat. no. 9)
Matisse exhibited five pictures at the 1906 Salon d’Automne: Marguerite Reading
(Marguerite lisant, Musée de Grenoble), Dishes and Fruit on a Red and Black Carpet (Assiettes
et fruits sur un tapis rouge et noir, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), Still Life
with Statuette, Flowers (Fleurs, Collection the Duke of Roxburghe), and The Sea Seen from
Collioure, all painted during the summer of 1906 in Collioure. Gustave Fayet bought all
five pictures from the dealer Eugène Druet just before the opening of the Salon.
That year, the Salon d’Automne included retrospective exhibitions dedicated to
Eugène Carrière (who had died in March), Gustave Courbet, and Paul Gauguin. The
Gauguin retrospective, which was influential for Matisse, was organized by GeorgeDaniel de Monfreid and included a monumental 227 works of art. Fayet, a major collector of Gauguin, lent twenty-five paintings, twenty-six drawings, and seven ceramics.
Matisse had met both de Monfreid and Fayet the previous summer in Collioure and
knew their collections. At this time, the discovery of Gauguin’s Tahitian works (including his sculptures and ceramics) was decisive for Fauve painters.1
After the scandal of the 1905 Salon d’Automne, where Matisse and his fellow painters were christened les Fauves, by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, for the violence of their
pictorial style, and after the even more radical appearance of Le Bonheur de vivre at the
Salon des Indépendants in March 1906, Matisse’s group of pictures in the 1906 Salon
d’Automne was much less bold. Most of the critics remarked upon the subdued tone of
these pictures. Charles Morice wrote: “M. Henri Matisse is one of these seekers who is
never satisfied. Remember his big picture from the spring, Le Bonheur de vivre. It is disturbing; a vast colored schema with theoretical figures. This autumn he is calmer; his
Still Lifes, his Flowers, his Woman Reading, seem to indicate a return to the rich and
stable harmonies that he was looking for two years ago. A number of his admirers seem
reassured.”2
Paris: Grand Palais. Salon d’Automne. October 1–22, 1907
Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12)
Matisse, a jury member at the Salon d’Automne of 1907, exhibited five paintings
there: Le Luxe, esquisse (Luxe I; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris), La Musique,
esquisse (Music; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Paysage, esquisse (View of
Collioure and the Sea; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), an unidentified landscape, and Tête d’expression (Red Madras Headdress). He also showed two drawings and
some ceramics he had recently executed in the studio of André Metthey. La Coiffure
(1907; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart) was refused by the jury.3
The Salon d’Automne also included an important Paul Cézanne retrospective of
fifty-seven works.
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Fleurs et Natures Mortes. November
14–30, 1907
Dishes and Melon (cat. no. 10 [?])
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune regularly organized group exhibitions on various themes,
such as this one on flowers and still lifes. Matisse exhibited two pictures, both of them
for sale. They are listed in the catalogue with an asterisk: Les Pivoines (Peonies, 1907;
location unknown), which was bought by Félix Fénéon at the end of the show, and a
second picture, Assiettes et melon (1907), which is probably Dishes and Melon.4
Paris: Grand Palais. Salon d’Automne. October 1–November 8, 1908
Blue Still Life (cat. no. 13)
In 1908 as in 1907, Matisse’s submissions to the Salon d’Automne suggested both a
focused attack on the traditions of still life and figure painting and a presentation of his
own revision of those conventions. As a member of the jury Matisse was able to submit
a large number of works, and he organized what amounted to a mini-retrospective
that included eleven paintings, six drawings, and thirteen sculptures. Six of the eleven
paintings were still lifes and four were figure paintings or portraits, such as Portrait of
Greta Moll (National Gallery, London), painted in Paris in early 1908, and Young Sailor I
(Le Jeune Marin I, private collection), painted the previous summer in Collioure. Critics
such as Louis Vauxcelles could not help but notice the show’s retrospective aspect:
“Playfully, perhaps to demonstrate the logic of his efforts and his development, Matisse
is also exhibiting a set of two Nudes: one, painted ten years ago, is notable for its robust
austerity; the other, on a green background, painted a few weeks ago, is a grand synthesis, superb in its bulk. Other works by the same spirited painter—one of the most
powerful works of the past, one of the most powerful of today—complete the exhibit.”5
It seems likely that the retrospective approach taken by the artist was an attempt to
counter some of the criticisms directed at him in earlier reviews—to provide an example
of his discipline and to make evident the logic of his method, even a certain grounding
in tradition.6 The selection of five related still lifes, beginning with Blue Still Life, the
earliest of the five, and ending with the artist’s recent major work Harmony in Red (The
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) plus a more indirectly related and slightly
earlier still life, Pink Onions, may have been an attempt to demonstrate a development
that the critics had failed to see.7
The exhibition was a success, with previously negative critics finding redeeming
qualities in Matisse’s pictures.8 Although the critics were certainly not unanimous in
their praise (Roger Marx was much more reserved), many at least were pleased with
the Blue Still Life (probably because it was the most naturalistic of the still lifes), and it
received specific mention in at least three reviews; even the fairly ambivalent Andrien
Bovy in La Grande Revue found no better work in the entire Salon d’Automne.9 The artist
must nonetheless have been somewhat disappointed with his reception, as his “Notes
of a Painter,” published by George Desvallières in La Grande Revue, responds directly to
some of the adverse criticism of the Salon that year. Matisse mentions the critic Joséphin
Péladan in the “Notes,” for example, and in particular takes up his notion of “expression,” something that the critics had failed to comprehend.10
Berlin: Paul Cassirer. Ausstellung Henri Matisse. January 1–20, 1909
The Madras (cat. no. 11), Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12 [?]), Blue
Still Life (cat. no. 13 [?])
Hans Purrmann (1880–1966), a German painter from Munich, met Matisse in Paris
through the collector Leo Stein. Along with Sarah Stein, the wife of Michael Stein
(brother to Leo and Gertrude Stein), Purrmann was a founding member of the Académie
Matisse, which opened at the Couvent des Oiseaux, Paris, in January 1908. As a member of the Berlin Secession, Purrmann suggested that the organizers of the Secession
include a Matisse show, but it was refused. The dealer Paul Cassirer, however, accepted
the exhibition. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., explains this story in his 1951 monograph on Matisse:
“Paul Cassirer, the great Berlin dealer, who sometimes visited Purrmann in Paris,
seemed willing to show Matisse in his galleries. The pictures were selected and sent off
to Berlin toward the end of the year. Soon after, Purrmann began to receive discouraging reports. He consulted with Matisse and they decided to go to Berlin personally
to see the show through. They arrived shortly before Christmas 1908 to find Cassirer
very uneasy about the coming show and alarmed by the hostility of the German artists
and critics who had had a preview of the paintings.”11 Purrmann would recall that the
paintings were taken down just after he and Matisse left Berlin.12
for important decorative works, Matisse had established his position in the international
art market, a fact that the retrospective only further confirmed.
The short-lived show consisted of thirty paintings, drawings, and lithographs as
well as ten bronzes. As Purrmann would later remember, “In the Berlin exhibit were
paintings belonging to various of my friends whom I had induced to purchase Matisse
pictures.”13 The show included paintings lent by French collectors such as Marcel
Sembat, Leo Stein, and Michael and Sarah Stein, and by important German collectors
such as Emil Orlik, Kurt Glaser, Heinz Braun, Baron Wolfurk, and Oskar and Greta Moll.
Most reviews were unfavorable, criticizing Matisse as a master who could not master a unified style.16 (The “master” designation was related to the fact that Matisse
had opened an academy of painting in January 1908.) Jacques Rivière, the critic for La
Nouvelle Revue Française and the only positive reviewer, wrote a psychologically influenced analysis of Matisse’s work, recognizing both its abstract and its material quality.
In particular he praised the still lifes for their rendering of sensation: “Furthermore,
in the still lifes, Matisse, having prepared as he wished, abandons himself to sensation
with more confidence, gives himself to transcribe it more literally, is won over by the
voluptuousness of things; his color is more muted, heavier, more engorged with matter.”17 The art critic Octave Mirbeau wrote to Claude Monet sarcastically criticizing the
exhibition’s public appeal: “It has been a success. From morning to night it has been
full of visitors. Russian, Germans, males and females, slaver before each picture, drool
with joy and admiration, naturally. I heard a Russian man, who by the way was hunchbacked and knock-kneed, say: ‘He is the father of painting. Matisse has finally discovered painting!’ I saw Matisse. He was calm, Olympian among this crowd. He said to me:
‘I think that I have gone as far as possible with my search. . . . Have you seen my latest
pictures? . . . Have you noticed that there are no more than three tones? Because, let me
tell you, those who put more than three tones in a picture are either fakers or ignorant. .
. . Perhaps it is even possible to use only two. . . . I am going to study this question, this
year!’ And in a single day yesterday, almost all the works in the show were sold!”18
The Molls lent some recently acquired works, such as The Madras, The Rose (Norton
Museum of Art, West Palm Beach), and Three Bathers (Minneapolis Institute of Art).
Michael and Sarah Stein lent three pictures: Die Friseuse, which can safely be identified
as La Coiffure; Kopf, which may have been Red Madras Headdress; and Stilleben, which may
have been Blue Still Life or possibly Sculpture and Persian Vase (1908; Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo), which the Steins had purchased from Bernheim-Jeune in October 1908.14 The
show also included two other still lifes on their way to Russia from the Salon d’Automne, pictures made for the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin after he had seen Blue
Still Life at the home of Sarah and Michael Stein: Still Life on Red Venetian Rug (1906; The
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) and Harmony in Red. Leo Stein also lent three
paintings for the show, Bacchantin, Blumenbouquet, and Landschaft, none of which has
been identified with certainty.
Purrmann recalls the German art historian Julius Meier-Graefe’s response to what
he believes was Red Madras Headdress: “I only remember Meier-Graefe’s exclamation in
front of the painting of Madame Matisse from the Michel Stein Collection: ‘What can
you do with this sort of Pfefferkuchen [gingerbread] manner of painting?’ I definitely
think he was referring to this painting.” Purrmann here confuses the Cassirer show in
1909 with the Gurlitt show in 1914, where the picture was certainly exhibited.15
Paris: Bernheim-Jeune & Cie. Exposition Henri-Matisse. February
14–22, extended to March 5, 1910
Landscape (Collioure) (cat. no. 3), Flower Piece (cat. no. 8 [?]), The Sea
Seen from Collioure (cat. no. 9), Blue Still Life (cat. no. 13)
This exhibition was Matisse’s first solo show at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and his
first retrospective. It included sixty-five paintings, ranging in date from 1895 to 1910,
and twenty-six drawings (mostly figure drawings). The years 1905 and 1906 were particularly well represented, with eight works from 1905 and thirteen from 1906, including the drawing Landscape (Collioure), probably Flower Piece, The Sea Seen from Collioure,
and Blue Still Life. Only ten paintings were for sale; the rest were lent by private collectors such as Alphonse Kann, Leo Stein (Landscape [Collioure], Flower Piece, and The Sea
Seen from Collioure), and Sarah and Michael Stein (Blue Still Life).
By this time the Bernheim-Jeune gallery had established a contract with Matisse to
be the sole dealer of his works, as they also were for Pierre Bonnard, Paul Signac, and
Kees van Dongen. With this contract and the Shchukin and Ivan Morosov commissions
London: The Grafton Galleries. Manet and the Post-Impressionists.
November 8, 1910–January 15, 1911
The Sea Seen from Collioure (cat. no. 9 [?])
Manet and the Post-Impressionists, which was organized by the British art critic Roger
Fry, was one of the first exhibitions to introduce the Parisian avant-garde to England
and contributed to the diffusion of Fry’s formalist approach.19 The exhibition included
works by Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Matisse, and many of
the Fauves, including André Derain, Othon Friesz, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, Jean
Puy, Georges Rouault, Louis Valtat, and Maurice de Vlaminck. Cézanne, Van Gogh, and
Gauguin were presented as masters of the modern movement and fathers of the new
generation. The influence of Cézanne on the tradition of modernism was emphasized by
the inclusion of twenty-one pictures. The preface to the catalogue, written by Fry and
Desmond McCarthy, attempted to legitimize the modern artists by accentuating the
relationship of their art to the traditions of the past. It introduced a formalist approach
to art, using notions such as “design” and “expressionism.” MacCarthy noted: “In the
work of Matisse, especially, this search for an abstract harmony of line, for rhythm, has
been carried to lengths which often deprive the figure of all appearance of nature. The
general effect of his pictures is that of a return to primitive, even perhaps of a return
to barbaric, art.”20 The exhibition was a shock to the British art establishment and
received much publicity.
Fry was introduced to Matisse’s work by Leo and Gertrude Stein, whom he had met
in 1908.21 The show included three paintings by Matisse: The Girl with Green Eyes (San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art), probably lent by the artist: Trees near Melun, a landscape lent by Bernard Berenson (Royal Museum of Yugoslavia); and a landscape lent by
Leo Stein (either The Sea Seen from Collioure or Olive Trees at Collioure, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York). There were also drawings, eight sculptures, and a ceramic
piece. The British critic Charles John Holmes noted, “M. Henri Matisse has been the
enigma of the show, even for artists and critics. He enjoyed a great reputation on the
Continent, yet I have not seen the large decorations, which are said to be his best work,
and can therefore view him only in the light of the small examples of various arts, which
are collected in the exhibition. . . . Of the paintings the Femme aux yeux verts is evidently
more important in every way than the little landscapes.”22
London: The Grafton Galleries. Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition.
October 5–December 31, 1912
Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12)
The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, which was held at the Grafton Galleries from
October 5–December 31, 1912, was the sequel to the 1910 exhibition Manet and the PostImpressionists at the same gallery. The 1912 exhibition presented the next generation of
French, English, and Russian artists (without taking into account the Russian avantgarde and German Expressionism), and positioned Picasso and Matisse as their leaders.
