The drawings that Matisse produced in the mid-1930s were those he valued as amongst his very greatest achievements. And finely reproduced as they are here, they astonish, delight and seduce everyone who sees them by their verve, their audacity and their voluptuousness. Made in pen and ink, admitting of no correction, devoid of shading or hatching they are, as Matisse said of them, 'the most direct expression of my emotion'. These portraits and drawings of models reclining in and against profusely patterned textiles and ornamented backgrounds, are miracles of pure line, of fluid arabesques seemingly spontaneous and free, yet rationally controlled to embody the height of exoticism and sensuality. The naked and clothed models, mirrors, reflections of sprawling limbs and of the artist himself or his own hand drawing, spread in waves across the whiteness of the paper to beguile us and take our breath away at Matisse's sheer virtuosity in making a simple line evoke the complexities of space and form. There was no delay in recognizing these miracles of draughtsmanship as a sort of pinnacle of perfection and in 1936 Christian Zervos reproduced a selection of them in his journal Cahiers d'Art. This present volume is a near facsimile of that special edition.

One of the great pioneering masters of twentieth century art, Henri Matisse was an extremely versatile and productive artist. Although he was an outstanding sculptor and draftsman. he was most widely known and loved for his paintings. And his paintings-vibrant, colourful, and diverse-are the focus of this book. John Jacobus, the Leon E. Williams Professor of Art at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, tells the facinating story of Matisse's life, exploring the relation of his work to the art of the past and showing how it contributed to the art of today. In this volumes forty stunning colour plates the artists most important paintings are reproduced, and each is accompanied by a detailed commentary on the page facing the illustration. With 105 illustarions, 40 in colour.

"Recounts the publication history of nearly fifty books illustrated by Henri Matisse, including Lettres portugaises, Mallarmae's Poaesies, and Matisse's own Jazz. Explores his illustration methods, typographic precepts, literary sensibilities, and opinions about the role of the artist in the publication process"--Provided by publisher.

MATISSE: DRAWING LIFE, and the exhibition it accompanies, explores Matisse's works, on and with paper, made throughout his long career. Featuring more than 300 drawings, prints, illustrated books and selected paintings and paper cut-outs by one of the twentieth century's greatest artists, it traces an arc from the artist's studies in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, through the intimacies of daily life in his studio sketched in pencil and pen, to the masterpieces made using line, light and colour in the decade before his death in 1954. This publication showcases the most comprehensive gathering of Matisse's graphic work from major international museums and private collections ever presented in an exhibition with new writing by Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, Celine Chicha-Castex and Emilie Ovaere-Corthay.