Henri Matisse - Greta Moll 1908

Bathers with a Turtle 1908 Flowers in a Pitcher 1908 Game of Bowls 1908 Greta Moll 1908 Harmony in Red 1908 Landscape with eucalyptus trees and river. Trees in front of a river 1908 Nude. Black and Gold 1908
Greta Moll 1908

Greta Moll 1908
92x73cm oil/canvas
National Gallery, London, UK

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From the National Gallery, London, UK :
The sitter, Margareta Moll, was born in Mulhouse in 1884. She was a sculptress and painter and, with her husband Oskar, a pupil of Matisse. Both were early collectors of his work.
Matisse had recently developed a daring style, using crude brushmarks and vibrant colours in dazzling contrasts. But the painting's spontaneous technique and the simplicity of its design are misleading: Greta Moll recalled that she had to sit during ten three-hour sessions.
After seeing a painting by Veronese in the Louvre in Paris, Matisse reworked the portrait extensively, broadening the arms and emphasizing the curve of the eyebrows, to give the figure grandeur and monumentality. The flowered cotton print against which the sitter is placed reappears in a number of his works at this time.