In June 1912, Fry, who was responsible for the French section of the show (the French
Group), wrote to Matisse, “I hope that this time the English public will have the occasion to judge (and I hope to appreciate) your genius. To this end, if you can help me to
provide you with a place of honor, I would like something a little special and out of the
ordinary. I will be in Paris the week after next and I will do myself the honor of visiting
you for a serious talk. I will bring a plan of the gallery and we will be able, I hope, to
arrange some sort of decorative ensemble.”23
A whole room of the show was indeed dedicated to Matisse. The catalogue listed
nineteen paintings, seven sculptures (among them the first four versions of Jeannette),
eleven drawings, two watercolors, some lithographs, and a woodcut. Among the
paintings were The Red Studio (The Museum of Modern Art), Luxe II (Statens Museum for
Kunst, Copenhagen), Young Sailor II (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Red
Madras Headdress, and The Dance I (The Museum of Modern Art), which was the most
important and prominently displayed work in the show. Matisse himself lent twelve
pictures.24 Sarah and Michael Stein lent Red Madras Headdress as well as La Coiffure.
A painting of the exhibition by Fry, A Room in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition
(Musée d’Orsay, Paris), shows the Large Gallery; in it, Red Madras Headdress hangs low
on the wall next to Luxe II on the adjoining wall.
New York: The 69th Regiment Armory. International Exhibition of
Modern Art. February 17–March 15, 1913. Chicago: The Art Institute of
Chicago. International Exhibition of Modern Art. March 24–April 16,
1913. Boston: Copley Hall. International Exhibition of Modern Art. April
28–May 19, 1913
Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12)
The International Exhibition of Modern Art, or the “Armory Show,” was the fourth
international exhibition organized by the Association of American Painters and
Sculptors.25 It comprised over 1,400 works, by both European and American artists,
with an emphasis on Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. Following the model
of European international exhibitions, the Armory Show tried to legitimize contemporary art by highlighting its link with tradition, thus privileging a model of continuity
rather than rupture and suggesting that it developed from a succession of “masters,”
such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin.
The exhibition was organized by the president of the association, Walter Kuhn; his
secretary, Arthur B. Davies; and Walter Pach, who acted as the European correspondent.26 In Autumn 1912, Kuhn went to Europe to select works for the show. He visited
the Cologne Sonderbund show (an influential international exhibition that included Van
Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Signac, Picasso, Edvard Munch, and many of the Fauve painters),27 then the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London,
and finally left for Paris, where he met up with Davies. There Pach arranged for them to
see the Matisse collection of Michael and Sarah Stein, close friends of his.28 In the end,
Pach arranged the loan of eight paintings from the London show from Matisse, who was
in Tangier at the time, and the loan of Red Madras Headdress and La Coiffure from Michael
and Sarah Stein.29
Matisse was particularly well represented in the exhibition, as much for the importance of the works exhibited as for their quantity, which was greater than that of any
other artist: in the same room with works by Gauguin were installed one sculpture,
three drawings, and eleven paintings, notably Goldfish and Sculpture (Poissons rouges et
sculpture; The Museum of Modern Art), Luxe II, The Red Studio, Blue Nude (The Baltimore
Museum of Art), and Red Madras Headdress.30 It was the wide American public’s first
discovery of Matisse’s painting, and the show was vehemently attacked in the press.31
Despite or perhaps because of the uproar, the Armory Show established Matisse as a
leader of the avant-garde. Barnes attended the show, but did not purchase any works
by Matisse from it.32
Part of the exhibition traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago (March 24–April
16), then to the Copley Society of Boston (April 28–May 19, 1913). In Chicago, Davies
hung the show, giving Matisse prominence with a large display of thirteen pictures.
Pach wrote from Chicago to Michael Stein, “We are going to put a mark on American
thought that will be simply indelible. We have done it already. . . . Total number of sales
in N.Y.—237. . . . No Matisse paintings yet (confound it) nor Picasso. Matisse, I really
believe, awakens more interest than any one else in the show and I do not have to work
hard to keep up my hopes of a sale or two from the splendid long wall he has to himself
here, the first thing you see as you enter. Davies made the plan for the hanging here and
designed it that Matisse should first meet the eye and set a pace.”33 On the last day of
the exhibition, a group of students from the Art Institute burned reproductions of Blue
Nude, Luxe II, and Goldfish and Sculpture. They also held a mock trial of “Hennery O’Hair
Mattress,” accusing “Mattress” (Matisse), personified by a disguised student, of “artistic murder, pictorial arson, total degeneracy of color sense, artistic rapine, criminal
abuse of title, and general aesthetic abortion.”34
as well as drawings are mentioned in the reviews.40 Morosov and Shchukin lent seven
paintings; the eighth was Seated Riffian. For further discussion of this exhibition see the
entry for Seated Riffian.
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie. Exposition Henri-Matisse,
Tableaux du Maroc et Sculpture. April 14–19, 1913
The Madras (cat. no. 11 [?]), Studio with Goldfish (cat. no. 14 [?])
Seated Riffian (cat. no. 15)
Of the fourteen paintings (only eleven are listed in the catalogue) in this week-long
exhibition of the Moroccan paintings, only three were for sale: Seated Riffian, Moroccan
Café (Le Café marocain; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), and Fatma, The
Mulatto Woman (La Mulatresse Fatma; private collection, Switzerland). The purpose of the
exhibition was to show the large Moroccan decorations commissioned by the Russian
collectors Morosov and Shchukin, particularly the so-called “Moroccan Triptych,”
before the works left France.35 A photograph of the installation shows Seated Riffian
between the two still lives Arums (The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) and Arum,
Irises and Mimosas (The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), both 1912–13, and two
plaster versions of the bust of Jeannette (Jeannette II and III).
Commentaries of the exhibition in the press are scarce. Louis Vauxcelles noted “that
the essential theme of a picture is light, while three-quarters of Matisse’s pictures are
nothing but exercises in color.”36 René Jean noticed that Matisse “attains a sort of colored music that goes to the extreme limits of the pictorial domain.”37 The most laudatory review was that of Marcel Sembat, a French left-wing deputy and close friend of
Matisse, who emphasized the decorative quality of the Moroccan paintings as well as
their provision of what he called “a sentimental quintessence.”38
Berlin: Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt. [Moroccan Paintings]. May 2–11, 1913
Seated Riffian (cat. no. 15)
After the Bernheim-Jeune show, Matisse asked the two Russian collectors Shchukin
and Morosov to lend their recent Moroccan acquisitions to an exhibition at the
Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin, on the works’ way to Russia. He wrote to Morosov, “I
have given in to the wishes of my friends and also to the necessity of showing my pictures before sending them to Moscow, by promising that they would be exhibited in
Berlin for 8 days on the way to Moscow—as well as those owned by Shchukin. . . . I am
even thinking about going there to assure myself of the safe shipment of the pictures
which will leave Berlin toward May 8.”39
There was no catalogue for the show, which was open only for one week and coincided with the Berlin Secession. The show was well received; eight Moroccan paintings
Berlin: Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt. Kollektionen: Henri Matisse, Franz
Heckendorf, E. L. Kirchner, Georg Leschnitzer, Plastiken. November
1913
One month after the exhibition of the Moroccan works, Gurlitt wrote to Matisse
about a plan to hold another solo exhibition of the artist’s work in the fall.41 Instead,
Matisse was presented in a group exhibition of works from private collections, consisting primarily of works by Swiss and German artists such as Max Liebermann, Ferdinand
Hodler, Lovis Corinth, Frank Heckendorf, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, as well as twelve
paintings by Matisse along with drawings and engravings. At least three and possibly
four of these paintings came from the collection of Oskar and Greta Moll: Three Bathers
(Trois Baigneuses; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts), The Rose (Une Rose; Norton Museum
of Art, West Palm Beach), The Palm (La Palme; National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.), and probably The Madras. Studio with Goldfish, which was also owned by the Molls,
may be a picture here called Interieur, a title that the painting held in some French and
German publications.
Rome: Palazzo dell’Esposizione. Seconda Esposizione Internazionale
D’Arte “Della Secessione.” February–June 1914
Seated Riffian (cat. no. 15)
In 1914, the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune asked Matisse to lend pictures from his collection to the second Rome Secession exhibition to replace works in the collection of
Leo Stein that were no longer available for loan. On February 13, 1914, Fénéon wrote
to Matisse, “M. Leo D. Stein, as you know, being no longer able to exhibit his collection, now dispersed, in Rome (which has placed us in a very disagreeable situation
apropos the organizers of the Secession), we would like to substitute ourselves for him
and put together a small group of your works, since it is expressly your works that are
requested. We would consequently send some of your pictures there, if you could put at
our disposal for this purpose some of the pictures that you were disposed to lend in case
the first ensemble did not succeed.”42
Matisse agreed to lend three pictures as well as etchings. He also proposed to send
The Dance I (The Museum of Modern Art), but it was refused because of its large format.43
The exhibition catalogue listed thirty-two works by Matisse—twenty-one etchings,
one drawing, and ten paintings including Purple Cyclamen (Cyclamène pourpre; private
collection), Music, sketch (La Musique, esquisse; The Museum of Modern Art), The Door (La
Porte; unknown provenance), and Seated Riffian, lent by the artist.44 Matisse’s works
were exhibited in the same room as those by Cézanne, which were also all lent courtesy
of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery.45
Brussels: Palais du Cinquantenaire. Exposition générale des Beaux-Arts,
Salon Triennal. May 9–August 1914
Le Bonheur de vivre (cat. no. 5)
The Salon Triennal, organized by the Belgian government with the aid of the Société
Royale des Beaux-Arts, was an official presentation of Belgian and foreign art. That year
the Salon included an important section of French art organized by the Belgian art critic
Octave Maus, who was president of the Libre Esthétique, an association devoted to the
promotion of the artistic disciplines. The Galerie Bernheim-Jeune agreed to lend a selection
of works by Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Ker Xavier Roussel, Edouard Vuillard, and Matisse.46
The show also included a special section of “Arts décoratifs,” which grouped together
applied art, faïence, furniture, rugs, illustrations, and what were called at the time “decorative panels,” usually monumental paintings destined for public buildings or private decorative programs. Le Bonheur de vivre was included in this section of the show). The Salon
opened on May 9 and was to run until November 1, but it was interrupted in August 1914 by
the outbreak of World War I.
Berlin: Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt. Henri Matisse. [July–August] 1914
Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12), Blue Still Life (cat. no. 13)
Soon after Gurlitt’s exhibition of Matisse’s Moroccan works in May 1913 (see above),
Gurlitt approached the artist for a second solo show in the fall of 1913, having obtained
the support of the collector Kurt Glaser. He added that he wanted to present the artist’s
drawings and sculptures to a German audience.47 Explaining the progress of the show, Barr
wrote: “Curt Glaser now came to see Purrmann in Paris with an invitation from the Gurlitt
Gallery in Berlin to hold a large Matisse retrospective. Purrmann urged Matisse to cooperate and together they persuaded the Michael Steins to lend, though Marcel Sembat, still
the leading French collector of Matisse, refused, Purrmann thought because, as an experienced politician, he felt war was imminent.”48 The exhibition, however, did not open until
July 1914, and showed only paintings from Sarah and Michael Stein’s collection. It consisted of nineteen pictures from 1897 to 1909, including Red Madras Headdress and Blue Still
Life. With the outbreak of war, the show was forced to close on August 1, and the pictures
remained blocked in Germany until the end of the war.49
Barcelona: Municipalité de Barcelone. Exposition d’art français. April 23–
July 5, 1917
Still Life with Gourds (cat. no. 16)
The Exposition d’art français, an exhibition of works by French artists organized by the
city of Barcelona, was modeled on the annual salons in France. Three associations for the
annual salons were invited to submit pictures: la Société des Artistes Français, la Société
Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the Salon d’Automne. Robert Lubar suggests that the exhibition promoted a French nationalist agenda during wartime, observing that it focused
on the works of artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Cézanne who could by then
be considered “classicists,” rather than work by more recent avant-garde artists. (There
were, for example, no Cubist works in the show.)50 Only one picture by Matisse is listed
in the catalogue, Still Life with Gourds (lent by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune), in the section
allotted to the association of the Salon d’Automne. This work, however, is perhaps one
of Matisse’s more successful responses to Cubism, although it may have been somewhat
lost among the 1,462 works listed in the catalogue and presumably on display.
Paris: Galerie Paul Guillaume. Matisse-Picasso. January 23–February
15, 1918
Three Sisters (cat. nos. 17–19)
In January of 1918, for the opening of his grand new gallery at 108, rue du Faubourg
Saint-Honoré, Paul Guillaume organized a show of the work of the two leading figures
of the modern art world, Matisse and Picasso.51 They were paired here together for the
first time. The catalogue listed sixteen works by Picasso and fifteen by Matisse (mostly
recent works); the Three Sisters panels, possibly late additions, were not listed in the
catalogue.52 Louis Aragon remembers their presence in the exhibition: “At the same
period I saw at Paul Guillaume’s the so-called Triptych where the ‘three sisters,’ Laurette
and her two sisters, are shown three times; this painting is not to be confused with The
Three Sisters in the Walter Collection.”53
The show was organized quite quickly, beginning around January 12.54 Guillaume
asked Apollinaire to write the preface of the exhibition, and on January 14, Apollinaire,
from the military hospital of Val-de-Grâce, submitted the preface to Guillaume. The
following is an excerpt: “M. Paul Guillaume, whose taste cannot be praised enough,
has just had the most unusual and unexpected idea of uniting in one exhibition the two
most famous members and representatives of the two greatest trends in contemporary
art—one can guess that these are Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.”55 On January 18,
with Picasso’s approval, Guillaume wrote to Matisse, who was then in Nice: “You know
that I own a certain number of your important works. I thought that it would not displease you to see them in my own special exhibition, which might appear as if it had
been organized by you and in consequence seem to be a personal demonstration, which
I’m sure you care little for during the war, but in this case it would be at the same time
as a certain number of works by Picasso. This comparison has nothing I think that could
displease you. I have Picasso’s consent. . . . I will have very beautiful things by you that
have been promised to me most notably by Monsieur [Jos] Hessel. The program will be
sold for the benefit of disabled war veterans.”56
Evidently Matisse was caught unawares, and did not agree with Guillaume’s commercial strategy. He answered his proposal on January 18: “You ask for the authorization
to hold an exhibition of my work with that of Picasso, when you have already covered
the walls with announcements for this exhibition. Many people think that I organized
this exhibition. This goes against my wish to refrain from making demonstrations of
artistic activity during the war.”57 Despite Matisse’s reluctance, however, the show
opened on January 26. The catalogue (only a booklet) included a list of the works with
an essay on each artist by Apollinaire. The exhibition was extremely successful and
provided the public with an opportunity to view works by these artists at a time when
they were seldom shown in France. Nevertheless, Matisse was upset by the comparison,
criticizing Guillaume’s commercial attitude and the way the exhibition favored his rival.
