Rare Vintage 1940s Matisse “Still Life with Pineapple” Art Print Folio

A rare print of Still Life With Pineapple by Henri Matisse (French School 1869—1954) tipped into its own thick portfolio with information and provenance of the work enclosed. Folio is made of thick vintage textured paper with a lovely patina.

11” x9” colorplate tipped in to a 13” x 10” art folio with deviled edge.

Printed while the artist was still living.

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (1869-1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.

Commentary on the work and artist circa late 1940s:

”HENRI MATISSE Came to Paris in 1890 from Saint-Quentin, where he had been a solicitor's clerk, with the intention of continuing his law studies.

But his early interest in painting was too strong to be set aside and he began studying in earnest. For a number of years he was an official copyist at the Louvre. From such conservative and technically sound beginnings he emerged in 1905 as the leader of the Fauves, or "wild beasts of art," as the group which included Braque, Roualt, Vlaminck and Derain was labeled.

Today they are accepted as modern masters, but at the time they were thought outlandish in their efforts to go beyond Gauguin and Van Gogh in their use of bright flat colors and black outlines, and to combine primitive spontaneity and formal design. "What I dream of," wrote Matisse, "is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling and depressing subject matter.” And again: “Expression to me is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements used by the painter-the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions.”

Matisse sees with the new eyes of a child; he uses line, color and pattern as aesthetic agents with the freedom of the primitive artist. But to this freshness of vision he has brought the formal science of Eastern art, learned from the study of Byzantine mosaics, and Persian, Near Eastern and Far Eastern painting, pottery and textiles. The result, in his best works, is an impression of gaiety and charm and joy, where all is "balance, purity and tranquillity." Still Life With Pineapple is now in the collection of Mr. Sam A. Lewisohn, New York.”