1917, Henri Matisse, Aïcha and Lorette -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Aïcha Goblet, a Black habituée of the Montparnasse café scene, posed for Matisse on multiple occasions, including for this double portrait with the artist's frequent Italian model Lorette. A rare portrayal of Black and white women of socially equivalent stature, the composition veers decisively away from the nineteenth-century trope of depicting Black servants with their white employers. The models sit side by side, as if colleagues or friends. The modernity of the scene is reinforced by the sitters' flattened physiques and Aïcha's masklike visage, which evokes African aesthetics. The multiracial aspect of Parisian artistic circles, captured in numerous photographs of Aïcha with friends, was a reality that Matisse, himself a Montparnasse resident, likely observed during his daily neighborhood strolls.
1917, Henri Matisse, Aïcha and Lorette -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Aïcha Goblet, a Black habituée of the Montparnasse café scene, posed for Matisse on multiple occasions, including for this double portrait with the artist's frequent Italian model Lorette. A rare portrayal of Black and white women of socially equivalent stature, the composition veers decisively away from the nineteenth-century trope of depicting Black servants with their white employers. The models sit side by side, as if colleagues or friends. The modernity of the scene is reinforced by the sitters' flattened physiques and Aïcha's masklike visage, which evokes African aesthetics. The multiracial aspect of Parisian artistic circles, captured in numerous photographs of Aïcha with friends, was a reality that Matisse, himself a Montparnasse resident, likely observed during his daily neighborhood strolls.