He wrote to his wife Amélie, “I received the catalogue from the Guillaume exhibition
that I will call the [Carpentier Joe] match.58 It is indeed what I thought, Apollinaire’s
preface shows it. All in all, I don’t know what it will do, but it is directed against me.
Guillaume can look elsewhere if he wants something, and if I still sell to Hessel and
to Georges Bernheim it is because I cannot do otherwise. It is the height of politics to
attract attention to the work of someone who is not there in order to demolish him.
What should the Cubists and the cubistons say. One can see from the two prefaces that I
did not directly organize the show.”59
The first issue of Guillaume’s review Les Arts à Paris provides extracts of a number of
reviews of the show.60
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Oeuvres récentes de Henri Matisse.
May 2–16, 1919
Still Life with Gourds (cat. no. 16), Bouquet of Anemones (cat. no. 23
[?])
This exhibition, organized by Fénéon, director of Bernheim-Jeune, was Matisse’s
first solo exhibition in Paris since the 1913 exhibition of his Moroccan works at the same
gallery. It comprised thirty-six works and was the first major exhibition of his early
Nice-period works. Only three of the works—Still Life with Gourds, Gray Nude with a
Bracelet (Nu gris au bracelet, 1913–14; private collection, Switzerland), and Still Life with
Lemons (Les Citrons, 1914; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence)—
were made between 1914 and 1916.
One can assume that the war interrupted exhibitions at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune
between 1914 and 1918. The lessening of the gallery’s interest in Matisse during these
years, however, may also have been due to the increasing difficulty of the works he
made between 1913 and 1917, a period referred to by some as his experimental years:61 as
the artist engaged in a dialogue with Cubism and the competing forces of modernism,
the pictures became increasingly abstract and more geometrically constructed. Many,
such as Piano Lesson (1916; The Museum of Modern Art), The Moroccans (1915–1916; The
Museum of Modern Art), and Bathers by a River (1909–16; The Art Institute of Chicago),
were also extremely large, and as such would not have been included in the terms of the
contract with Bernheim-Jeune, freeing the artist to sell them to whomever he liked.62
In 1917, then, when Matisse began to make smaller easel paintings in an
Impressionist palette, Bernheim-Jeune must have welcomed the opportunity to exhibit
them. Bouquet of Anemones, made in Nice in the spring of 1918, with its simple arrangement of flowers in a decorated vase and its rosy, violet palette, is an example of the
works that had more commercial appeal.63 But if the exhibition was a financial success
for the gallery, initiating a series of exhibitions of the Nice-period works that would
continue throughout the 1920s, the show was critically panned. Writers favorable to the
Cubist avant-garde reproached Matisse for a virtuosity they deemed superficial; Jean
Cocteau was particularly harsh: “The exhibition of recent canvases by Henri Matisse, at
Bernheim-Jeune’s, is very strange. Here the sunny Fauve has become one of Bonnard’s
little cats. The atmosphere of Bonnard, Vuillard, of Marquet reigns throughout the
room.” André Lhote remarked upon Matisse’s “laziness of thought and judgment.”64
London: The Leicester Galleries. Exhibition of Pictures by HenriMatisse and Sculpture by Maillol. November–December 1919
Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table” (cat. no. 17)
This exhibition was the first in a series of exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries dedicated to French art. As Oliver Brown, the owner of the gallery remembers, it was difficult after the war to find pictures by French painters. He consulted the collector Michael
Sadler, who suggested that the gallery hold a Matisse show: Sadler “was able to borrow
a small collection for us and we obtained a few more pictures from other sources.”65
Parisian loans were secured by the dealer Charles Vildrac, who wrote to Matisse on June
4, 1919, “The directors of the gallery attach great importance to your exhibition. The
word is out that it is the first time that an important group of your works will be presented in London and that they expect a success. As a consequence, they insist that I
get them important and representative pictures. This exhibition will also include a few
small bronzes by Maillol.”66
On October 12, 1919, Matisse went to London, where he stayed through the beginning of November to design the sets of Stravinsky’s opera Le Chant du rossignol for
Leonide Massine. Once there, he visited the Leicester Galleries often.67 Brown would
recall, “In the autumn of 1919 the Matisse pictures arrived from Paris, but it was disappointing to find that in spite of one large picture, ‘Les Trois Sœurs,’ there were scarcely
enough to fill our largest gallery. Then, to our surprise and pleasure, Henri Matisse
himself turned up and asked to see the pictures we had assembled for the coming
exhibition.”68 Matisse then offered to supplement the show with works from his own
collection.
The show included both works on loan and works for sale. The catalogue listed
twenty-one paintings, as well as drawings, woodcuts, and lithographs.69 Most of the
works were recent pictures made in Nice—landscapes, still lifes, and studies of Matisse’s
models Antoinette and Laurette and of his daughter, Marguerite. The largest picture was
Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table.” The show was a success; the critical response
was positive and the sales numerous.70 Considered an avant-garde artist when his work
was first exhibited in London, at the Grafton Galleries in 1910 and in 1912, Matisse was
now in favor among British collectors as an acceptable modernist. Vanessa Bell, in a
letter to Fry, who had organized the Grafton Galleries shows, provided an apt description of the easy appeal of the works exhibited: “The Matisses are lovely, but for the most
part slight sketches. . . . All are sold. He’s evidently a great success nowadays. These are
not important works and so attractive in colour I suppose no one can help liking them. I
hope he is doing bigger things too.”71
Paris: Galerie Devambez (organized by Paul Guillaume). Exposition de
Peinture Moderne. January 27–February 12, 1920
Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table” (cat. no. 17) or Three Sisters
with Grey Background (cat. no. 18)
The Galerie Devambez was one of the most important sites for the diffusion of
African art in Paris after World War I. Guillaume, an influential early dealer in African
art, set out to establish a correspondence between it and modern art by exhibiting them
together. His and Apollinaire’s book L’Album d’art nègre (1917) illustrates the Bamana figure belonging to Matisse that appears on the mantelpiece in Three Sisters with an African
Sculpture (cat. no. 19). After the death of Apollinaire, in November 1918, Guillaume
organized La Première Exposition d’art nègre et d’art océanien (May 10–31, 1919), with the
assistance of the collector André Level, at the Galerie Devambez, which had a large
space on the boulevard Malesherbes.72
In January of 1920, Guillaume organized a show of modern painting at the Galerie
Devambez, including works by Giorgio de Chirico, Derain, Pinchus Krémègne, Amedeo
Modigliani, and others including Matisse. On January 7, 1920, he wrote to Matisse, “I
am organizing a very important exhibition at Devambez and of course it is essential
that the exhibition include some important, recent, and possibly totally new works by
you. I don’t know if my three pictures from London [Leicester Galleries, 1919] are sold
or if they will be returned. Whatever happens, I would prefer new things. I hope then
that, in concert with one or the other of the Bernheim galleries, you would agree to lend
some works. I am going to go see these men as soon as possible as I have need of the
titles for the catalogue.”73
For the introduction to the catalogue, titled “Sur la peinture” (On painting),
Guillaume selected extracts from Apollinaire’s book Méditations esthétiques. Les Peintres
cubistes (1913). Five works by Matisse were listed, four bronzes and one painting, Les
Trois Sœurs. This painting could have been one of three works: The Three Sisters from
the Auguste Pellerin collection, now at the Musée de l’Orangerie; Three Sisters with
Grey Background, which may have entered Alphonse Kann’s collection by this time;
or Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table”, at the time either in Hessel’s or Baixeras’s
collection.74
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie. Exposition Henri-Matisse.
October 15–November 6, 1920
Interior, Nice (cat. no. 29), The Venetian Blinds (cat. no. 30), Standing
Nude near Window (cat. no. 35), The Black Boat (cat. no. 36), High Tide
(cat. no. 37)
This was the second in a series of four shows at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune dedicated to Matisse’s most recent production. It opened the same day as the Salon d’Automne, surely to capitalize on the interest in art stirred up by that exhibition, where
a major work by Matisse was on display, Music Lesson (cat. no. 20). It comprised thirty-one pictures from Etretat painted the previous summer, including The Black Boat
and High Tide, and twenty-two works painted in Nice between the winter of 1919 and the
spring of 1920, including Interior, Nice, The Venetian Blinds, and Standing Nude Near Window.
The financial success of Bernheim-Jeune’s Matisse exhibition of 1919, combined with
the publication in January 1920 of the first monograph on the artist, by Marcel Sembat,
contributed to the image of an artist who had reached the apex of his art.75 The critical
reception had been negative. In response, Matisse had criticized Sembat’s book in a letter
to his wife: “First of all he denies me any future—by claiming I’ve already won, then he
makes all sorts of blunders—is this the moment to say I look like a German professor? And
to drag in Nietzsche?”76
The 1920 Bernheim-Jeune exhibition attempted to change the public perception of the
artist as an established master who could churn out charming pictures with ease. The exhibition was accompanied by a book composed and edited by the artist, Cinquante dessins,
in which, by reproducing recent drawings, he worked to demonstrate that his paintings,
contrary to appearances, were the object of long and complex preparatory work.77 But
the artist’s efforts to reverse the critical trend initiated by Sembat’s book and the series
of exhibitions at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery were in vain. Throughout the 1920s, in the
nationalist context of the retour à l’ordre, his reputation as an “old master” would continue
to amplify. The critical reception of the Galeries Georges Petit retrospective a decade later
would only confirm this state.
Paris: Grand Palais. Salon d’Automne. October 15–December 12, 1920
The Music Lesson (cat. no. 20)
The Music Lesson was the only painting exhibited by Matisse at the Salon d’Automne
this year, although the book Cinquante dessins was also exhibited in the illustrated-book
section. The book was supervised by the artist, with a preface by Vildrac, and consisted
of mostly recent drawings. The Salon included a large Renoir retrospective in honor of the
artist, who had died the year before. For more specific discussion of The Music Lesson at the
Salon d’Automne, see the entry for cat. no. 20.
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Exposition Henri-Matisse. February 23–
March 15, 1922
Two Women Reclining (cat. no. 42), Interior with Two Figures, Open
Window (cat. no. 43), Young Woman before an Aquarium (cat. no. 44)
Exposition Henri-Matisse was the third of a series of four shows dedicated to the artist’s
most recent production. The catalogue lists thirty-eight paintings, as well as drawings, but
a letter from Paul Ebstein, director of the gallery, to Matisse with a drawing of the installation suggests that there were approximately forty-nine paintings in the show; about
eleven, then, were not reproduced in the catalogue.78
Most of the pictures were painted during the artist’s most recent season in Nice,
between September 1921 and February 1922. Matisse sent nineteen paintings from Nice
to Paris at the beginning of January.79 At least sixteen of these works were acquired by
the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune on February 13 for inclusion in the show. These included
Interior with Two Figures, Open Window and Young Woman before an Aquarium. Two Women
Reclining, also in the show, had been purchased the previous summer.80 The artist lent
eleven paintings, including Odalisque with Red Culotte (Odalisque à la culotte rouge; Musée
National d’Art Moderne) and The Moorish Screen (Le Paravent mauresque; Philadelphia
Museum of Art), as well as drawings.
The selection of works was uniform, largely dominated by interiors and female
figures and punctuated by a few landscapes and still lifes. Most of the paintings were
sold during the show. Marcel Kapferer bought three pictures on the first day, including
Interior with Two Figures, Open Window; Claribel Cone bought three in the months following the show, and the French state acquired Odalisque with Red Culotte, the first Matisse
painting to enter a Paris museum and perhaps a sign of the gentrification of both the
French museum and the previously radical artist.
Matisse, then living in Nice, did not come to Paris for the show. The catalogue was
complemented by a booklet of sixteen reproductions, Nice 1921, published by the gallery; Vildrac, a poet and friend of Matisse’s as well as an art dealer, provided a preface.
Paris: Galerie Paul Guillaume. Exposition des acquisitions récentes de
La Barnes Foundation. January 22–February 3, 1923
Standing Nude near Window (cat. no. 35 [?])
As the title implies, this exhibition, at Guillaume’s gallery on the rue la Boétie, consisted of a selection of recent purchases by Barnes.81 There was no catalogue for the
show, but newspaper reviews indicate that it included, among other works, Manet’s
Tarring the Boat and Daumier’s Ribalds. It also presented works by contemporary artists
such as de Chirico, Derain, Modigliani, Jules Pascin, Maurice Utrillo, and Chaim Soutine,
as well as African art. Barnes had just purchased a spectacular group of fifty-four
Soutines.82 Guillaume intended to publish a special number of his journal Les Arts à Paris
to accompany the exhibition, but this issue did not appear until October, and did not
specifically mention the show.83
The exhibition confirmed the prestige of Guillaume’s gallery on the Paris art scene
and helped to establish him as one of most important dealers of modern art in the city.
