Gallery Purchase

This print is part of a series of prints from his first book of poetry titled Poesies. Matisse selected his favorite poems by his close friend John-Antoine Nau, as an homage to the poet who had died in 1918. Creating mythologically inspired images based on the poems by Nau, Matisse employed Martiniquan models for the illustrations. Matisse worked on the illustrations for this book from 1950 to 1953, but because of his poor health and death in 1954, the book was not published until 20 years after his death. The drawn face in this print shows how Matisse sought to use simple but expressive lines to explore facial expressions, especially later in his life as he gave up painting, in favor of less laborious media.