Male Speaker 1

Here again is Erika Holmquist-Wall, Assistant Curator and Provenance Specialist in the Department of Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Erika Holmquist-Wall

Matisse had kind of dabbled in printmaking. He always painted, he always drew but he returned to sculpture and printmaking at different times in his career, when he was stuck with a problem, with line or movement or shape to explore, to get his thoughts out. And then he would return to painting and drawing. In 1913, he caused an incredible stir with this set of lithographs. They were bold, they were shocking. They have got this amazing power, there was a personality that’s conveyed, she’s lively, she is full of movement, she is full of vitality. The prints as simple as they are, they capture her personality and what’s really interesting, The thought was, that for decades, nobody knew who the sitter was. You know, there has been all these studies on Matisse’s models, volumes have been written and nobody knew who this sitter was.

And then it was actually revealed that the sitter was Germaine Raynal who was the wife of the very well known art critic at the time, Maurice Raynal. And the Raynals had fallen on hard times, and Matisse agreed to pay Madame Raynal and he paid her a very generous sum for some modeling sessions. He did a series of 8 lithographs of Madame Raynal. When you see the photograph of her, there is no doubt that it’s her. Look at how he captures, how he captures her essence, how he captures her personality.

Male Speaker 1

Press the green button to hear Erika Holmquist-Wall discuss these lithographs. What is a lithograph, press the red button for an explanation of this printmaking process. To hear Matisse explain the value of drawing which is the basis for his lithographs, select the yellow button.