Even the critic of the prominent Philadelphia newspaper the Public Ledger observed
that the show was well received in France: “The critic of Le Journal writes: All artistic
Paris has been very much excited, not because of anything sensational, but because of
the number and the quality of the paintings exhibited, which are representative of the
tendencies in painting during the last few years.”84 The show was also good publicity
for Barnes, then in the process of constructing the Barnes Foundation, as it defined
him as one of the major American collectors of modern French and African art. During
the show, in something of a publicity stunt, Guillaume was officially presented as the
“foreign secretary” for the Foundation.85 At the end of the exhibition Barnes wrote
to Guillaume, “Your little gallery must be surprised to get so much attention. You will
remember that I predicted that it would be great sensation and that you would be the
most talked of man in French art circles. The advertising value will be enormous and I
wish you had more fine paintings and more choice negro pieces to sell at high prices to
the people who will surely come to the gallery long after the exhibition is closed.”86
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Exhibition of
Contemporary European Paintings and Sculpture. April 11–May 9, 1923
Le Bonheur de vivre (cat. no. 5), Flowers in Pitcher (cat. no. 8), Three
Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table” (cat. no. 17), Standing Nude near
Window (cat. no. 35), Woman Reclining (cat. no. 39)
The exhibition at Guillaume’s gallery in Paris was such a success that Barnes
arranged for some of the works to be exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts in Philadelphia, a conservative establishment that continued to teach in
the realist style of one of its most famous members, Thomas Eakins. This time Barnes
did not advertise the exhibition as a show of his own collection, although this may
have been evident to some as he wrote the preface to the catalogue and had recently
announced the opening of the Foundation.87 Barnes wrote to Guillaume, on January 15,
1923: “When all my recent acquisitions arrive in Philadelphia I’ll arrange to have the
most important show of modern art ever held in America. I’ll put with them my best
Matisses, Picassos, Laurencins, Laguts, and my negro sculptures, and arrange to have
the exhibition a special one at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
I’ll write the introduction to the catalogue and will say that the whole exhibition
belongs to you and is due to your courtesy. Let the public find out later that the things
belong to the Foundation.”88
As the first public showing of Barnes’s collection in the United States, this was
his first opportunity to share his educational ideas with the people of Philadelphia.
In his catalogue introduction he explained the educational importance of showing
Philadelphians contemporary French art that “will probably seem strange to most
people.” He compared modern art to music, notably that of Arnold Schoenberg, whose
music the public of Philadelphia had recently heard in a concert conducted by Leopold
Stokowski. He wrote, “If education does mean growth, movement, direction, development, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra have done one of the most significant
and important things for education of a part of the public that our city has ever had.”89
The catalogue of the show lists seventy-five paintings, including five works by
Matisse, which can be seen in photographs of the exhibition: Le Bonheur de vivre,
Flowers in Pitcher, Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table”, Standing Nude near Window,
and Woman Reclining. This was the first public display of Le Bonheur de vivre in the United
States, but the picture went almost unnoticed. The Philadelphia area press derided
the show, categorizing the works as unclean and decadent in the academic context in
which it was presented.90
Paris: Hôtel de la Curiosité et des Beaux-Arts. Première exposition
de collectionneurs, au profit de la Société des Amis du Luxembourg.
March 10–April 10, 1924
Chinese Casket (cat. no. 45)
The Musée du Luxembourg was established in 1818 in the galleries of the Palais du
Luxembourg in Paris as a national museum dedicated to the work of living artists. The
Société des Amis du Luxembourg was created in 1903 to support the institution. In
1946, when the French state created the Musée National d’Art Moderne to replace the
Musée du Luxembourg, the group became La Société des Amis du Musée national d’art
moderne, as it is still known today.
In the spring of 1924 the Friends held the first exhibition in support of the institution, the aptly titled Première exposition de collectionneurs, au profit de la Société des Amis
du Luxembourg. The collector Charles Pacquement lent Chinese Casket to this show. The
exhibition catalogue was organized by collector rather than by artist, and the selection of works on display was correspondingly broad, providing a cross-section of the
state of private collections in France. Along with the picture by Matisse, Pacquement
lent works by Cézanne, Denis, Marie Laurencin, and others. The brothers Henry and
Marcel Kapferer lent three works by Matisse, as well as works by artist such as Bonnard,
Daumier, Gauguin, and Odilon Redon.
Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Exposition Henri-Matisse. May 6–May
20, 1924
Reclining Nude (cat. no. 47)
The Galerie Bernheim-Jeune’s sixth Matisse exhibition showed the artist’s most
recent works: thirty-nine paintings and an unspecified number of drawings, most of
them already in private collections.91 Like the 1919, 1920, and 1922 exhibitions, it displayed works from the early Nice period, mostly interiors, odalisques, such as Reclining
Nude, and still lifes.
The response to the exhibition in the Paris press was extremely favorable. In a long
article typical of the show’s reception, Philippe Marcel (alias Adolphe Basler) wrote,
“After years of trial and error, today Matisse has achieved perfection. . . . The artist
who has reached the prime of his life aspires to more clarity, more simplicity, more
sociability, not to say more classicism, a term that cannot be exaggerated, to define the
latest phase of his production. For Matisse is a Latin who is pleased by order, and by the
voluptuous rhythms that the Mediterranean coast inspires in him, his preferred place of
sojourn for many years.”92
Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Henri Matisse: Udstilling af hans
Arbejder. September 1924
Red Madras Headdress (cat. no. 12), Blue Still Life (cat. no. 13), Seated
Riffian (cat. no. 15), Three Sisters and “The Rose Marble Table” (cat. no.
17), Blue Villa (cat. no. 26), Reclining Figure in a Landscape (cat. no. 27)
This Copenhagen retrospective, organized by the Association of French Art, was
made up of works primarily from the collections of the Danish collectors Christian
Tetzen-Lund and Johannes Rump. The largest retrospective of Matisse’s work up to that
time, it comprised ninety-one paintings ranging in date from the artist’s early years
to 1924; a number were from the Nice period. The show was organized by the young
Danish curator and art historian Leo Swane, who also wrote the introduction to the
catalogue. Part of the exhibition traveled to Oslo and Stockholm, although none of the
Barnes paintings, all then owned by Tetzen-Lund, traveled to these venues. TetzenLund was eager to sell his collection at the time, and after the show, the Glyptotek purchased four of his works by Matisse.93
Glasgow: The Galleries of Mr. Alex Reid. Works of Some of the Most
Eminent French Painters of To-Day. October 1924. London: The Lefevre
Galleries. Works of Some of the Most Eminent French Painters of
To-Day. November 1924
The Red Couch (cat. no. 34)
Alex Reid from Glasgow and the Lefevre Galleries from London began their collaboration in 1923 by jointly organizing exhibitions of French painters (see “Matisse’s
Dealers and Collectors” [http://www.barnesfoundation.org/assets/public/PDFs/
Collections/matisse-dealers-collectors.pdf]). The third such exhibition, Great French
Painters of Today (Georges Braque, Derain, Raoul Dufy, Matisse, Picasso, Rouault, Utrillo,
Laurencin, Jean Marchand), opened in Glasgow in October 1924 and moved to London
a month later. Four Matisse paintings were shown in Glasgow, including The Red Couch,
and a fifth was added for the London show.
In his review of the show, the painter Walter Sickert criticized Lefevre and Reid for
a lack of connoisseurship in their shows: “Matisse, for instance, is a great painter, as
his exquisite view from inside a motor proves. The delicious window at Nice is a motive
that he has made classic. These things are important pictures—infinity represented with
the greatest economy of means—stable decorations, eternally alive. But number 20 and
21 are null, and their exhibition a good example of the kind of artistic, commercial and
international mistake that I depreciate.”94
Zurich: Kunsthaus Zürich. Internationale Kunstausstellung. August 8–
September 23, 1925
London: Alex Reid & Lefevre. Exhibition of Works by Henri-Matisse.
June 1927
Studio with Goldfish (cat. no. 14)
The Red Couch (cat. no. 34 [?])
The Internationale Kunstausstellung was organized by the director of the Kunsthaus
Zürich, Wilhelm Wartmann, aided by F. A. Lutz, an affiliate of the well-known Galerie
Van Diemen & Co. in Berlin. Lutz was instrumental in organizing many of the Matisse
loans that came from German collections, including those that came from the collections of Greta and Oskar Moll, the Galerie Van Diemen, Galerie am Brandenburger Tor
(run by the dealer Hugo Kloser), and Lucien Bett. Matisse was well represented in the
show by twenty-two paintings, four drawings, and ten lithographs, spanning the years
between 1900 and 1922. It seems clear from the correspondence that the fullness of this
selection was owed to the fact that there were a number of good early pictures by the
artist in Germany and that many of these collectors and dealers were willing to lend.
(Bernheim-Jeune, the artist’s dealer in Paris, lent works from the 1920s). Their participation may have been encouraged by the fact that the Kunsthaus indicated that works
in the catalogue would be for sale, and had even designated its own interest in purchasing works in correspondence with lenders. Studio with Goldfish was listed as Intérieur,
and was for sale for 15,000 francs. The minutes of the Kunsthaus commission meetings indicate that a number of Matisse’s pictures were considered for purchase by the
museum, including Studio with Goldfish. In the end, the Kunsthaus purchased the Molls’
picture of Matisse’s daughter, Margot (1907), which had initially been in the collection
of Leo Stein.95
At the time director of the recently combined galleries of Alex Reid in Glasgow and
Lefevre in London, Etienne Bignou organized a series of monographic shows dedicated
to French artists such as Charles Dufresne, Redon, Henri Rousseau, and Georges Pierre
Seurat, in their galleries in either London or Glasgow. The Matisse exhibition took place
in London, just after a show of Manet and Cézanne. It presented nineteen paintings,
including early works such as Three Bathers (1907; Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and The
Butterfly Catcher (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) but mainly works from the recent Nice
period, as well as pastels and drawings.
Antwerp. Exposition d’art français moderne. May 15–June 20, 1926
Interior with Two Figures, Open Window (cat. no. 43), Moorish Woman
(The Raised Knee) (cat. no. 46)
In 1926, eleven works from Marcel Kapferer’s collection, including Interior with Two
Figures, Open Window and Moorish Woman (The Raised Knee), made up the entire selection of works by Matisse in the 292-work group show Exposition d’art français moderne,
organized by the Association Française d’Expansion et d’Echanges Artistiques (AFAA)
in Antwerp. The organizing committee in Paris consisted of Paul Fierens, Waldemar
George, and Dr. Laugier. George wrote the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
London: National Gallery, Millbank. Opening Exhibition of the Modern
Foreign Gallery. June–October, 1926
The Red Couch (cat. no. 34 [?])
Built by Sir Joseph Duveen’s son, Lord Duveen, the New Galleries for the modern
international collection of the Tate opened in 1926. Matisse was represented with nine
pictures, all loaned by British collectors.
The Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery Album indicates that The Red Couch was in the exhibition, but none of the works on the checklist corresponds to the Barnes Foundation
picture.96
New York: Valentine Gallery. Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by
Henri Matisse, the First Painting 1890, the Latest Painting 1925. January
3–31, 1927
Woman on a Red Sofa (cat. no. 33 [?])
In November 1925, Matisse’s son Pierre, who had recently moved to New York to
become a dealer, began a partnership with the dealer Valentine Dudensing. They specialized in French artists such as Braque, Bonnard, Derain, Laurencin, Vlaminck, and
Matisse. Pierre regularly traveled to Europe to find works.
With the aid of his father, Pierre organized the first retrospective exhibition of
Matisse’s work in America at Dudensing’s gallery. The exhibition, which was not
accompanied by a catalogue, included paintings from all periods of the artist’s life
except the Fauve years: the first, Chardin-esque still lifes, the early engagement with
Impressionism, the experimental years of the teens, and the most recent Nice-period
pictures. The following works were worthy of specific notice: Marguerite with the Black
Cat (Marguerite au chat noir, 1910; private collection), The Moroccans, The Painter in His
Studio (Le Peintre dans son atelier, 1915–16; Musée National d’Art Moderne), The White
Plumes (1919; The Minneapolis Institute), The Moorish Screen (Le Paravent mauresque, 1921;
Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground (Figure
décorative sur fond ornemental (1925–26; Musée National d’Art Moderne). Matisse was the
main lender, most notably with The Moroccans and The Painter in His Studio. By presenting a panorama of the artist’s oeuvre including his most recent works, then completely
unknown in the United States, the exhibition marked an important stage in the artist’s
reception, the first step toward his American consecration. Matisse was presented as
an accomplished artist, one of the great masters of the French tradition. As Elizabeth
Cary wrote, “It is too late in the day to call Matisse a sensation. He is one of the veterans of the current movement in art.” Forbes Watson noted, “Matisse is French to the
core, a logical development of the French tradition.”97 Pierre wrote to his father in Nice
on January 28 commenting on the success of the show: “The gallery is always full. The
newspapers have written very good articles.”98 A version of the exhibition with fifteen
pictures traveled to the Arts Club of Chicago in February.99
collectors. Marcel Kapferer sent Interior with Two Figures, Open Window and Pacquement
lent Chinese Casket.
Hamburg: Kunsthalle. Europaïsche Kunst der Gegenwart. [August–
September] 1927
Reclining Odalisque (cat. no. 48)
Paris: Galerie Le Portique. Exposition de peintures et dessins de Henri
Matisse. October 1929
Five paintings by Matisse were presented in this important exhibition of European
art at the Hamburg Kunsthalle. Certain works were lent by private collectors or institutions, others were for sale. The German dealer Alfred Gold organized the loans of the
Matisse works for the show.100 One work by Matisse was for sale, Domino Players (Zwei
Frauen am Spieltisch/Les Joueuses de domino.101
The Galerie Le Portique published no catalogue for this exhibition of Matisse’s
most recent work, but the invitation indicates that it comprised eight paintings, fifteen drawings, and three etchings. It was organized on the occasion of the publication
of Florent Fels’s monograph on the artist.103 Eugène Tériade’s essay “L’Actualité de
Matisse,” in Cahiers d’art, reproduced five of the paintings in the show.104 When Pierre
Matisse saw the exhibition in Paris, he wrote to his father, “All the dealers are panic-stricken by this exhibition and ask themselves what it could mean.”105
Amsterdam: Municipal Museum. Cent ans de peinture française, 2e
partie, peinture moderne. April 16–May 5, 1928
New York: Valentine Gallery. Henri-Matisse. December 9, 1929–
January 4, 1930
Three Sisters with Grey Background (cat. no. 18)
The Red Sofa (cat. no. 41), Chinese Casket (cat. no. 45), Reclining
Odalisque (cat. no. 48)
Domino Players (cat. no. 38)
This was the second part of the exhibition Cent ans de peinture française, organized by
the Van Wisselingh & Co. Gallery in Amsterdam under the patronage of the Association
Française d’Expansion et d’Echanges Artistiques (AFAA). Part I, which took place at
the gallery, was subtitled “Peinture rétrospective,” and Part II, which took place at the
Municipal Museum, was subtitled “Peinture moderne.” Four paintings by Matisse from
private collections were included in Part II, including Three Sisters with Grey Background,
then owned on a joint account by Alex Reid & Lefevre and Guillaume, and Boy with
Butterfly Net, which Barnes purchased in early 1932 and sold in late 1935.102
New York: M. Knoedler & Company. A Century of French Painting.
