Henri Matisse

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.

By the time Matisse began work on Fleurs de Neige in 1951, the scale of his cut-outs had increased to the point that they had to be mounted across the walls of his apartment at the Hôtel Régina in Nice. Using papers that had been covered in vibrant washes of gouache paint, Matisse would cut out each shape with scissors and then direct his assistants to pin them into position. In this way the artist was able to overcome his physical infirmities and produce monumental, site specific works.

Fleurs de Neige - or 'Snow Flowers' - is one of Matisse's later cut-outs. In these works he focused on larger, bolder and more simplified shapes. The white plant and petal forms in this work appear at first glance to be wholly abstract, but at the bottom of the image a single drooping snowdrop reveals the inspiration behind the piece and its title. The white shapes also refer back to the tropical plants and corals that Matisse had encountered on a visit to Tahiti in 1930. The artist's memories of this visit generated a vast repository of images that form the bedrock of the cut-outs he produced at the end of his life. The work has been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1999.

This exquisite lithograph captures the full radiance of Matisse's cut-out as he intended it to be seen. Fleurs de Neige is often thought of as a companion piece to Vegetaux, a work that shares striking compositional similarities.

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

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