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Seated Nude
1922-1925bronze
31 in. x 31 1/2 in. x 14 in. (78.74 cm x 80.01 cm x 35.56 cm)
Currier Funds, 1964.1
Henri Matisse
French
1869–1954
ON VIEW
Description
Seated Nude is a bronze sculpture of a semi-reclining woman, precariously balanced on a round ottoman or cushion. The woman’s arms are bent behind her head, and her left leg is bent toward her chest. Her left foot is tucked underneath the bent knee of her right leg; the ball of her right foot touches the base of the statue. The woman’s features are simplified, and broad planes define her limbs and musculature. Her diminutive head, small breasts, and elongated torso contrast with her massive arms, legs, and thighs. The scale of the sculpture is approximately 1:2, or one-half life size.
Context and Analysis
One of only three sculptures that Henri Matisse produced during his pivotal period in Nice, France (1918–30), Seated Nude (Grand nu assis) is widely regarded as one of the artist’s most important works. The unusual posture of the subject, suspended between sitting and reclining, was one Matisse had explored simultaneously in paintings, lithographs, and drawings, notably his Nude with Blue Cushion of 1924 (Private Collection) and a series of odalisques. (The odalisque, a familiar trope in nineteenth-century orientalist art, was a female figure, usually reclining and sometimes nude. She was meant to refer to a slave or a concubine in a harem.) The tireless model for these works, and also for Seated Nude, was the former ballerina Henriette Darricarrère.
The artist’s ability to transform two-dimensional precedents into a work that demands to be seen in the round may owe something to Matisse’s original source. Inspired by the “clear and complex structure” of Michelangelo,1 Matisse had looked to two of that artist’s works: the sculpture of Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the Medici Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and the statuesque figures of ignudi, or seated male nudes, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Matisse’s hands, however, these classical figures are re-presented in thoroughly modernist terms. The human form is reduced to essential structures and becomes a study of mass, space, and the play of light and shadow, rather than of heroic anatomies.
Seated Nude went through several phases before being cast by the Parisian firm Valsuani. The size of the sculpture increased, and the carving of the woman’s form evolved from smooth and rounded to more expressively faceted. The slices of the artist’s knife can be seen on the woman’s back and thighs, and also on the broad planes of the inner surface of her right arm. The tautness and sharp angles of the woman’s core suggest the stress of her pose, even as the overall shape retains the artist’s graceful, trademark arabesque. The inclusion of the circular pouf adds a touch of the exotic, reminiscent of Matisse’s debt to Morocco and the East. Indeed, Seated Nude inspired one of Matisse’s most famous orientalist paintings from this period, Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground (1925–26, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).
Matisse created more than eighty sculptures over his long career. Of an edition of ten casts, the Currier’s sculpture is number four.
Connections
The Currier owns several works by Matisse, including the Reclining Nude of 1935 (pen on paper; Currier, 1961.12) and Head of a Woman (1947, linocut; Currier, 1980.75).
Two bronze statues of women, one by the American artist Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (Currier, 1929.2) and the other by the French expatriate Gaston Lachaise (Currier, 1982.26), offer an interesting comparison with Matisse’s sculpture of roughly the same date, in their verticality and more overtly expressive forms. Auguste Rodin’s The Athlete [Sam White] (n.d.; Currier, 2008.4.58) and Jacques Lipchitz’s Seated Bather of 1924 (Currier, 1963.2) reflect the origin and culmination, respectively, of Matisse’s Cubist tendencies. The “hovering” sensation of the Seated Nude compels an unexpected comparison with the color field paintings of Mark Rothko (Currier, 1998.17).
Written by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.
Notes
1 Quoted in Elsen, 146.
Select Bibliography
“A Bronze Sculpture by Henri Matisse (1869–1954).” Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin (May–June 1964).
Elsen, Albert E. The Sculptures of Henri Matisse. New York: Abrams, 1972.
Kosinski, Dorothy, et al. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Mezzatesta, Michael P. Henri Matisse, Sculptor/Painter: A Formal Analysis of Selected Works. Exh. cat. Forth Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 1984.
Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Watkins, Nicholas. “Matisse, Henri.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press: http://www.oxfordartonline.com (accessed July 29, 2013).