November 12–December 8, 1928
Three Sisters with Grey Background (cat. no. 18)
The exhibition was organized for the benefit of the French Hospital of New York. The
catalogue listed three pictures by Matisse, Three Sisters with Grey Background, The Window
at Nice (unidentified; lent by Mrs. R. A. Workman, London), and Vase of Flowers in front of
the Window (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
Brussels: Palais des Beaux-Arts. Exposition d’art français moderne.
April 13–May 12, 1929
Interior with Two Figures, Open Window (cat. no. 43), Chinese Casket
(cat. no. 45)
The Exposition d’art français moderne was a large group show including twenty-one
paintings, twenty-one etchings, and four drawings by Matisse, all lent by private
In December 1929, the Valentine Gallery in New York opened its first large Matisse
exhibition since 1927. Unlike the gallery’s previous retrospective exhibition, this show,
organized by Pierre Matisse and his father, was primarily devoted to the work of the
years between 1927 and 1929. It contained seventeen paintings, many of them lent by
the artist himself, including Reclining Odalisque.106 Dudensing had just purchased The
Red Sofa and agreed to show it, while Pacquement lent Chinese Casket.
Henri and Pierre hoped to encourage commercial success by combining the exhibition with the recent publication of Fry’s book Henri Matisse.107 Once the exhibition
opened, Pierre wrote to Henri to express his pleasure at its success: “News of the
Matisse exhibition, the gallery is very full, the book has been very successful in New
York. . . . The pictures from 1929 have made a great impression. Never has your work
been found so young, its color and light so ardent.”108 The American critics commented
on stylistic changes in the recent work, notably Matisse’s use of bold decorative patterns and his emphasis on form.109 The critic of Artnews wrote, “As in the former show
[New York, 1927] there is no sign of pause. Instead Matisse seems to be entering upon
new and more fertile fields than his former haunts.”110
Many of the paintings in the show returned to Europe to be included in the large
Matisse retrospective at the Galerien Thannhauser, Berlin, the same year (see below).111
New York: Valentine Gallery. Six Major Paintings by the Modern Masters
of France: Braque, Derain, Matisse, Picasso and one important work by
Henri Rousseau. February 17–March 8, 1930
Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum and Morgan Memorial. Exhibition
of Contemporary Paintings, Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James T. Soby.
November 16–30, 1930
Three Sisters with Grey Background (cat. no. 18)
The Red Sofa (cat. no. 41)
Essentially designed as a commercial exhibition of Dudensing’s recent purchases, since
all of the paintings were for sale, this show included one of Matisse’s Three Sisters panels,
Three Sisters with Grey Background, which Dudensing had recently bought from Alex Reid
& Lefevre and Guillaume. By this time Barnes owned two of the Three Sisters panels; he
had no plans to buy the third, but at the recommendation of the artist, who assured him
that the three works made up a triptych, he purchased the work to complete his ensemble.112 The exhibition also included Derain’s Joueur de cornemuse (The Bagpiper, Minneapolis
Institute of Arts), which Pierre Matisse had acquired at the John Quinn auction in New
York in 1927, and Rousseau’s Tiger and Rhinoceros (Fight Between a Tiger and Buffalo, 1908;
Cleveland Museum of Art).113
The Red Sofa was one of forty pictures in an exhibition of James Thrall Soby’s collection
at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Soby had built his collection of
modern art in less than a year, buying much of it through Dudensing, including The Red
Sofa. The Atheneum show included works by Derain, Laurencin, Jean Lurçat, and others,
as well as Matisse. Soby was a close friend of Chick Austin, director of the Wadsworth
Atheneum, who encouraged the young man’s purchases of modern art in conservative
Hartford. Although Soby later became more actively involved with The Museum of Modern
Art in New York, he remained friends with Austin and a trustee of the Atheneum.117
Berlin: Galerien Thannhauser. Henri Matisse, [February–March] 1930
The Red Couch (cat. no. 34), High Tide (cat. no. 37)
Head of a Young Girl (cat. no. 22), Interior with Two Figures, Open
Window (cat. no. 43), Moorish Woman (The Raised Knee) (cat. no. 46),
Reclining Odalisque (cat. no. 48)
The E. J. van Wisselingh & Co. gallery in Amsterdam specialized in Dutch and French
artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This group show featured fifty-six paintings, including The Red Couch and High Tide.
Matisse’s 1930 retrospective at the Galerien Thannhauser was the artist’s largest
and most inclusive show to that date. The first of four comprehensive retrospectives of
Matisse’s art in 1930–31, it was organized by Siegfried Rosengart, the nephew of Heinrich
Thannhauser, on the occasion of the artist’s sixtieth birthday. It contained over 250
works—83 paintings (most lent by private collectors), 150 drawings and prints, and 20
bronzes. (None of the works was for sale.) Matisse himself lent twenty-three paintings,
including Reclining Odalisque, as well as drawings, lithographs, and sculptures. The catalogue, with an introduction by Purrmann, was illustrated with sixty-four black and
white images. The paintings ranged in date from from late 1890 to 1929—in other words
from Matisse’s early work to his most recent—but the selection emphasized Nice-period
paintings from the 1920s. To coincide with the exhibition, Editions des Chroniques du jour
published a monograph with a German text by Gotthard Jedlicka.114 Matisse’s daughter,
Marguerite Duthuit, worked on the show from Paris obtaining loans and organizing many
of the shipments and insurance formalities.
The exhibition was well received, in the press, with collectors, and with directors and
curators of German museums. Indeed Rosengart asked the Matisse family to extend the
the exhibition: “Interest in this extraordinary artistic manifestation is everywhere. All the
artists, amateurs, students, etc., are so enthusiastic that they will not understand why
this excellent exhibition is only open for such a short time. Many schools, from Berlin and
other cities, have announced it everywhere. The directors from all the great museums are
coming too, notably Bremen, Cologne, Elberfeld, Essen, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dortmund,
Breslau, Copenhagen, Basel, Stuttgart, Dresden, Leipzig, Barmen, Vienna, etc. The interest
in the exhibition is boundless and as great today as it was at the start.”115 The exhibition
was in fact prolonged, or at least part of it was, since Pierre Matisse agreed to lend at least
two of his paintings until April 10.116
Amsterdam: E. J. Van Wisselingh & Co. La Peinture française aux XIX et
XXème siècles. April 9–May 9, 1931
Paris: Galeries Georges Petit. Henri-Matisse: exposition organisée au
profit de l’orphelinat des arts. June 16–July 25, 1931
The Green Dress (cat. no. 28), The Venetian Blinds (cat. no. 30), The Red
Couch (cat. no. 34), Interior with Two Figures, Open Window (cat. no.
43), Chinese Casket (cat. no. 45), Moorish Woman (The Raised Knee)
(cat. no. 46)
At the time of this retrospective Matisse was sixty years old, and was working on the
illustrations for Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poésies (some of these were shown in the exhibition) and on the Dance mural for the Barnes Foundation, which had been commissioned in
December 1930. The first show at the newly relaunched Galeries Georges Petit, the show
was organized by the Bernheim-Jeune gallery and Bignou (co-owners of the Galeries
Georges Petit) with assistance from Pierre Matisse and Duthuit.
Matisse returned to Paris in April, and, aided by Marguerite and Pierre, designed the
hang for the exhibition himself. He lent thirteen paintings and a number of drawings from
his own collection. The exhibition presented 143 paintings, 100 lithographs, and a number of drawings. Even though the selection ranged from 1892 to 1929, two-thirds of the
works were from the Nice years. Bernheim-Jeune and Bignou had significant stock from
this period, which had recently met with commercial success and was appreciated by
American collectors such as Etta Cone, Chester Dale, Stephen C. Clark, and Barnes.118 The
international participation was indeed significant: twenty-five loans came from the United
States and twenty-three from European collectors. Barnes himself did not participate.
The exhibition was accompanied by a well-illustrated catalogue, a special issue of the
journal Chroniques du jour, and an important issue of Cahiers d’Art with contributions by
major art critics from various countries, including Fry, Henry McBride, Will Grohmann,
Georges Salles, Paul Fierens, and Zervos.119 The opening dinner, attended by art-world
luminaries and French, German, and American journalists, created a stir in the Paris art
market, which was then experiencing a recession. The goal of the organizers was to anchor
Matisse’s international reputation by obtaining a number of foreign loans.
The French press, conventional as a whole, used the exhibition as a way to reclaim
Matisse for nationalist objectives and to position him as ultimate master of the French
school. His production before 1917, considered too abstract, was almost systematically
eliminated from this discourse. For these critics, “the painter of odalisques” presented
the reassuring image of a conformist artist whose career was established, who was appreciated by the great collectors and was useful for defending the image of France on the
international scene, which was above all American. At the same time, recognition of this
kind prevented the artist’s work from being taken into account in avant-garde circles. In
Cahiers d’Art, Henry McBride, who had published a book on Matisse in 1930, wrote, “These
paintings, now that the world definitely possessed them, are not sensational in the sense
that first they were. Innovations in style, once they are accepted, no longer operate as
innovations. It is Matisse’s distinction not so much to have defied precedents as to have
remained in the Great French tradition.”120
Barnes, who was working on The Art of Henri-Matisse, the book that he would publish
in 1933 with Violette de Mazia, went to Paris specifically to attend the retrospective. On
May 5, 1931, he wrote to Matisse, “My plan is to be in Paris from the fifteenth to the twenty-fifth of June to study the paintings in your exhibition and to gather material for our
book on Matisse.”121 He took copious notes on the exhibition in preparation for the book,
and returned to Philadelphia having purchased five pictures by Matisse, three of which
were in the exhibition: The Green Dress, The Red Couch, and Moorish Woman (The Raised Knee).
Back in the United States, he wrote of his trip rather gleefully to his colleague Laurence
Beurmeyer: “In the meantime, let me say I came back with somewhere near one thousand
pages of notes which I dictated in front of the very wonderful exhibition of one hundred
and fifty Matisses which was held in Paris for more than six weeks. I brought back five
Matisses, a marvelous Corot, a small Renoir, and a number of early Chinese paintings.”122
The exhibition must have encouraged his purchases of Nice-period works, as he later
bought several other works included in the exhibition, such as The Venetian Blinds, Interior
with Two Figures, Open Window, and Chinese Casket. Barr also came to see the show in order
to make a selection for his forthcoming Matisse retrospective to be held at The Museum of
Modern Art in New York.123
Basel: Kunsthalle Basel. Henri-Matisse. August 9–September 15, 1931
The Venetian Blinds (cat. no. 30), Interior with Two Figures, Open
Window (cat. no. 43), Chinese Casket (cat. no. 45, Reclining Odalisque
(cat. no. 48)
Following the show at Galeries Georges Petit, another retrospective opened in Basel in
August 1931, organized by the Société des Beaux-Arts de Bâle. This show was augmented
by important early canvases lent by German and Swiss collectors, fifteen bronzes for
sale, and a number of prints from a museum in Stuttgart.124 As he had in the Paris show,
Matisse participated actively, lending twenty-five pictures, as well as drawings and all
of the bronzes. The emphasis again was on the early Nice-period works: roughly 70 of
the 111 paintings in the exhibition were from that period, and many were lent by dealers.
Matisse lent Reclining Odalisque. Chinese Casket, lent by Pacquement, and Interior with Two
Figures, Open Window, lent by Marcel Kapferer, were also in the show. The Venetian Blinds
was among a group of ten paintings lent by the Bernheim-Jeune brothers.125
New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Henri-Matisse: Retrospective
Exhibition. November 3–December 6, 1931
The Venetian Blinds (cat. no. 30)
The Matisse exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1931, organized by Barr, was
the last of the four large retrospectives held in 1930–31. The Museum of Modern Art,
which had opened in 1929, regularly organized loan exhibitions of American and international art, and the Matisse show opened the third season of these shows. It was the
Museum’s first exhibition devoted to a single artist, and, as the critic Ralph Flint noted,
it was “the most complete Matisse showing ever held in the United States.”126 The show
was indeed very large, with seventy-eight paintings, thirty-eight drawings, thirteen
etchings, sixteen lithographs, and monotypes, woodcuts, and sculptures. Although
Barr included all periods of the artist’s œuvre, he accentuated the experimental years
before 1917, presenting thirty-eight such pictures. Such key works as Woman on a High
Stool (1914; The Museum of Modern Art), Interior With Goldfish (Musée National d’Art
Moderne), Head, White and Rose (Musée National d’Art Moderne), Gourds (1915–16; The
Museum of Modern Art), and The Moroccans were displayed in the same room.
The loans testified to Matisse’s success in the United States, for the most part a result
of the work of his son Pierre, who had been active on the American market since 1927.
Indeed, almost half of the loans came from American public or private collections, while
the other half came from European loans.127 Flint wrote, “This new acclamation, plus the
highly flattering commission by the Barnes Foundation, leaves little to be added in the
way of public acceptance in America.”128
The exhibition met with enormous success.129 Vanity Fair noted “a record attendance
for the ‘one man’ show of the year.”130 Most of the critics particularly praised the quality of the curation of the show, which presented the American public with a “brilliantly
comprehensive picture of the artist’s career.”131 As Barr observed, “It was not so big as
the preceding exhibitions in Berlin, Paris and Basel but every effort was made to make
it a well-balanced retrospective covering all media and giving adequate representation to the period before Nice.”132 In effect, the organization of the exhibition was both
explanatory and clear. It was accompanied by a catalogue, also praised by the press for
its richness and clarity, in which Barr organized the works into stylistic periods.133 The
catalogue also included a translation of Matisse’s essay “Notes of a Painter” of 1908,
deftly leaving the artist with the last word. The hanging of the works was innovative:
they were displayed quite far apart, and grouped thematically within an overall chronological sequence.134 For all of these reasons the exhibition was judged largely superior
to that of Paris. McBride noted, “The Matisse exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art is
about 50 per cent better than the much-discussed Matisse exhibition in Paris last summer.
