1910, Henri Matisse, Marguerite au chat noir (Marguerite with the black cat) -- Pompidou Center (Paris)
From the museum label: "Like a Byzantine mosaicist, Matisse bowed to the considerations of a global vision" (Georges Duthuit)
Matisse made thirty or so portraits of his daughter Marguerite. This painting, a major work in his artistic production, is probably one of the most powerful and stylised. The plainness of the background and simplification of the figure's outline reinforce the individuation of the subject. Matisse profoundly summarises his daughter's features. The art historian Georges Duthuit, who married Marguerite in 1923, compared this portrait with Byzantine art and the Coptic frescoes in the Bawit monastery in Egypt.
1910, Henri Matisse, Marguerite au chat noir (Marguerite with the black cat) -- Pompidou Center (Paris)
From the museum label: "Like a Byzantine mosaicist, Matisse bowed to the considerations of a global vision" (Georges Duthuit)
Matisse made thirty or so portraits of his daughter Marguerite. This painting, a major work in his artistic production, is probably one of the most powerful and stylised. The plainness of the background and simplification of the figure's outline reinforce the individuation of the subject. Matisse profoundly summarises his daughter's features. The art historian Georges Duthuit, who married Marguerite in 1923, compared this portrait with Byzantine art and the Coptic frescoes in the Bawit monastery in Egypt.