MATISSE HENRI (1869-1954).

Lot 152
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Estimation :
5000 - 7000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 9 750EUR
MATISSE HENRI (1869-1954).
L.A.S. "H Matisse" with DRAWING, Vence "Le Rêve" 15 September 1943, [to Henry de MONTHERLANT]; 6 pages in-4 (small pinholes). Long letter with drawing on Montherlant's illustration of Pasiphaé (original engravings by Matisse, H. Fabiani, 1944). Under a DRAWING occupying more than half the page, representing a mirror, a fireplace and a bookcase surmounted by blackened leaves, Matisse writes: "Here is the wall I have in front of me night and day. This is the illustration (and its studies) of P. [Pasiphae] and C. de M. [The Song of Minos] by H. de M. The X's indicate the illustration itself. The other blacks are what are called the rejected plates, which will later appear in albums, in other words the studies - the things that one might think are definitive and which are found to have to be surpassed when they are placed in a place like a bedroom, 7 or 8 metres in front of the author - who is almost always immobilised in his bed. - For the eglogue of Pasiphae placed in the frontispiece there are 10 plates. For the mating there are 12 plates. For the Pasiphae embracing the olive tree on whose bark the bull has rubbed: there are 4 plates etc. There are also 84 initials that I have drawn and engraved printed in ..... red. And I have not finished yet, I am still working on the pl. of the bull who gives himself joyfully although dominated by his destiny at the approach of the right moment"... He was looking forward to seeing Montherlant in front of this set arranged like three windows, but the writer did not come... The painter evokes the pleasure he had yesterday in Nice, a city full of young and pretty nymphs with "beautiful legs that could be seen all the way to...where you want them to be in a pretty red copper bronze like in Tahiti"... He invites Montherlant to go and see the proofs of the plates at the printer Féquet, and tells him that the soul of the house would be Mlle Féquet, "very young I think and with initiative, it seems - initiative that would please the publisher! I was a bit wary of her because I am also a man of initiative, who does not like coffee with milk"... He asked him to excuse his little teasing. Montherlant's attitude - "you the untouchable" - did however serve Matisse "very well for a plate of Ch. de M. [...] I tried five or six plates of your head, with its impetuously hot, though dominated, temperament - but I couldn't be happy with them because I remained so impressed by your distraught expression"...
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