This drawing is one of three by Matisse donated to The Met in 1910 by Florence Blumenthal, wife of Museum Trustee and future Museum president George Blumenthal. Purchased from Matisse’s second show at "291" for twenty dollars apiece, they were offered to The Met and became the institution’s first works by the artist (see also 10.76.2 and 10.76.3). They were, in fact, also the first works by the artist to enter any American museum. As the Blumenthals were major collectors of medieval and Renaissance art, their purchase of these modernist works—apparently, the only ones they ever made— suggests the behind-the-scenes prompting of some influential art figures: Bernard Berenson, the Renaissance art scholar and defender of Matisse’s work; Alfred Stieglitz, who later used the same tactic to introduce photography into The Met’s collection; and Eugene Meyer (brother of Florence Blumenthal), who with his wife, Agnes, were major patrons and supporters of Stieglitz and his gallery.
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Inscription: Signed (lower right, in graphite): Henri-Matisse
[Alfred Stieglitz, New York, until 1910; sold in 1910 to Blumenthal]; Florence Blumenthal, New York (1910; her gift to MMA)
New York. 291. "Exhibition of Drawings and Photographs of Paintings by Henri Matisse," February 23–March 8, 1910, no catalogue.
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "Henri Matisse," November 13, 1951–January 13, 1952, no. 111 (as "Seated Model, Hands Clasping Knee," 1906?).
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Henri Matisse," February 5–March 16, 1952, no. 111.
Art Institute of Chicago. "Henri Matisse," April 1–May 4, 1952, no. 111.
San Francisco Museum of Art. "Henri Matisse," May 22–July 6, 1952, no. 111.
New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "20th Century Master Drawings," November 6, 1963–January 5, 1964, no. 80 (as "Seated Model, Hands Clasping Knee").
Minneapolis. University Gallery, University of Minnesota. "20th Century Master Drawings," February 3–March 15, 1964, no. 80.
Cambridge. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. "20th Century Master Drawings," April 6–May 24, 1964, no. 80.
Los Angeles. UCLA Art Galleries. "Henri Matisse: Retrospective 1966," January 5–February 27, 1966, no. 139 (as "Seated Model, Hands Clasping Knee; Nude Study" ["Figure assise"], 1900).
Art Institute of Chicago. "Henri Matisse: Retrospective 1966," March 11–April 24, 1966, no. 139.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Henri Matisse: Retrospective 1966," May 11–June 26, 1966, no. 139.
Melbourne. National Gallery of Victoria. "Matisse," July 19–September 3, 1995, no. 47 (dated ca. 1908–9).
New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture. "Académie Matisse: Henri Matisse and his Nordic and American Pupils," October 17–November 17, 2001, unnum. brochure (p. 34; as "Nude Study," ca. 1908–9).
L'Annonciade, Musée de Saint-Tropez. "Henri Matisse: Émerveillement pour le Sud," July 10–October 11, 2004, no. 40 (as "Nu assis," 1908).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," October 13, 2011–January 2, 2012, not in catalogue [see p. 33].
B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "Principal Accessions." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 5 (May 1910), p. 126.
Marcel Sembat. Henri Matisse. Paris, 1920, ill. p. 21, dates it 1906.
Alfred H. Barr Jr. Matisse: His Art and His Public. New York, 1951, pp. 98, 115, 533 n. 8, ill. p. 323, calls it "Seated Model, Hands Clasping Knee (Figure assise)"; tentatively dates it 1906, citing Ref. Sembat 1920, but adds that many dates in that reference are inaccurate; notes that at first Stieglitz did not want to sell this and two additional Matisse drawings (MMA 10.76.2, 10.76.3) to Florence Blumenthal, who intended them as gifts to the Met, believing that the museum would "never accept them"; refers to the three drawings as "probably the first works by Matisse to enter a public museum anywhere" except for the artist's early works purchased by the French State.
Sidney Simon and Emily Rauh. 20th Century Master Drawings. Exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. [Cambridge, Mass.], 1963, unpaginated, no. 80, date it probably 1906.
Calvin Tomkins. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1970, pp. 220–21, notes that after giving the three Matisse drawings to the Met, Blumenthal, a collector of medieval and Renaissance art, never again purchased twentieth century works.
George Heard Hamilton. "The Alfred Stieglitz Collection." Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), p. 379, erroneously states that Blumenthal purchased two drawings from Exh. New York 1910.
Victor I. Carlson. Matisse as a Draughtsman. Exh. cat., Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore, 1971, p. 52.
Stephen Longstreet. The Drawings of Matisse. Alhambra, Calif., 1973, ill. n.p., calls it "Nude".
Isabelle Monod-Fontaine and Claude Laugier inHenri Matisse 1904–1917. Exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris, 1993, p. 93.
Sabine Rewald inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, p. 33.
Elizabeth Cleland. "Collecting Sixteenth-Century Tapestries in Twentieth-Century America: The Blumenthals and Jacques Seligmann." Metropolitan Museum Journal 50 (2015), p. 157.
John Cauman inMatisse and American Art. Exh. cat., Montclair Art Museum. Montclair, N. J., 2017, p. 26.
Douglas Eklund, Marilyn F. Friedman, and Randall R. Griffey inMaking The Met, 1870–2020. Ed. Andrea Bayer with Laura D. Corey. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2020, p. 164.
Henri Matisse (French, Le Cateau-Cambrésis 1869–1954 Nice)
1905
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