Henri Matisse

An original etching on Japon Impérial paper, stamped with the artist's monogram.

This etching was made by Matisse as a study in preparation for his suite of 29 etchings to accompany the 1932 book Poesies - poems - by Stéphane Mallarmé. The etching remained uneditioned until 1987 when the Matisse Foundation authorised an edition of 125 etchings only, to be printed from the original plate.

Matisse's etchings tend to express his artistic concerns on a more intimate scale than his lithographs. Whereas most of his lithographs were produced in the workshops of master printers such as Mourlot, he was able to print his own etchings as and when he liked on a small press that had been installed in his studio. Their small format and smooth, fluid execution give them a unique sense of immediacy akin to the pages of a sketchbook. This quality is particularly obvious in this etching.

In 1930 the publisher Albert Skira asked Matisse to illustrate a special collection of poems by the French Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898). In this, his first commission to illustrate a book, Matisse established both the comprehensive method of design and the “non-imitative” approach to illustration that he subsequently followed in his other important illustrated books.

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