 I would like to add my thanks to those of the other speakers. Thanks to Sylvie Patry and to Martha Lucie, to Alia Palumbo and to the team of the Barnes Foundation for having permitted us to discuss and talk about Matisse while having many of his shadows nearby. Thank you. My talk proceeds from the research conducted for the catalogue of the forthcoming exhibition in Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts. The title of the exhibition opening beginning of next December is Matisse, Le Laboratoire Intérieur. And our research, of course, has been helped, as always, by the Matisse archives and George Matisse and Vanda de Ghibriand. On two occasions, 20 years apart, Matisse expressed his thoughts about his drawings, not only by means of words, as Antéry has just brilliantly exposed, but by means of a different kind of demonstration that is through the reproduction as a book of a selection of drawings chosen and organized, selected and organized by himself anyway. For the first of these books called Second Dessin par Henri Matisse, Fifty Drawings by Henri Matisse, published in 1920, he set himself up as his own publisher and gathered together the extraordinary suit suite of drawings in graphite for the most part or ink pen and ink from his model, Antoinette Arnoux, drawings created in 1919. The second book, Temes et Variations, published in 1944, would be a completely different story and expose a quite different poetics of drawing. It's, of course, the first of these two demonstrations by way of publications that I would like to explore today. Let's rapidly review the circumstances that led to this book on drawing. In 1918, after making up his mind to stay more than a few weeks in Nice, Matisse would spend some time getting organized, finding the workspace and seasonal rhythm that suited him. Winters in Nice, summers in E.C. or Paris. The first year, 1918, he used hotel bedrooms as studios and had no regular model. But in early 1919, having moved into the Hotel de la Méditerranée, he had a 19-year-old model, Antoinette Arnoux, a wheel-away thing with very light skin and light brown hair, as different as possible from the Italian type of Lorette, his model for the years 1916 and 1917. But with Antoinette, he established the same sort of working routine. He painted and drew from the model on a daily basis and took her with him in Paris and E.C. in the autumn, thus ensuring a continuity in his work that was essential to him, and which remained so with the succession of model till the end of his life. Wearing an astonishing musketeer's hat adorned with ostrich feathers and streaming ribbons, we have to believe was made by Matisse himself. Antoinette would pose for that important canvas, one among others, the white feather created in spring 1919. The painting was preceded on what I accompanied by an extensive body of drawings and at least three painted studies. This beautiful portrait still makes my references to Manet in its bold color choices, a solid background of an intense thread, and in the way the face is constructed through large, flat zones of paint. And also a few of these drawings, those close us to the painting. I choose to show you the plates in the book to stay, to keep the focus on the book, and also to address the question of reproductions, reproductions in this case controlled by Matisse himself. Another drawing, the one, another plate from the drawing that is in Philadelphia Museum of Art, and this one in the Lauder collection. In these drawings, Matisse strove to depict in detail the substance of things. That appears to have been something altogether new when compared to his work of the previous years. He tries to make palpable the differences in density, in texture between fabric, skin, hat, ribbons, hair. In his words, I quote, the feather is put there as an ornament, decorative, but it has also a physical presence. You sort of feel its lightness, the sort of light aeridone which moves with a breath of air. He told the Swedish critic Ragnar Hoppe in June 1919 regarding the ostrich feathers that decorate the hat. It was through an intense labor of drawing that he succeeded in appropriating both the grace of his model, her serious face, and the specificity of the various accessories of a costume. The white-brimmed plumbed hat, of course, another hat with flowers in other drawings, or the color of a finely embroidered Persian dress. That's the drawing in the Washington National Gallery of Art. Except, of course, when Antoinette posed simply nude. That's the plate 25 of the book. Many of these sheets are meticulously detailed as another drawing with a Persian dress in Baltimore. Sometimes more elliptical or even more in this plate. So you have here already the modulation between slow and fast, between a firm command of detail and a desire for arabesque. This modulation, this alternates between two modes of drawing which would afterwards characterize his works on paper. In fact, without yet systematizing the two-stage process that was necessary for the full expression of his drawings, was already in 1919 conscious of it. The further remarks collected by Ragna Hope during the visit to Kesa Michel in June 1919 provide evidence of that. I quote, you see here a whole series of drawings that I did for one single detail, the lace collar around the young lady's neck. The very first ones, well, go back. The very first ones are worked out minutely. Then I could simplify more and more and in the last one, when I knew the face as if by heart, I was able to translate it with a few quickly drawn lines into an ornament and arabesque without losing its character of being the lace and of being this particular lace. And at the same time, it's a complete matisse, isn't it? I work the same way on the face, the hand, and all the other details. And of course, I did a lot of movements and composition studies. I'm not sure he spoke about this particular drawings, but still. That day for overtly didactic reasons, or so that his Swedish visitor would understand that his canvases were not, I quote, improvised, haphazardly and hurriedly composed, and of course, he organized the private exhibition of sorts as Ragnar Hoppe tells it. Matisse showed him, I quote, a huge portfolio with close to 50 drawings, all for the same lady's portrait. On