Loulou au chapeau fleuri

Medium: Original Etching, 1914/15, on Chine Appliqué paper supported on Velin Arches paper, signed by the artist and numbered in ink. With full margins. Verso is a stamp in an oval “paris Douane Central”
Size: 160 X 61 mms (Plate size); 188 X 279 mms (paper size)
Edition: 3/15; There were also 1 stage proofs and 1 proof struck from the cancelled plate
Reference: Duthuit - Garnaud 49
Provenance: The stock of Henri m Petiet, Paris. The dealers stamp H. M. P in an oval, verso. Petiet was one of the most famous art dealers of Paris in the post war era. He bought the stock of Vollard on that dealers untimely death and proceeded to become one of the leading print dealers in Paris. The fact that our piece emanates from this source gives authenticity and prominence to it.
Note : In the seven years after his woodcuts of 1906 Matisse had made very few prints but in 1914 he turned back to printmaking with enthusiasm making about 8 or 9 lithographs, over 60 etchings and about 9 monotypes. Matisse’s depression of spirit caused by the war may have led him to work on a smaller scale then before, just as it caused him to renew his interest in music and the violin. Most of the etchings of this period are portraits of his friends. They include Madame Derain, Mme Galanis, Mme Gris, all wives of artists, Mme La Forge, Mme Vignier and her little daughter, Irene, who was the subject of our etching and 6 others in a series. Some of these may have been commissioned and some of the subjects may have been paid sitters. Possibly Matisse planned to publish the series, or a selection from it, in an album but in the end they were all created in small editions of 5 to 15 proofs. Loulou Brouty was a professional model who had spent the summer with the Matisse family in a remote fishing village in 1909. The whole family liked her and she was especially good with the children. She was a typical Parisienne, earthy and tough, with dark hair, catlike features, a lithe body and skin so richly tanned by summer’s end that Matisse’s pupils nicknamed her “the Italian sunset. ” She modelled for Matisse for some year after this and her portrait, made in the time of the First Wolrd War, is very charming.
Exhibitions: 1970: Pully, no 20 1982, Friborg, No 49.1981