Lithograph in colors on wove paper after a paper cutout composed in 1943 for the literary and art revue magazine "Verve". Signed in the lower right on the stone "Henri Matisse". Dated in the lower right, "June 1943" (6/43). Published in the Arts Revue, "Verve", Vol. IV, No.13, 1945. Printed by Draeger Freres, Paris.

Sheet: 13 3/4" x 10 3/8"
Catalogue reference: Duthuit "Ouvrages illustrees" 74

Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau, France, on December 1869. He initially planned a career as a lawyer and even passed the law examinations in Paris in 1888. He began to paint after an acute attack of appendicitis and proceeded to become the leading artist of the Fauvist movement. In 1914 the artist went to Nice for the winter, he was so taken by the Riviera that he bought a house and lived there for the rest of his life. In the south of France he painted the long series of Odalisque and still-life subjects which are his main oeuvre. Matisse illustrated several books, notably editions of Ronsard and Baudelaire, done at the end of World War II. Toward the end of his career Matisse used a mixture of cut-outs in colored paper with gouache and crayons to overcome the handicaps of age and illness.