the wall hung a couple of oil studies for the same canvas. The completed one was in a commercial gallery. And of course, not already the number, 50. And that recurrent preoccupation was explaining and even demonstrating in reaction to the accusations of apparent ease of which Matisse's works have always been the object. The writer and gallery owner, Charles Vildrak, would be favored with the same demonstration, but it Matisse's absence. That was in late May of very beginning of June 1919. And Amélie Matisse opened to him the studio and also opened for him the portfolio of 50 drawings. Soon afterwards, Vildrak wrote an enthusiastic letter to Matisse on June 4, 1919, I quote. Madame Matisse showed us, showed me, sorry, the series of drawings that were used for this portrait that is at your studio and which is amazing. I don't think anyone could be better informed about your art and your labor or could better persuade himself that you are achieving the truth of art and with the utmost probability than in looking at these drawings, their evolution and the realization of the painting to which they lead. The public should know of these drawings. And of course, not already that mention of utmost probability. I go back again to the drawing in Philadelphia, Museum of Art. This mention of utmost probability that a piece has a subliminal illusion to anger which the style of the meticulous drawings of Antoinette might suggest at first glance. Despite that obvious reference, Matisse's relation to anger and especially to that word probability is not so simple. For in a note published in 1939, Matisse will admit his perplexity about if not his disagreement with the meaning of the famous statement engraved above anger signature in the little monument dedicated to him at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Drawing is the probability of art. And for Matisse, it seems that that word probability, a moral assessment, essentially has no relation to drawing which in his view has nothing to do with honesty or with a purely superficial fidelity or resemblance but has to be related with truth, with a freer, more profound quality of truth. And though Matisse did admire anger practice as a draftman, it is so less for that supposed probability than for anger gift for the arabesque. Was it Vildrak's suggestion that decided Matisse to publish a series of 50 drawings? The public should know of these drawings, wrote Vildrak. In any event, Matisse acted quickly. And a few weeks after having received the Vildrak letter, on July 19, 1919, he received from the printer Victor Jackman. He received because he had asked, of course, three sets of proposed specifications for a book. And at the end of the same summer, on September 4th, Jackman sent a definitive proposal where most of the technical elements of the book were already spelled out. The book would have 20 pages of text, 50 élio gravure, that is reproductions of drawings, some of them in pencil writes Jackman. See proof, he has already tried the élio gravure. And the others in pen. Matisse had therefore already decided on the number of drawings he would like to have in the book. And that was certainly based on the content of the portfolio, shown to Ragnar Hopper and then Vildrak. The handmade paper, Van Gelder Holland White, would be specially ordered. Also stipulated was an original etching on colored paper and a cover of cream simile Japon paper with letterpress printing. All that for a print run of 1,000 and at the total cost of 48,500 frags. Note that the final cost for the publication assumed fully by Matisse would rise a little more to 52,000 francs. I try to check and it's about the same amount in present-day euros and a little more in dollars, so about $60,000, which is not an unsubstantial sum, I think, for Matisse. The stages of manufacture of the book proceeded but slowly, especially since Matisse returned to Nice and was later absorbed in his work for the sets of the Song of the Nightingale. Jack Ma worked from the original drawings, which were entrusted to him one series at a time. In late December 1919, Matisse still had five more to send him. He was anxious to be done with them. He writes to Jack Ma, I quote, I am longing to be satisfied with your proofs, to be done with them and move on to something else. He wrote that on March 1, 1920. So all the process was rather slow. Jack Ma was worried on his side as well because the price of the raw materials and the workers' wages had greatly increased since the submission of the estimate as a result of inflation in this post-World War I years. In the meantime, in early summer 1920, Matisse proposed that Vildrak write a preface. He wrote that during the summer and the text reached Matisse on September 1, accompanied by a letter. Here is, I quote, Vildrak, here is the little preface. I wanted to indicate as briefly as possible why these drawings were important and the new preoccupations on your part that they appear to show. I did not want to insist on their quality with all sorts of common places generally used in that day. It seems to me that to praise or mainly to judge the work in a preface is presumptuous and insults the audience, especially when the drawings will generally find their way only into the hands of people who know how to look at them. Vildrak's letter ends with a post-script that is not without interest and which takes us back to Angre. I quote, that strange poetry borrowed from the past that Baudelaire spoke of regarding Angre imbued with the antique style is also the archaism of feeling that fills the work of a host of present day painters who capture, who capture the style from somewhere besides life. But I did not want to say so there in order not to contrast Matisse with his little pals, C'est Petit Camarad. Before commenting this document let us consider briefly that term, PJ, a term of art still in use in workshops in the early 60s. It means, I don't know exactly how it could be translated, it means it's a familiar word, it means attraper to capture, as for example a resemblance in the case of a portrait, or to pick up a knack, a technical trick, or in this case to capture the characteristics of a particular style. Vildrak seems here to be contrasting the proponents of a neoclassicism laboriously recomposed from dead