Etching, 1914

Edition : 15

Catalog : [Duthuit 34]

30.00 cm. x 21.00 cm. | 11.81 in. x 8.27 in. (paper)

16.00 cm. x 6.00 cm. | 6.3 in. x 2.36 in. (image)

Handsigned by the artist in pencil
Certificate of authenticity
Very good condition

Etching on Chinese paper mounted on vellum

Matisse made no distinction between printmaking and drawing: for him, engraving on copper or stone was simply drawing with an added constraint. Once a line is drawn, it cannot be undone. It is precisely this irreversibility that fascinated the artist and brought out the very best in him. He called his small engravings ‘acrobatic drawings’: the precarious balance, the absolute concentration, the risk taken with every line. Mlle Landsberg with the Long Face is one of those works born of a single impulse, without hesitation, where the slightest hesitation would be read as a mistake.
Yvonne Landsberg belongs to that circle of models whom Matisse depicted almost obsessively during the 1910s, tirelessly returning to the same faces, the same poses, as if each new version were yet another attempt to grasp an elusive truth. This relationship with the model was far from a mere studio practice: it was a method, almost an ascetic discipline. Each portrait of Yvonne Landsberg is both a finished work and a stage: a milestone in an endless quest of which this engraving is one of the most refined expressions.

Ref : LCD8008