The Italian Woman (L’Italienne)
1916
Oil on canvas
116.7 x 89.5 cm
Guggenheim Museum, New York
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Henri Matisse often painted the same subject in versions that range from relatively realistic to more abstract or schematic. At times the transition from realism to abstraction could be enacted in a single canvas, as is the case with The Italian Woman. From the earlier state of the portrait, which depicts a heavier figure, Matisse pared down the model’s image, in the process making her less corporeal and more ethereal. Using the conventions of religious painting—a frontal pose, introspective countenance, and flat back-ground devoid of any indication of location—he created an icon of Woman. The spatial ambiguity of this portrait—the way the arms appear flat while the background overtakes a shoulder, for example—reveals Matisse’s relationship to Paul Cézanne via the bolder experiments of Cubism.
Guggenheim.org