documents and was result as also dead. To contrast that to Matisse and his way of working and looking. Matisse may invoke on his side the foreign poetry of Angre but he never loses sight of the living presence of his model and of a carnal and physical presence. Perhaps it's possible to detect here in Vildrak's words a discreet illusion targeting among other little pals, Picasso, with his new classical and ingresque manner, post-Balirus after he had been to Rome and made the acquaintance of Olga. That ingresque manner of Picasso had become widely known, especially through two recent exhibitions of Picasso's works at the Galerie Léon-Rosambert in June 1919 precisely and at the Galerie Paul-Rosambert in October of the same year. The two exhibitions were heavily covered in the press, which highlighted the reference to Angre, whether to praise Picasso's virtuosity or to mock his facility as a pasticheur. As one may expect, the harshest commentary came from an old painter friend, an old camarade, Braque, in a letter to Canvaler on October 8, 1919. I quote, As for Picasso, he is creating a new genre known as the Angre genre. What is truly constant about that artist is his temperament and Picasso remains for me what he has always been a virtuoso full of talent. The dates need to be taken into account, of course, because Picasso had drawn ingresques since a number of years, but it had small doses, beginning in January 1950, the famous portrait of Max Jacob in the Musee Picasso. But at that time, without abandoning cubism, alternating the cubist mode and the ingresque or realistic mode. As it happens, a comparative exhibit dedicated ago, with a few, where a few of the 50 drawings of Antoinette were set against exactly contemporaneous portrait drawings of Olga. I'll show you some of these drawings, Picasso Newed in Turban, 1919, or a slightly earlier Olga recombinant, Olga Couchier, Musee Picasso, set against a Matisse drawing from the 50 drawings in the Pierre Matisse Foundation in New York. Another Picasso, Olga, 1919, and contrasting with a drawing, Matisse drawing from the 50 drawings, plate 5, 1919 also. So, that was an occasion to evaluate on the basis of evidence, of this evidence, the distance between the mass produced, automated elements, characteristic of the classical turn taken by Picasso in 1990, precisely. That's the portrait of André Derin, or the one, the portrait of Diaghilev, the two in Musee Picasso in Paris. These works have been analyzed perfectly in Rosalind Croce Picasso pastiche, and they display the sureness of a continuous line, sort of filled the fair, hard-on line, that appears to be traced, and which perhaps is traced either from a photograph or from an older drawing. It was possible to see in this exhibition, or we can appreciate, looking at the 50 drawings, it's possible to appreciate the almost maniacal and obviously more laborious attention of Matisse, the corrections and antimony, sorry, with which Matisse gave himself to depict, down to the slightest thread of embroidery, down to each individual wisp of ostrich feather in the plume-hard drawings, down to each of the model strands of hair and even lashes in order to better draw a Matisse. Therefore, rather than being a birthday present that Matisse gave himself the year in turn 50, as John Elderfield has suggested, this publication, 50 drawings, at the author's expense, ought perhaps to be seen as another episode in the friendly but merciless battle that Matisse and Picasso engaged against each other, and perhaps a way for Matisse to mark out his territory. I too am a draft man. I would be affirming in this book I too look at Ag and the masters, but of course never with the coldness and ironic distance of his little pal Picasso. Finally completed, the book was published on September 18, 1920, but not before Charles Vildrak had made the last intervention, giving Matisse at the last minute, just before printing, a regular lesson in illustrated typography or how to typeset the title and cover. This is the letter of Vildrak, belonging to the Matisse archive. The book was distributed privately and its success was limited, though the drawings themselves, as Vildrak anticipated, were appreciated, gradually being dispersed among the most picturesque art lovers. Their power of seduction is commensurate with the mastery of the drawing techniques, the sureness and even virtuosity Matisse displayed. Beyond that, a diffuse emotion emanates from the drawings. The beauty combined with melancholy on the face of the very young Antoinette is rather poignant. That's another drawing in the Bluthroman, as early as 1919, along these qualities, along with a very distinctive quality of light as in the place from the drawing in the Fogart Museum. And even at times, a strangeness, as in certain moods with spindly members, rather strange, which brings to mind some German quality of the strange in Matisse's work. If Matisse well-known article Comanjefemé livre, How I Made My Books, opens, of course, with a magnificent malarmée published by Esquira in 1930. It may be noted that 50 drawings, Sainte-Déceint par Henri Matisse, is objectively speaking the first book he composed, the first in which he was completely involved in content, the elaboration, and in this case, even financially involved. No doubt Matisse was not fully aware at the time of what the entirely original architecture of a book could be, a relation between text and image re-invented each time. But he selected and distributed each of the 51 plates, also the proofs and printing with his usual meticulousness, demanded one kind of paper rather than one another, and finally selected a certain grey for the cover papers. He also chose rather paradoxically to dig up a beautiful little drawing from 1906 for the inside cover, and finally, specially for the book's frontispiece, he did an etching that depicted the face of his daughter Marguerite. By way of a discreet dedication, Marguerite had just undergone the last and decisive surgery that finally liberated her from the black ribbon, a distinctive sign that had previously been present in all her portraits. And perhaps you will find, that the Marguerite frontispiece is the only portrait and very moving portrait among the whole series of exquisite Antoinette studies. Thank you very much.