It is not so big but it is better. This result is as astonishing as it is gratifying. It shows among
other things that if we did not produce the artist we at least know better how to appreciate
him.”135
Like the Paris show, the show was missing major works from Russia as well as from the
Barnes Foundation, a weakness underlined in Virginia Nirdlinger’s review: “The absence
of such key canvases as The Desserte of 1908, The Dance and Music of the former Shchukin
Collection now the Museum of Modern of Western Art in Moscow, and La Joie de vivre of the
Barnes Foundation leaves serious lacunae in a survey exhibition of Matisse.”136 The Venetian
Blinds, then in the collection of the Bernheim-Jeune brothers, was the only work now at
the Barnes Foundation that was included in the show. In preparation for the show, Barr
had gone to see the Matisse exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel over the summer. Observing
The Venetian Blinds, he noted in his catalogue, “Full, Loose, Fluid.”137 Barnes purchased the
picture in November, before the show closed.
New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery. Pierre Matisse presents a group of
paintings by Braque, Derain, Dufy, Lurçat, Matisse, Picasso, Rouault,
Rousseau. November 14–December 5, 1931
The Black Boat (cat. no. 36)
This was the first exhibition at Pierre Matisse’s new gallery. After officially ending his
partnership with Dudensing, Pierre rented two small rooms in the Fuller Building at 51 East
57th Street, near the galleries of Joseph Brummer (also a Matisse dealer), down the block
at 43 E. 57th Street. Six months earlier he had written to his father: “I rented in the Fuller
Building, the sky-scraper that is on the corner of 57th Street and Madison—just next to
Brummer’s—an office-gallery of two rooms starting in October—it is on the 17th floor with
good northern light—on one side my windows look onto Central Park and on the other the
Ritz-Tower.”138
Simply titled Pierre Matisse presents a group of paintings by Braque, Derain, Dufy, Lurçat,
Matisse, Picasso, Rouault, Rousseau, the pamphlet for the exhibition listed only twelve pictures by these artists, two of which were by Matisse, The Black Boat and an unidentified
work titled simply Collioure. Barnes must have seen the show, as Pierre wrote to him on
December 10, 1931, about works that Barnes had seen at his gallery.139 Barnes replied one
day later that he was not interested in any of these works, but must have changed his
mind, as he purchased The Black Boat from Pierre Matisse two months afterward.
Paris: Galerie Paul Rosenberg. Exposition d’oeuvres récentes de HenriMatisse. May 2–30, 1936
Reclining Nude with Blue Eyes (cat. no. 54), Nude with Blue Necklace
(cat. no. 56)
This solo show was the first of three exhibitions at the Rosenberg gallery (one each
year between 1936 and 1938) that focused on Matisse’s recent production. Rosenberg had
stopped exhibiting contemporary artists during the Depression, but by 1936 the recovering market must have prompted him to return to twentieth-century art and he organized exhibitions of recent works of Braque in January, Picasso in March, and Matisse in
May. Both Reclining Nude with Blue Eyes and Nude with Blue Necklace were in the show. The
reviews were not particularly favorable; for at least two critics the works were a return
to the principles of “fauvism by the alphabet,” as Germain Bazin described it in L’Amour
de l’art.140
Barnes probably arrived in Paris in early June (he departed on a steamer from New
York on May 26), where he must have seen the exhibition at Rosenberg’s, even though
it was to have closed on May 30. In a number of articles published in the American
press upon his return to the United States, he raved about the exhibition and his recent
purchases of four pictures by Matisse. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted him as saying,
“It’s an amazing thing about Matisse. He’s getting on in years, you know, and everyone
thought he had shot his bolt in art. He is sixty-seven or sixty-eight years old, and he
hadn’t shown anything for two years. But this year he had a show in Paris that would
knock your eye out! The man has an absolutely new approach in color.”141 To The New
York Times, he added, “I obtained four of his things, all of them figure pieces, in interior scenes.”142 Barnes had not purchased a picture by Matisse since May 1933, when
the artist installed his Dance mural in the Barnes Foundation, but he was sufficiently
impressed with the artist’s new work to buy four pictures at one time.
Barnes was to a certain extent correct in saying that Matisse had not shown anything in two years. There had not been a major Matisse exhibition in Paris since the
retrospective at the Galeries Georges Petit in June and July of 1931, which had received
a lukewarm response from the critics.143 Early in 1934, Pierre Matisse had held a show
in New York, Henri Matisse: Paintings (January 23–February 24), which contained few
recent works (twenty-six paintings in all), but there were no major exhibitions in Paris
until the this one at Rosenberg in 1936. Occupied with the illustrations for Mallarmé’s
Poésies (1930–32) and the Dance mural (1930–33), Matisse’s output of easel pictures
had been extremely limited in the early 1930s. The exhibition at Rosenberg contained
twenty-seven paintings and a group of drawings (unlisted in the catalogue) and was
accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. Major works shown included The Dream (Le
Rêve, 1935; Musée National d’Art Moderne) and Large Reclining Nude (The Pink Nude) (Nu
rose, 1935; The Baltimore Museum of Art), as well as two large pictures from Tahiti and
the remarkable and unfinished La Verdure (Nymph in the Forest) (La Verdure [Nymphe dans
le forêt]; Musée Matisse, Nice).
Pierre sent a copy of the article in Time to his father, with translations of some of
Barnes’s comments for his father. Pierre wrote, “They speak of his arrival with 500,000
dollars in paintings, Le Linge de Manet (from Gallimard’s collection), two important
Cézannes, Le Buveur and Le Coupeur de bois and four Interiors by Matisse. He says of papa
that he is getting old and that everyone thought that he had said all that he had to say.
For two years, he had shown nothing for two years. But this year there was an exhibition in Paris that was magnificent (‘which was staggering’) literally ‘which will make
your eye jump from its socket.’ I am photocopying it.”144
New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery. Modern French Paintings.
November 1939
Figure with Bouquet (cat. no. 57)
In November 1939, while Pierre was in Paris waiting for his military exemption, his
wife, Teeny, opened a group show, Modern French Paintings, in his gallery in New York.
The show consisted of works by Balthus, Braque, Derain, Matisse, Miro, Picasso, and
Rouault.145 Although the show was small—eight paintings in all—it was noticed in the
press, for Pierre had arranged to exhibit one of Matisse’s early Fauve masterpieces, Bathers
with a Turtle (The St. Louis Art Museum), as well as the later Barnes picture Figure with
Bouquet. Matisse was the only artist with two pictures in the show, and the critics noted
the relationship between Bathers with a Turtle and Matisse’s Dance I, which had recently
been on view in the show Art in Our Time at The Museum of Modern Art. Joseph Pulitzer
had purchased Bathers with a Turtle in the “degenerate art” auction at the Galerie Fischer,
Lucerne, on June 30, 1939.146
The large Bathers with a Turtle was consistently admired and often reproduced in the
press, but Figure with Bouquet received equal attention, perhaps because the two paintings were exhibited together along with Picasso’s Arlésienne and Rouault’s Twilight, while
the works by Balthus, Derain, Braque, and Miró were shown in another room. The Art
Digest reviewer noted the brilliant color of Figure with Bouquet: “In addition to the larger
work there is a small canvas of a Figure with Bouquet done last summer by Matisse, which
is exceptionally colorful and fresh. Dominated by intense reds and blues and with three
lovely spots of lemon, the canvas is the brightest thing that has come out [of] Europe in
many months.”147 James Lane, the critic from Artnews, preferred the larger picture, which
he called a “dithyrambic revel,” but also commented on the brilliant colors of Figure with
Bouquet: “Compared with the tamer but coloristically more interesting Matisse of this year,
the Figure with Bouquet, where three uncontoured lemons set against a blue background do
all that can be asked of lemons in such circumstances, The Bathers is gay with a deep joy—
the joy of a world whose problems are not too much with us.”148
Though none of the commentators note it directly, their appreciation for the brilliant
colors and otherworldly joy of Bathers with a Turtle, which must have been heightened by
the contrast with the more somber colors of the other pictures (the Art Digest reviewer
commented on this difference), may have been an implicit response to the war in Europe.
New York: Bignou Gallery. Ancient Chinese and Modern European
Paintings. May–June 1943
Landscape (Collioure) (cat. no. 3)
Barnes anonymously lent Landscape (Collioure) for the exhibition Ancient Chinese and
Modern European Paintings, organized by Georges Keller at the Bignou Gallery in New
York. Works by European modern artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau, Renoir, and
Pascin, as well as ancient Chinese scroll paintings, were assembled for the show. In an
unusual move, Barnes agreed to lend pictures from the Foundation: a work by Henri
Rousseau, The Canal (BF583) and two paintings by Alexis Gritchentko, Greek Landscape
(Amphitheater, BF277) and Red Sail (Sailboats, Crete, BF2541), as well as Matisse’s 1905
drawing Landscape (Collioure). De Mazia lent one Renoir and two drawings by Jean Hugo
from her personal collection.149 At Keller’s request, Barnes and de Mazia published an
essay in the catalogue, “Ancient Chinese and Modern European Painting.”150
Barnes conceived of the exhibition and the essay as opportunities to express his
views about the universality of human relationships through a comparison of modern
Western art and ancient non-Western art. He accordingly seems to have been quite
active in the organization of the exhibition, giving Keller suggestions as to the kinds
of works that should be included in the show and even going to New York a few days
before the opening to help with the hang.151 Seeking to establish a connection between
the formal qualities of Matisse’s line and that of a Chinese landscape, he wrote, “A
number of the characteristic effects of the Dufy and Matisse pictures in this exhibition
are Chinese in feeling,” as for example, “the dramatic line in Matisse’s ‘Landscape,’ no.
39” (Landscape [Collioure]) and “the angular arabesque of the trees in no. 2” (Ma Yuan,
twelfth century, Gentleman Playing the Chin). Six other works by Matisse were in the
show, including Woman with a Veil (La femme à la voilette, 1927; The Museum of Modern
Art), then in the William Paley collection. Critics however were unconvinced and seem
to have found Barnes’s comparisons banal, dismissing the show for its inability to identify direct influence.152
1.
On Matisse’s relationship with Fayet and Montfreid, see Claudine Grammont,
“L’atelier du Sud. Henri Matisse à Collioure, 1915–1914,” in Joséphine Matamoros
and Dominique Szymusiak, eds., Matisse-Derain: Collioure 1905, un été fauve,
exh. cat. (Céret: Musée d’art moderne de Céret, Le Cateau-Cambrésis: Musée
Matisse, and Paris: Gallimard, 2005), pp. 272–87.
12. See Purrmann, “Über Henri Matisse,” Werk 33, no. 6 (1946):185–92. Peter Kropmans
suggests that it was up at least long enough for reviews to appear. Conversation
between Kropmanns and Claudine Grammont, Paris, November 2006. For a review
of the show see M[ax] O[sborn], “Matisse Ausstellung,” Kunstchronik 20 (February 5,
1909):238–39.
2. Charles Morice, “Le XXIIe Salon des Indépendants,” Le Mercure de France (Paris)
60, no. 212 (April 15, 1906):542.
13. Purrmann, letter to Barr, September 20, 1950. MoMA Archives, New York. Alfred Barr
papers, AHB 11.I.A.1.
3. For more on this famous episode see Guillaume Apollinaire, Œuvres en prose
complète (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991), 2:91.
14. On the purchase of Sculpture and Persian Vase see Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez
Bernheim-Jeune, 1:no. 85, 442–43.
4. For Félix Fénéon’s purchase of Peonies see Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Michel
Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune (Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1995),
1:76.
15. Purrmann, letter to Barr, September 20, 1950. MoMA Archives, New York. Barr papers,
AHB 11.I.A.1. In the previous sentence, Purrmann refers to the sequestration of the
works, which happened at the time of the Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt show.
5. Louis Vauxcelles, “Au Grand Palais. Le Salon d’Automne,” Gil Blas (Paris),
September 30, 1908. Trans. in Jack Flam, ed., Matisse: A Retrospective (New York:
Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1988), p. 72.
16. See, e.g., Charles Morice, “A qui la couronne?,” Le Temps (February 22, 1910), and J. F.
Schnerb, “Exposition Henri Matisse,” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (Paris) no.
8 (1910):59.
6. On the critical responses to the various salons, particularly those of 1907 and 1908,
see Roger Benjamin, Matisse’s ‘Notes of a Painter’: Criticism, Theory, and Context,
1891–1908 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987).
17. J[acques R[ivière], “Exposition Henri Matisse,” Nouvelle Revue Française (Paris) no.
16 (April 16, 1910):532.
7. The still lifes were: no. 895, Blue Still Life (cat. no. 15); no. 896, Sculpture and
Persian Vase (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo); no. 897, Still Life on Red Venetian Rug
(Pushkin Museum, Moscow); no. 898, Harmony in Red, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg); no. 901, Nature morte, moulage plâtre et citrons
(unidentified); and no. 903, Pink Onions (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen).
8. Benjamin provides a detailed discussion of the artist’s reception in Matisse’s ‘Notes
of a Painter,’ p. 151.
18. Octave Mirbeau, letter to Claude Monet, n.d. Archives Claude Monet.
19. On Roger Fry’s two Post-Impressionist shows and their influence on the reception of
modern French art in England see Benedict Nicolson, “Post-Impressionism and Roger
Fry,” The Burlington Magazine (London) 93, no. 574 (January 1951):10–15; AnnePascale Bruneau, “Aux sources du post-impressionnisme. Les expositions de 1910 et
1912 aux Grafton Galleries de Londres,” Revue de l’Art (Paris) 113, no. 1 (1996):7–18;
and Anna Gruetzner Robins, Modern Art in Britain, 1910–1914, exh. cat. (London:
Merrell Holberton in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1997).
9. See Vauxcelles, “Au Grand Palais”; Andrien Bovy, “Le Salon d’Automne,” La
Grande Revue (Paris), October 10, 1908, p. 564; and Roger Marx, “Le Vernissage du
Salon d’Automne,” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (Paris) no. 32 (October 10,
1908):326.