Seated Nude is a bronze sculpture of a semi-reclining woman, precariously balanced on a round ottoman or cushion. The woman’s arms are bent behind her head, and her left leg is bent toward her chest. Her left foot is tucked underneath the bent knee of her right leg; the ball of her right foot touches the base of the statue. The woman’s features are simplified, and broad planes define her limbs and musculature. Her diminutive head, small breasts, and elongated torso contrast with her massive arms, legs, and thighs. The scale of the sculpture is approximately 1:2, or one-half life size.
Context and Analysis
One of only three sculptures that Henri Matisse produced during his pivotal period in Nice, France (1918–30), Seated Nude (Grand nu assis) is widely regarded as one of the artist’s most important works. The unusual posture of the subject, suspended between sitting and reclining, was one Matisse had explored simultaneously in paintings, lithographs, and drawings, notably his Nude with Blue Cushion of 1924 (Private Collection) and a series of odalisques. (The odalisque, a familiar trope in nineteenth-century orientalist art, was a female figure, usually reclining and sometimes nude. She was meant to refer to a slave or a concubine in a harem.) The tireless model for these works, and also for Seated Nude, was the former ballerina Henriette Darricarrère.
The artist’s ability to transform two-dimensional precedents into a work that demands to be seen in the round may owe something to Matisse’s original source. Inspired by the “clear and complex structure” of Michelangelo,1 Matisse had looked to two of that artist’s works: the sculpture of Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the Medici Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and the statuesque figures of ignudi, or seated male nudes, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Matisse’s hands, however, these classical figures are re-presented in thoroughly modernist terms. The human form is reduced to essential structures and becomes a study of mass, space, and the play of light and shadow, rather than of heroic anatomies.
Seated Nude went through several phases before being cast by the Parisian firm Valsuani. The size of the sculpture increased, and the carving of the woman’s form evolved from smooth and rounded to more expressively faceted. The slices of the artist’s knife can be seen on the woman’s back and thighs, and also on the broad planes of the inner surface of her right arm. The tautness and sharp angles of the woman’s core suggest the stress of her pose, even as the overall shape retains the artist’s graceful, trademark arabesque. The inclusion of the circular pouf adds a touch of the exotic, reminiscent of Matisse’s debt to Morocco and the East. Indeed, Seated Nude inspired one of Matisse’s most famous orientalist paintings from this period, Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground (1925–26, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).
Matisse created more than eighty sculptures over his long career. Of an edition of ten casts, the Currier’s sculpture is number four.
Connections
The Currier owns several works by Matisse, including the Reclining Nude of 1935 (pen on paper; Currier, 1961.12) and Head of a Woman (1947, linocut; Currier, 1980.75).
Two bronze statues of women, one by the American artist Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (Currier, 1929.2) and the other by the French expatriate Gaston Lachaise (Currier, 1982.26), offer an interesting comparison with Matisse’s sculpture of roughly the same date, in their verticality and more overtly expressive forms. Auguste Rodin’s The Athlete [Sam White] (n.d.; Currier, 2008.4.58) and Jacques Lipchitz’s Seated Bather of 1924 (Currier, 1963.2) reflect the origin and culmination, respectively, of Matisse’s Cubist tendencies. The “hovering” sensation of the Seated Nude compels an unexpected comparison with the color field paintings of Mark Rothko (Currier, 1998.17).
Written by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.
Notes
1 Quoted in Elsen, 146.
Select Bibliography
“A Bronze Sculpture by Henri Matisse (1869–1954).” Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin (May–June 1964).
Elsen, Albert E. The Sculptures of Henri Matisse. New York: Abrams, 1972.
Kosinski, Dorothy, et al. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Mezzatesta, Michael P. Henri Matisse, Sculptor/Painter: A Formal Analysis of Selected Works. Exh. cat. Forth Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 1984.
Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Watkins, Nicholas. “Matisse, Henri.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press: http://www.oxfordartonline.com (accessed July 29, 2013).
founder Claude Valsuani Foundry
French, active 1899–1923
ON VIEW
Description
Seated Nude is a bronze sculpture of a semi-reclining woman, precariously balanced on a round ottoman or cushion. The woman’s arms are bent behind her head, and her left leg is bent toward her chest. Her left foot is tucked underneath the bent knee of her right leg; the ball of her right foot touches the base of the statue. The woman’s features are simplified, and broad planes define her limbs and musculature. Her diminutive head, small breasts, and elongated torso contrast with her massive arms, legs, and thighs. The scale of the sculpture is approximately 1:2, or one-half life size.
