These lithographs were begun in 1950, almost at the end of the artist's life, and are from the only edition of lithographs of the cut-outs produced directly by Matisse working with Mourlot. The images reproduce his iconic pochoir designs and were incorporated into a volume of the French portfolio Verve, ‘Dernieres Oeuvres de Matisse’, also known as Verve 35/36, celebrating his last works and published posthumously by Teriade in Paris in 1958.

Lierre en Fleurs ('Ivy in Flower') was created as the design for a stained glass window commissioned by Mary Woodward Lasker, one of Matisse's leading American collectors. Lasker was planning to build a mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, New York, for her late husband, Albert D. Lasker, famous as the “father of modern advertising” and one of the inspirations for the character Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men. The art critic John Russell wrote that it “was the kind of commission that [Matisse] craved especially at this stage in his life. He was offered a free hand in a prestigious enterprise. It would be, in effect, a small-scale reprise in the United States of his chapel in Vence. It would be devotional, but not drab. It would be planned by himself, to the nearest fraction of an inch, and executed by reliable craftsmen in an idiom he understood completely."

Matisse chose as his subject the evergreen ivy; in ancient Greek mythology it was sacred to Dionysus and symbolised immortality. He completed the cut-out in April 1953 and sent photographs to Lasker in New York to await her approval. A speedy answer was not forthcoming. “Matisse knew that his window could be one of the grandest of his late works,” Russell wrote. “It might be one of the last of them. He did not care to be kept waiting for an answer." Finally, in October, he learned that Lasker had rejected the design. Her husband's favourite colours had been red, green and blue; Matisse's decision to flood the image with yellow made it unsuitable. Under the terms of the commission she retained ownership of the cut-out, and initially found a home for it at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. In 1963 she gifted it to the Dallas Museum of Art.

In 1956 Matisse's daughter Marguerite authorised Paul Bony, the master craftsman who had executed all of the artist's late designs for stained glass, to recreate Lierre en Fleurs as a window, as had been originally intended. Marguerite sold the window to the Museum Moderner Kunst, Foundation Ludwig, Vienna in 1962.

The original cut-out is only displayed in Dallas sparingly for conservation reasons; the Verve lithograph captures the beauty of Matisse's design flawlessly and is a perfect distillation of the artist's vision that can be enjoyed permanently.

The lithographs are in stunning condition and are becoming extremely scarce.

Referenced in the Catalogue Raisonne: Duthuit 139. Freitag 6231
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