Vintage 1976 Henri Matisse "Self Portrait" Art Print

A lovely tipped in art print of Henri Matisse's "Self Portrait" (1900) printed in Japan in 1976. Image is hand tipped in on heavy paper and affixed to chipboard backing for ease in styling, propping, or framing.

Image: 7" x 10.25"

Commentary at time of printing: “The self-portrait did not occupy a central role in Matisse's work, as it had in the art of Cézanne or of Courbet. However, from time to time he studied his own features with notable results. The present painting is his earliest major effort in this genre. The artist, seen here standing at his easel, seems more genial than he does in many of the later self-portraits, in which a stern, professorial master emerges. The present theme, that of the artist at work, will later be incorporated in studio or figurative compositions, either as in the mirror reflection of Car-melina (1903), or as a full figure in The Painter and His Model (1917).

The tentative, open facial character of the 1900 self-portrait is echoed in the painting's style, the somber brown tones being relieved by muted yet latently strong purples and greens, especially at the bottom. Moreover, the brushwork varies from broadly painted areas to patches of shorter, almost Impressionistic strokes. This picture was executed shortly after the artist's first efforts at Neo-Impressionism, during 1899, and is subsequent to several powerfully hued still lifes that may mark his first encounter with the art of Gauguin. Hence the picture marks a retreat from some of his bolder, Proto-Fauve efforts, and anticipates a somber phase in his development, one exemplified by The Attic Studio (1903) and Carmelina.”