Context and Analysis
One of only three sculptures that Henri Matisse produced during his pivotal period in Nice, France (1918–30), Seated Nude (Grand nu assis) is widely regarded as one of the artist’s most important works. The unusual posture of the subject, suspended between sitting and reclining, was one Matisse had explored simultaneously in paintings, lithographs, and drawings, notably his Nude with Blue Cushion of 1924 (Private Collection) and a series of odalisques. (The odalisque, a familiar trope in nineteenth-century orientalist art, was a female figure, usually reclining and sometimes nude. She was meant to refer to a slave or a concubine in a harem.) The tireless model for these works, and also for Seated Nude, was the former ballerina Henriette Darricarrère.
The artist’s ability to transform two-dimensional precedents into a work that demands to be seen in the round may owe something to Matisse’s original source. Inspired by the “clear and complex structure” of Michelangelo,1 Matisse had looked to two of that artist’s works: the sculpture of Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the Medici Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and the statuesque figures of ignudi, or seated male nudes, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Matisse’s hands, however, these classical figures are re-presented in thoroughly modernist terms. The human form is reduced to essential structures and becomes a study of mass, space, and the play of light and shadow, rather than of heroic anatomies.
Seated Nude went through several phases before being cast by the Parisian firm Valsuani. The size of the sculpture increased, and the carving of the woman’s form evolved from smooth and rounded to more expressively faceted. The slices of the artist’s knife can be seen on the woman’s back and thighs, and also on the broad planes of the inner surface of her right arm. The tautness and sharp angles of the woman’s core suggest the stress of her pose, even as the overall shape retains the artist’s graceful, trademark arabesque. The inclusion of the circular pouf adds a touch of the exotic, reminiscent of Matisse’s debt to Morocco and the East. Indeed, Seated Nude inspired one of Matisse’s most famous orientalist paintings from this period, Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground (1925–26, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).
Matisse created more than eighty sculptures over his long career. Of an edition of ten casts, the Currier’s sculpture is number four.
Connections
The Currier owns several works by Matisse, including the Reclining Nude of 1935 (pen on paper; Currier, 1961.12) and Head of a Woman (1947, linocut; Currier, 1980.75).
Two bronze statues of women, one by the American artist Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (Currier, 1929.2) and the other by the French expatriate Gaston Lachaise (Currier, 1982.26), offer an interesting comparison with Matisse’s sculpture of roughly the same date, in their verticality and more overtly expressive forms. Auguste Rodin’s The Athlete [Sam White] (n.d.; Currier, 2008.4.58) and Jacques Lipchitz’s Seated Bather of 1924 (Currier, 1963.2) reflect the origin and culmination, respectively, of Matisse’s Cubist tendencies. The “hovering” sensation of the Seated Nude compels an unexpected comparison with the color field paintings of Mark Rothko (Currier, 1998.17).
Written by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.
Notes
1 Quoted in Elsen, 146.
Select Bibliography
“A Bronze Sculpture by Henri Matisse (1869–1954).” Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin (May–June 1964).
Elsen, Albert E. The Sculptures of Henri Matisse. New York: Abrams, 1972.
Kosinski, Dorothy, et al. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Mezzatesta, Michael P. Henri Matisse, Sculptor/Painter: A Formal Analysis of Selected Works. Exh. cat. Forth Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 1984.
Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Watkins, Nicholas. “Matisse, Henri.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press: http://www.oxfordartonline.com (accessed July 29, 2013).
Seated Nude is a bronze sculpture of a semi-reclining woman, precariously balanced on a round ottoman or cushion. The woman’s arms are bent behind her head, and her left leg is bent toward her chest. Her left foot is tucked underneath the bent knee of her right leg; the ball of her right foot touches the base of the statue. The woman’s features are simplified, and broad planes define her limbs and musculature. Her diminutive head, small breasts, and elongated torso contrast with her massive arms, legs, and thighs. The scale of the sculpture is approximately 1:2, or one-half life size.