20. Desmond MacCarthy, “The Post-Impressionists,” in Manet and the PostImpressionists, exh. cat. (London: Grafton Galleries, 1910).
10. For Matisse’s reference to Péladan see Matisse, “Notes of a Painter (1908),” Eng.
trans. in Flam, Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869–1918 (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 43. See also Joséphin Péladan, “Le Salon
d’Automne et ses rétrospectives. Greco et Monticelli,” La Revue hebdomadaire
(Paris) no. 42 (October 17, 1908):360–61, and Benjamin, Matisse’s ‘Notes of a
Painter,’ pp. 153–57.
22. C. J. Holmes, Notes on the Post-Impressionist Painters: Grafton Galleries, 1910–11
(London: Philip Lee Warner, 1910), p. 15.
11. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public (New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 1951), p. 108. Barr’s account of the show is most probably based on
letters sent to him by Hans Purrmann, September 20, 1950, and March 3, 1951, Barr
Papers, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, AHB, 11.I.A.17.
21. Gertrude Stein, Autobiographie d’Alice Toklas (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), pp. 157–58.
23. Fry, letter to Henri Matisse, June 24, 1912. Archives Matisse, Paris (AMP).
24. Fry, receipt to Matisse, n.d. [August 1912]. AMP.
25. On the Armory Show see Milton W. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (New
York: The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1963, repr. ed. New York: Abbeville Press
and The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1988), and Marilyn S. Kushner, Casey
Nelson Blake, and Kimberly Orcutt, The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and
Revolution (New York: New-York Historical Society, 2013). On Matisse’s reception at
the Armory Show see John Cauman, “Matisse and America, 1905–1933,” Ph.D. diss.,
City University of New York, 2000, pp. 190–234.
26. On Walter Pach’s role in the exhibition see Laurette McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883–
1958): The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America (University
Park: Penn State University Press, 2004).
27. Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde
und Künstler, Cologne, May 25–September 30, 1912.
28. Pach describes the visit: “When I had left the Steins’ apartment in the Rue Madame
with Arthur B. Davies, that extraordinary appreciator made a respectful bow to
them on the other side of the door.” Pach, Queer Thing, Painting: Forty Years in the
World of Art, 1938 (repr. ed. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Library Press, 1971), p. 118.
29. Pach, letter to Matisse, November 18, 1912. AMP. Matisse, letter to Pach, December
6, 1912, Eng. trans. in Cauman, “Henri Matisse’s letters to Walter Pach,” Archives of
American Art Journal 31 (1991):3. Sarah Stein considered agreeing to a month-long
extension of the loan to London; see Sarah Stein, letter to Pach, December 6, 1912.
Walt Kuhn family papers and Armory Show Records, series 1: Armory Show Records,
1912–1963, Archives of American Art.
30. Pablo Picasso exhibited five paintings, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp four
each, Georges Braque, André Derain, and Henri Manguin three each, and Robert
Delaunay two. A plan of the galleries appears in a letter from Davies to Kuhn,
October 5, 1912. Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show Records series 1,
Archives of American Art.
31. Alfred Stieglitz’s New York exhibitions of Matisse in 1908, 1910, and 1912 had
included primarily drawings and sculptures. Nude in a Wood (Brooklyn Museum of
Art) had been exhibited in the 1912 show but was not in the catalogue.
32. After visiting the Armory Show, Barnes wrote Leo Stein, “At New York, it was
the sensation of the generation and proved a big money-maker for the organizers.
The attendance was frequently 10,000 a day, many paintings were sold, and the
newspapers had columns almost daily about it. Academic art received a blow from
which it will never entirely recover.” Barnes, letter to Leo Stein, March 30, 1913. Yale
Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Also
cited in Cauman, “Matisse and America,” p. 213.
33. Pach, letter to Michael Stein, March 30, 1913, quoted in McCarthy, Walter Pach
(1883–1958), p. 8.
34. “Cubist Art Exhibit Ends ‘at the Stake,’” Chicago Record Herald, April 17, 1913, p. 1.
Quoted in Cauman, “Matisse and America,” p. 224.
35. The decision to show only Matisse’s Moroccan works (as the gallery would also do
a few months later for Charles Camoin) was probably tied to Gaston Bernheim’s
participation in the Société coloniale des artistes français, which was created in
1906 following a large colonial exhibition in Marseille. Most of the society’s events
took place at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which Gaston directed with his brother
Josse. See Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North
Africa, 1880–1930 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California
Press, 2003), pp. 125, 299 n. 69.
36. See ibid., pp. 305–6 n. 35.
37. René Jean, “Petites Expositions,” Chronique des Beaux-arts et de la curiosité no.
16 (April 19, 1913):125.
38. Marcel Sembat, “Henri Matisse,” Cahiers d’aujourd’hui (Paris) no. 4 (April):194.
Sembat’s article makes no allusion to political events, although he was publicly
opposed to French colonialist policies; on his political position see Benjamin,
Orientalist Aesthetics, p. 179. Les Cahiers d’aujourd’hui, created in 1912 by George
Besson and Francis Jourdain, took a marked antiwar and antireligious stance.
39. Matisse, letter to Shchukin, April 16, 1913, quoted in Albert Kosténévich and Natalia
Sémionova, Matisse et la Russie, trans. Andrew Bromfield (Paris: Flammarion,
1993), p. 174.
40. Ibid. For reviews of the show see Peter Kropmanns, “Matisse in Deutschland,”
doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2000, p. 260.
41. Fritz Gurlitt, letter to Matisse, June 6, 19. AMP. The exhibition referred to in this
letter, an exhibition of works by Matisse from the collection of Michael and Sarah
Stein, would not take place until the summer of 1914.
42. Fénéon, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, letter to Matisse, February 13, 1914. AMP.
43. Fénéon, cable to Matisse, February 14, 1914. Except for Seated Riffian, the pictures
Matisse agreed to lend have not been identified.
44. Purple Cyclamen, purchased by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune from the artist in 1910,
was still owned by the gallery (see Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez BernheimJeune, 1:no. 100, 472). Music, sketch, from the collection of Leo Stein, was by that
time on deposit at Bernheim-Jeune (Leo Stein, letter to Gertrude Stein, November
26, 1914). The Door was purchased by Bernheim-Jeune from Leo Stein on February
12, 1914; see Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, 1:no. 26, 322.
45. Seconda Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte “Della Secessione,” 1914, 39.
46. Fénéon, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, letter to Octave Maus, May 14, 1914. Fonds Octave
Maus, Musées Royaux des Beaux-arts, Brussels. Fénéon, “La Peinture française
à l’étranger.” Le Bulletin de la vie artistique (Paris) no. 7 (May 14, 1914), repr. in
Fénéon, Œuvres plus que complètes (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), 1:293.
47. Gurlitt, letters to Matisse, June 27, 1913, and October 10, 1913. AMP.
48.Barr, Matisse: His Art and His Public, pp. 177–78.
49. See the entry for for Michael and Sarah Stein in “Matisse’s Dealers and Collectors”
(http://www.barnesfoundation.org/assets/public/PDFs/Collections/matissedealers-collectors.pdf).
50. See Robert S. Lubar, “Joan Miró before The Farm, 1915–1922: Catalan Nationalism
and the Avant-Garde,” Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New York
University, 1988.
51. Paul Guillaume opened another Paris gallery in February 1921, at 59, rue La Boétie;
see Colette Giraudon, Paul Guillaume et les peintres du XXe siècle. De l’art nègre à
l’avant-garde (Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1993), pp. 130–34.
52. For an identification of the works see Anne Baldassari, Elizabeth Cowling, John
Elderfield, et al., Matisse-Picasso, exh. cat. (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), p.
363. A letter from Guillaume to Amélie Matisse confirms that the Three Sisters
panels were in the exhibition. On January 24, 1918, Guillaume wrote to Amélie,
“Only 12 works are listed in the catalogue, but the exhibition will include Hessel’s
three large canvases.” AMP. Jos Hessel, who had just purchased the pictures with
Georges Bernheim in November of 1917 and whose gallery was just next door at no.
109, must have agreed to lend them to Guillaume.
53. Louis Aragon, Henri Matisse: A Novel, 1971 (Eng. trans. Jean Stewart, New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 2:103.
54. Guillaume wrote to Picasso about the show on January 12, 1918; see Baldassari,
Cowling, Elderfield, et al., Matisse-Picasso, p. 377.
55. Apollinaire, letter to Guillaume, January 14, 1918. Archives Musée de l’Orangerie,
Paris.
56. Guillaume, letter to Matisse, January 18, 1918. AMP.
57. Matisse, letter to Guillaume, January 20, 1918. Archives Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.
58. Though difficult to decipher, this could refer to Georges Carpentier (1894–1975), a
French boxer who was popular at the time (his career lasted from 1908 to 1927).
59. Matisse, letter to Amélie Matisse, January 26, 1918, cited in Baldassari, Cowling,
Elderfield, et al., Matisse-Picasso, p. 377.
60. Les Arts à Paris (Paris) no. 1 (March 15, 1918).
61. The Bernheim-Jeune gallery had no contract with the artist between the end of its
second contract with him, in September 1915, and the beginning of the third, in
October 1917. For Matisse’s contracts with Bernheim-Jeune see Barr, Matisse: His
Art and His Public, pp. 553–55.
62. Bernheim-Jeune continued to hold group shows that included works by Matisse.
Still Life with Lemons, which the gallery bought from the artist in 1916, was
exhibited in one such show, Exposition de Peinture, série C, in June of that year,
but it did not sell and reappeared in the 1919 show. Still Life with Gourds too the
gallery purchased from the artist in July 1916, exhibited in the Exposition d’art
français, Barcelona, in 1917, and then included in Oeuvres récentes de Henri
Matisse in 1919, until it was probably finally sold to another dealer, Léopold
Zborowski, in 1923. See Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, 1:nos.
142, 145, and 155.
63.Ironically, Bouquet of Anemones did not sell all that well; see the Provenance
section of the entry for this picture. There is no documentation to verify that
the work was in Oeuvres récentes de Henri Matisse, but the title and size are
appropriate for cat. no. 22 in Bernheim-Jeune’s exhibition catalogue.
64. Jean Cocteau, “Déformation professionnelle,” Paris-Midi, May 12, repr. in Cocteau,
Carte Blanche (Paris: Editions de La Sirène, 1920), pp. 98–99; and André Lhote,
“Une Exposition Henri Matisse,” Nouvelle Revue Française (Paris), 6e année, 13, no.
70 (July 1919):308–13.
65. Oliver Brown, Exhibition: The Memoirs of Oliver Brown, exh. cat. (London: Evely,
Adam & Mackay, 1968), pp. 62–63.
66. Charles Vildrac, letter to Matisse, June 4, 1919. AMP.
67. See Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master. A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of
Colour, 1909–1954 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005), p. 230; and Matisse, letter to
Amélie Matisse, October 13, 1919. AMP.
68.Brown, Exhibition, p. 65.
69. On the show, its context, and its reception see Richard Shone, “Matisse in England
and Two English Sitters,” The Burlington Magazine (London) 135, no. 1084
(July):479–84.
70. On November 18, 1919, Matisse wrote to Amélie Matisse from London, “Success
of the show continues. New purchases. Director asks Mme Vildrac to send
new pictures. Articles in important newspapers, very good—excellent—almost
everything is sold except the two big ones, the Three Sisters and Still Life with
Torso, realized lately.” AMP.
71. Vanessa Bell, letter to Roger Fry, November 30, 1919. Tate Gallery Archives, quoted
in Shone, “Matisse in England and Two English Sitters,” p. 481.
72. Jean-Louis Paudrat, “From Africa,” in William Rubin, ed., “Primitivism” in 20th
Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 1984), p. 157 ff. The Galerie Devambez was also an important publisher.
73. Guillaume, letter to Matisse, January 7, 1920. AMP.
74. Les Trois Sœurs is unlikely to have been Three Sisters with an African Sculpture,
which had already entered Christian Tetzten-Lund’s collection in Denmark.
75.Sembat, Henri Matisse (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1920).
Sembat’s book was followed at the end of the year by another book on Matisse,
Henri-Matisse (Paris: Crès, 1920), edited by George Besson, with texts by Elie
Faure, Jules Romains, Vildrac, and Léon Werth.
76. Matisse, letter to Amélie Matisse, December 31, 1919, quoted in Spurling, Matisse
the Master, p. 255.
77. Henri Matisse: Cinquante dessins (Paris, 1920). The front page reads “Album édité
par les soins de l’artiste” (Album published with the care of the artist). The album
was distributed by the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, the Galerie Georges Bernheim, and
the Galerie Vildrac.
78. The letter gives a precise drawing of the hanging. Paul Ebstein, letter to Matisse,
January 19, 1922. AMP.
79.Ibid.
80.Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, 2:nos. 485, 499, 500, 503–4,
506–9, 510–14, 518–19.
81. In a review, René Jean observed: “A small show of his most recent purchases,
which displays for a few days about fifty canvases that are going to cross the
Atlantic.” Jean, “Un Nouveau Musée américain. La Fondation Barnes,” Comœdia
(Paris) 17, no. 3697 (January 30), 1923.
82. See the invitation for the exhibition; Guillaume to Barnes, n.d. [January 1923].
Albert C. Barnes correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives (ACB Corr., BFA).
No checklist exists for the exhibition, although shipping documents in the BFA
indicate that Standing Nude near Window (cat. no. 35) was probably shipped
to the Barnes with a group of works whose description fits that of the works in
Guillaume’s exhibition; see the shipping invoice from Arthur Lenars & Cie to
Barnes, March 2, 1923. ACB Corr., BFA. See also the review of the exhibition by
Waldemar George, which identifies the pictures by Manet and Daumier by title;
George, “La Fondation Barnes,” L’Ere nouvelle (Paris) no. 1160 (January 26):n.p.
