''La Négresse'' (1952–53) by

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

is a

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...

découpée, made of cut pieces of colored paper.

Medium

Starting in the 1930s, Matisse began to experiment with creating art by cutting paper into shapes. By 1950, he had primarily shifted to this mode of art making, perhaps because his health and disabilities made painting on a large scale difficult."Henri Matisse"
,

Pompidou Centre The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

. Retrieved 25 December 2007. These "cut-outs" were often

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

-sized and made from pieces of paper painted with

. ''La Négresse'' was first pinned onto the wall at his apartment in

Nice, France Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

around 1952. He rearranged the composition until early 1953. It takes up an entire wall. A newspaper review called the figure "a giantess."

Subject or Inspiration

''La Négresse'' may be inspired by

Josephine Baker Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald; naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted Fran ...

, a black American dancer whose popularity reached its height in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

during the 1920s and 1930s. One of Baker's famous outfits was a skirt made from

bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...

, which Matisse may be invoking in the orange-yellow forms around the figure's waist.Wright, Alistair (Sept. 2014). "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs". ''Artforum International, 53'', 370-371,12. "''La Négresse'', 1952–53, a work not in this show but inspired by the films of Josephine Baker, reiterates racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips and in the abstracted yellow form that represents Baker's notorious banana skirt. (In the catalogue, the curators celebrate Matisse's invention of a new visual sign for the skirt, but it is a sign utterly reliant on ready-made stereotypes.)" Baker's association with

jazz music Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major f ...

may have also inspired Matisse, whose had previously designed a book titled ''Jazz'' (1947). Matisse's depiction has been criticized as reiterating "racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips." Others have proposed that Matisse presented black women as beautiful. Other scholars propose that the figure may be of another famous dancer,

Yvette Chauviré Yvette Chauviré (; 22 April 1917 – 19 October 2016) was a French prima ballerina and actress. She is often described as France's greatest ballerina, and was the coach of prima ballerinas Sylvie Guillem and Marie-Claude Pietragalla. She was awa ...

. Matisse had created an earlier work about a dancer (''Creole Dancer,'' 1950) that art critic

Louis Aragon Louis Aragon (, , 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littérature''. He wa ...

identified as

Katherine Dunham Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for ma ...

, who Matisse had seen perform. The work may also be an imagined dancer or amalgamation of the previously discussed figures.

Reception

The work has been praised as "the culmination of Matisse's art." It was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1973. In 2018, the work was referenced in the title of Denise Murrell's

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

and catalog ''Posing Modernity: the Black Model from

Manet A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...

to Matisse.''

References

1952 paintings Paintings by Henri Matisse Collections of the National Gallery of Art {{20C-painting-stub