Context and Analysis
One of only three sculptures that Henri Matisse produced during his pivotal period in Nice, France (1918–30), Seated Nude (Grand nu assis) is widely regarded as one of the artist’s most important works. The unusual posture of the subject, suspended between sitting and reclining, was one Matisse had explored simultaneously in paintings, lithographs, and drawings, notably his Nude with Blue Cushion of 1924 (Private Collection) and a series of odalisques. (The odalisque, a familiar trope in nineteenth-century orientalist art, was a female figure, usually reclining and sometimes nude. She was meant to refer to a slave or a concubine in a harem.) The tireless model for these works, and also for Seated Nude, was the former ballerina Henriette Darricarrère.
The artist’s ability to transform two-dimensional precedents into a work that demands to be seen in the round may owe something to Matisse’s original source. Inspired by the “clear and complex structure” of Michelangelo,1 Matisse had looked to two of that artist’s works: the sculpture of Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the Medici Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and the statuesque figures of ignudi, or seated male nudes, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Matisse’s hands, however, these classical figures are re-presented in thoroughly modernist terms. The human form is reduced to essential structures and becomes a study of mass, space, and the play of light and shadow, rather than of heroic anatomies.
Seated Nude went through several phases before being cast by the Parisian firm Valsuani. The size of the sculpture increased, and the carving of the woman’s form evolved from smooth and rounded to more expressively faceted. The slices of the artist’s knife can be seen on the woman’s back and thighs, and also on the broad planes of the inner surface of her right arm. The tautness and sharp angles of the woman’s core suggest the stress of her pose, even as the overall shape retains the artist’s graceful, trademark arabesque. The inclusion of the circular pouf adds a touch of the exotic, reminiscent of Matisse’s debt to Morocco and the East. Indeed, Seated Nude inspired one of Matisse’s most famous orientalist paintings from this period, Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground (1925–26, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).
Matisse created more than eighty sculptures over his long career. Of an edition of ten casts, the Currier’s sculpture is number four.
Connections
The Currier owns several works by Matisse, including the Reclining Nude of 1935 (pen on paper; Currier, 1961.12) and Head of a Woman (1947, linocut; Currier, 1980.75).
Two bronze statues of women, one by the American artist Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (Currier, 1929.2) and the other by the French expatriate Gaston Lachaise (Currier, 1982.26), offer an interesting comparison with Matisse’s sculpture of roughly the same date, in their verticality and more overtly expressive forms. Auguste Rodin’s The Athlete [Sam White] (n.d.; Currier, 2008.4.58) and Jacques Lipchitz’s Seated Bather of 1924 (Currier, 1963.2) reflect the origin and culmination, respectively, of Matisse’s Cubist tendencies. The “hovering” sensation of the Seated Nude compels an unexpected comparison with the color field paintings of Mark Rothko (Currier, 1998.17).
Written by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.
Notes
1 Quoted in Elsen, 146.
Select Bibliography
“A Bronze Sculpture by Henri Matisse (1869–1954).” Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin (May–June 1964).
Elsen, Albert E. The Sculptures of Henri Matisse. New York: Abrams, 1972.
Kosinski, Dorothy, et al. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Mezzatesta, Michael P. Henri Matisse, Sculptor/Painter: A Formal Analysis of Selected Works. Exh. cat. Forth Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 1984.
Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Watkins, Nicholas. “Matisse, Henri.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press: http://www.oxfordartonline.com (accessed July 29, 2013).
Exhibition
1963 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Manchester Collects: Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures from Local Collections." Oct. 9 - Nov. 10. 1972 Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, "Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts from the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire." May 14 - June 20.
1979 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, "Small Gallery on a Large Scale." June 16 - July 29.
1984 Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, FL, "In Quest of Excellence." Jan. 14 - Apr. 22.
1986 Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, "Masterpieces from the Currier Gallery of Art." Sept. 11 - Nov. 2.
2006-2007 Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Extended Loan of European and American Paintings. Aug. 2006 - Nov. 2007.
2016 Currier Museum of Art, "Max Pechstein: Paradise Lost" Nov. 23, 2016 - March, 2017
2021 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "The Body in Art: From the Spiritual to the Sensual." April 1 - Sept.
Provenance
Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Ahrenberg Sotheby's, London, July 7, 1960
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc. New York, NY
Purchased by Currier Gallery of Art , 1964
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