83. The October issue of the journal contained an essay in French by Albert Barnes,
“La Fondation Barnes (Une expérience d’éducation),” an essay in English by Paul
Guillaume, “African Art at the Barnes Foundation,” a brief discussion of the reliefs
for the exterior of the Foundation made by Jacques Lipchitz, and an essay in French
by Paul Guillaume, “Le Recent voyage du Dr. Barnes à Paris”; see Les Arts à Paris,
1923.
address—59, rue la Boëtie, Paris. In 1926, both Barnes and Guillaume commissioned
their portraits from Giorgio de Chirico. Guillaume donated his portrait to the
Barnes Foundation in July 1926 and Barnes placed it near his own portrait in the
“Paul Guillaume room” at the Foundation. See correspondence between Barnes and
Guillaume, July and August 1926. ACB Corr., BFA. In 1935, a few years after Barnes
and Guillaume ended their collaboration and a year after Guillaume died, Barnes
donated Guillaume’s portrait to the Musée de Grenoble, where it is today. See
correspondence between Barnes and Andry-Farcy, Musée de Grenoble, September
1935. ACB Corr., BFA.
86. Barnes, letter to Guillaume, February 4, 1923. ACB Corr., BFA.
87. No checklist exists for the Paris exhibition. However, it is clear that the two
exhibitions were not exactly same; Woman Reclining, for example, was not
included in the Paris show, nor was Le Bonheur de vivre (cat. no. 5). In early
correspondence with the artist, Arthur B. Carles, the teacher at the Pennsylvania
Academy to whom Barnes first proposed the show, Barnes presented the exhibition
as coming directly from the dealer Guillaume, but he soon acknowledged that
it was his own personal collection destined for his soon-to-be-completed
Foundation; see Carles’s correspondence with Barnes, December 1922–March 1923.
ACB Corr., BFA. Barnes told the president of the Academy, John Frederick Lewis,
that he preferred his name not appear as he wanted to keep the show an impersonal
affair, but he was active in the production of the catalogue and even advised the
Academy on how to hang the paintings and display the African sculpture. See
Barnes’s correspondence with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, March–May
1923. ACB Corr., BFA.
88. Barnes, letter to Guillaume, January 15, 1923. ACB Corr., BFA.
89. Exhibition of Contemporary European Paintings and Sculpture, exh. cat.
(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1923), p. 4. Leopold
Stokowski (1882–1977) was the director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1912 to
1941.
90. See for example, Dorothy Grafly, “Old Portraits Are Praised, Modernists’ Art
Decried,” Philadelphia American, April 15, 1923; and Francis J. Gregler, “The
Modernistic Annex,” Philadelphia Record, April 15, 1923.
91. The purchased works are listed in the catalogue with an asterisk.
92. Philippe Marcel, “Henri Matisse,” L’Art d’aujourd’hui (Paris), spring/summer, pp.
33–47.
84. “African Art Work for Merion Museum is Most Comprehensive in the World,”
Public Ledger, February 5, 1923.
93. For a brief discussion of the show see Kasper Monrad, Henri Matisse: Four Great
Collectors, exh. cat. (Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 1999), pp. 149–50.
85.See Gazette de l’Hôtel Drouot 32, no. 14 (February 1, 1923). In 1923, on the occasion
of the exhibition, Guillaume used the honorary title “foreign secretary” when
representing the Barnes Foundation; he even had letterhead printed with “The
Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa., U.S.A.” at the top, then his name, title and
94. Walter Sickert is here referring to The Road to Villacoublay (The Cleveland Museum
of Art) and Festival of Flowers (The Cleveland Museum of Art). The two pictures
that Sickert dislikes are Portrait of Marguerite (location unknown) and The
Red Couch. Sickert, “French Modern Paintings,” The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs (London) 45, no. 261 (December):312.
95. F. A. Lutz, letters to Wilhelm Wartmann, Wartmann letters to Oskar Moll, and the
minutes of the Kunsthaus collection commission, 1925. Kunsthaus Zurich Archives.
There are two versions of the exhibition catalogue; in one Studio with Goldfish is no.
293 and in the other no. 292. For the provenance of Margot see Dauberville, Henri
Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, 1:no. 83.
96. & Lefevre Gallery Albums, Hyman Kreitman Research Center, Tate Gallery.
the paintings suggests that he lent most of them.
107.Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, director of Editions des Chroniques du Jour, organized the
publication of a monograph on the artist’s most recent production, to be published
with three separate texts in different languages: the first book, in French, was by
Fels, the second, in English, by Fry, and the third, in German, by Gothard Jedlicka.
See di San Lazzaro, letters to Marguerite Duthuit. AMP. Each book was associated
with a show, in Paris at Le Portique, in New York at the Valentine Gallery, and in
Berlin at the Galerien Thannhauser. For the English-language edition, Fry changed
the illustrations of Fels’s book, which he did not like; see Fry, letter to Duthuit,
November 30, 1929. AMP.
97. Elizabeth Cary, “Two Remarkable French Painters on Exhibition,” New York Times,
January 2, 1927; Forbes Watson, “Henri Matisse,” The Arts (New York) 11, no. 1
(January 1927):31. see also “36 Years of Matisse Shown at Dudensing’s,” Artnews
(New York) 25, no. 13 (January 1, 1927):1–2.
108.Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri and Amélie Matisse, December 25, 1929. AMP.
98. Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, January 28, 1927. AMP.
110.“Valentine Gallery Shows Late Work By Matisse,” Artnews 28, no. 11 (December 14,
1929):7.
99. Although no catalogue for the show at Dudensing’s gallery has been located,
reviews provide an idea of some of the works in the show (see note 97 above). There
was, however, a catalogue for the Chicago venue: Catalogue of a Retrospective
Exhibition of Paintings by Henri Matisse. The First Painting, 1890, the Latest
Painting, 1926, The Arts Club of Chicago, February 17–27, 1927. Fifteen paintings are
listed here, suggesting that the Arts Club received only part of the New York show.
100.Alfred Gold, letter to Matisse, June 25, 1927. AMP.
101.The catalogue dates the picture 1917 in error.
102.Barnes purchased Boy with Butterfly Net from the Galeries Georges Petit in January
1932 for $6,000 and then exchanged it for Renoir’s Bather and Maid (La Toilette)
(BF899), plus $44,000, with the dealer Etienne Bignou in December 1935; Barnes,
correspondence with Georges Keller (Galeries Georges Petit), January 29, 1932, and
with Etienne Bignou, December 11 and 12, 1932. ACB Corr., BFA.
103.The invitation is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. The show also
included The Yellow Hat (private collection) and Grey Nude (location unknown).
Florent Fels’s book is Henri-Matisse (Paris: Editions des Chroniques du Jour).
104.E. Tériade, “L’Actualité de Matisse,” Cahiers d'Art (Paris) no. 7:285–95. In the
same issue, the page dedicated to recent exhibitions reads “Exhibition Matisse, Le
Portique. A magnificent exhibition of works by Henri Matisse most of which are
reproduced in the article published in this issue.”
105.Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, October 22, 1929. AMP.
106.Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri and Amélie Matisse, November 9, 1929. AMP.
Although the letter does not state precisely which paintings belonged to Henri at
this date, the fact that Pierre provides him with the insurance prices for many of
109.See, e.g., Pierre Marion, “A New York. Matisse Galerie Valentine,” Beaux-arts
(Paris) 8, no. 2 (February 20, 1930):20.
111. Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri and Amélie Matisse, November 9, 1929. AMP.
112. Matisse, letter to Barnes, January 1, 1931. ACB Corr., BFA. See “Correspondence
around the Dance,” in Yve-Alain Bois, ed., Matisse in the Barnes Foundation
(Philadelphia: The Barnes Foundation, and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015),
3:219–220.
113. Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, February 16, 1927. AMP.
114.Gotthard Jedlicka, Henri-Matisse (Paris: Editions Les Chroniques du Jour, 1930).
This was the German version of the monograph organized by di San Lazzaro; see
note 107 above.
115. Siegfried Rosengart, Galerien Thannhauser, letter to Duthuit, March 3, 1930. AMP.
116.Rosengart, letter to Duthuit, April 10, 1930. AMP.
117. The Soby Papers in the Museum of Modern Art Archives have information on his
transactions with Valentine Dudensing.
118.On American collectors during this period, see John O’Brian, Ruthless Hedonism:
The American Reception of Matisse (Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 61–93.
119.Les Chroniques du Jour (Paris) 11, no. 9 (April 1931) and Cahiers d'Art (Paris) 6, nos.
5–6 (1931).
120.Henry McBride, Matisse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), p. 296.
121. Barnes, letter to Matisse, May 5, 1931. AMP. See “Correspondence around the
Dance,” p. 233.
122.Barnes, letter to Laurence Buermeyer, August 13, 1931. ACB Corr., BFA.
123.Barr’s annotated exhibition catalogue for the Petit show (Henri-Matisse.
Exposition organisée au profit de l’orphelinat des arts, Paris: Galeries Georges Petit,
1931) can be found in the AMP.
exhibition catalogue; Barr, letter to Barnes, November 10, 1931. ACB Corr., BFA.
137.Henri-Matisse, exh. cat. annotated by Barr. AMP.
124.Karl Egger, letter to Duthuit, June 8, 1931. AMP.
138.Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, April 3, 1931, cited in William M. Griswold
and Jennifer Tonkovich, Pierre Matisse and His Artists, exh. cat. (New York: The
Pierpont Morgan Library, 2002), p. 155.
125.Ibid.
139.Pierre Matisse, letter to Barnes, December 10, 1931. ACB Corr., BFA.
126.Ralph Flint, “Matisse Exhibit Opens Season at Modern Museum,” Artnews (New
York), November 7, 1931.
140.G[ermain] B[azin], “Musées et Galeries: Oeuvres récentes d’Henri Matisse. Galerie
Paul Rosenberg.” L’Amour de l’art 17, no. 6 (June 1936): 228–29. See also J[acques]
G[uenne], “Les Expositions: Matisse-Gromaire,” L'Art vivant, no. 204 (July
1936):158.
127.Most of the major private American collectors of Matisse lent to the show: Stephen
C. Clark, Conger Goodyear, Chester Dale, the Cone collection, Adolph and Samuel
Lewisohn, and John D. Rockefeller. Major dealers also lent: Montross, Marie
Harriman, Knoedler, The Weyhe Gallery, The Valentine Gallery, and, of course, The
Pierre Matisse Gallery. Barnes lent no pictures.
128.Flint, “Matisse Exhibit Opens Season at Modern Museum.”
129.For a discussion of the reception of the show, see O’Brian, 1999, 30–37.
130."Wherry Good," The Editor's Uneasy Chair, Vanity Fair (New York) 37, no. 5
(January 1932):17.
131. Edward Alden Jewell, “Matisse Exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art. A
Significant Pioneer,” New York Times, November 8, 1931.
132.Barr, Matisse: His Art and His Public, p. 222.
133.Barr, Henri-Matisse: Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum
of Modern Art, 1931). This presentation of the works prefigures that of Barr’s
1951 monograph, which returns to the method of periodizing Matisse’s work and
also inaugurates the didactic logic of future exhibitions organized by Barr at The
Museum of Modern Art.
134.Pierre wrote to his father a laudatory report of the show: “The catalogue is the
marvel of everyone and everyone says that they have never seen such an exhibition
and a catalogue so well done. . . . When one sees the exhibition one receives a shock
that is much bigger than that felt in Paris, which was wrong to show so many
pictures.” Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, November 12, 1931. AMP.
135.McBride, “The Museum of Modern Art Gives a Matisse Exhibition with Special
Success,” New York Sun, November 7, 1931, p. 12.
136.Virginia Nirdlinger, “The Matisse Way: Forty Years in the Evolution of an
Individualist,” Parnassus (New York) 3, no. 8 (November 7, 1931):4. It is not
known whether Barr attempted to make loans from Barnes, who had repeatedly
turned him down in the past. Barr did extend a cordial invitation to Barnes and his
students to visit the exhibition by special appointment, and included a copy of the
141.“Dr. Barnes Acquires $500,000 Art Gems,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 1,
1936.
142.“Barnes Acquires $500,000 in Art,” New York Times, September 1, 1936. See also
“75th Cezanne,” Time magazine, September 14, 1936; “Dr. Barnes Adds $500,000 in
Art,” The Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), September 1, 1936; and “Collector Here
With $500,000 Art Purchases,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 1, 1936. Barnes
even went so far as to send a press release to the editor of The Evening Bulletin,
September 3, 1936. ACB Corr., BFA.
143.A number of smaller exhibitions had taken place, such as Matisse, dessins et
sculpture at the Galerie Renou et Colle in late November and early December 1935.
Some of these drawings were published in a special issue of Cahiers d’Art, which
did not come out until October 1937. Another drawings show, Drawings and
Lithographs by Henri Matisse, was held at the Leicester Galleries, London, in
February 1936, before the Rosenberg show.
144.Pierre Matisse, letter to Henri Matisse, September 13, 1936. AMP.
145.“Parisians in High and Muted Keys,” Art Digest (New York) 14, no. 3 (November 1,
1939):11.
146.Joseph Pulitzer attended the auction with Pierre. He had previously purchased
The Conservatory, which had also been exhibited at the Pierre Matisse gallery, so
he must have willingly lent it as the centerpiece of Pierre’s exhibition of modern
French painters. See Laurie A. Stein, "The History and Reception of Matisse’s
Bathers with a Turtle in Germany, 1908–1939," in Henri Matisse: Bathers with a
Turtle, The Saint Louis Art Museum Bulletin XXII, no. 3 (Fall 1998):68
147.“Parisians in High and Muted Keys,” p. 11.
148.James W. Lane, “Caviar from Contemporary Paris: Selected Pictures Illustrating
Quality in French Painting,” Artnews (New York) 38, no. 5 (November 4, 1939):17.
149.Barnes, letter to Keller, April 9, 1943. ACB Corr., BFA.
150.Keller, letter to Barnes, March 25, 1943. ACB Corr., BFA.
151. Barnes, letter to Keller, April 22, 1943. ACB Corr., BFA.
152.See M[aude] R[iley], “Ancient Chinese & Modern Europeans,” Art Digest (New
York) 17, no. 16 (May 15, 1943):9, and Edward Alden Jewell, “Old Chinese Art on
Display Today,” New York Times, May 1, 1943.