An exceptional Matisse donation to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

22/1/26 - Acquisitions - Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris - No less than sixty-one works by Henri Matisse have joined the Musée d’art moderne de Paris, quadrupling the already held monographic collection, which includes two of the three monumental triptychs of The Dance displayed in a dedicated room of the permanent display. This exceptional donation, made by Barbara Dauphin Duthuit, the wife of Henri Matisse’s grandson, Claude Duthuit, follows the remarkable exhibition Matisse and Marguerite. The gaze of a father presented by the museum last year. The ensemble, composed of seven paintings, one sculpture, twenty-eight drawings, eight etchings, six lithographs, five original posters, and six illustrated books, represented nearly half of the largely unpublished corpus then on display.

1. Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Child Profile (Marguerite), 1902-1903
(sand-cast Cullen, undated, c. 1905)
Bronze – 12.8 x 9.2 cm
Paris, Musée d’art moderne de Paris
Photo: Jean-Louis Losi

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2. Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Marguerite, 1901 or 1906
Oil on panel – 71.1 x 55.3 cm
Paris, Musée d’art moderne de Paris
Photo: Musée d’art moderne de Paris

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The paintings and drawings are almost all portraits of Marguerite Matisse, the artist’s eldest daughter and the main subject of the exhibition, which for the first time highlighted the essential role she played in her father’s career. While the effigies reveal the privileged model she was for decades, the engraved selections also testify to her involvement in Matisse’s printed work, both during his lifetime and posthumously. Acting alternately as assistant, secretary, agent, exhibition curator, and intermediary between her father and printers and publishers when he could no longer travel, Marguerite was also responsible for the preparation of the catalogue raisonné of his works, the prints catalogue being the first and only published during his lifetime…