 Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I think, in a way, I'm representing Edda Cohn to a certain degree. Edda was so remarkably in tune with Matisse during these years from, say, 1920, 21, through the middle of the decade, particularly because I have this feeling that she was listening very carefully to what Matisse was telling her. She made so many wonderful choices during these particular years. I want to thank Eva Lanford, the volume and the team that worked on this book. I felt as if I was moving through Edda's mind, in a way, in seeing how many times Edda's choices, pictures like the yellow dress, interior with dog, how many of these works came into the collection and really underlined her knowledge and acceptance of what had been difficult works for other people. Well, actually, let me go back one. I added this phrase that came from the conversation that Matisse had with Terry Odd talking about how disappointed he was with the actual production of the Malermay book. Even though La Courière had worked on it very carefully and Marguerite kept a very close eye on the progress, still Matisse was disappointed. I think primarily because the actual drawn lines didn't look like they were drawn with pen or with pencil. They didn't have that sense of materiality. In spite of that, they Marguerite and Matisse made this decision that the Malermay maquette would find a wonderful home in Baltimore with the cones. Remember that there were overlapping trips between the visits to Edda Conan, her apartment, and the presence of Matisse up here. There was no actual contact. As far as I know, Edda never made any trips to the Barnes collection. It was completely, and Barnes never came to him, but Matisse was visiting both of them simultaneously. So he felt that the maquette, which he put together, I'll talk a little bit about later, is so revealing and so complete in its educational mission that it was really intended by Matisse to explain step by step everything that was important to him in the creation of this amazing maquette. Now, what I was particularly interested in as I've been looking through Matisse's drawings is to try to figure out if there are certain drawings which I would call more preparatory. Matisse was thoroughly involved with every aspect of drawing, as you may know. And the commitment to bringing together that maquette, which had first initially been a kind of sales technique for Skira, that he would be able to sell a version of the manuscript with all the drawings and all the refuse plates as part of his offering to a very special collector. But at some point, they decided that the most efficient thing to do, and actually the place where the maquette would really have the most serious educational achievement, would come if it was kept together and then went to Baltimore together with the other works from these same years that Eda was buying. I wanted to especially thank my former colleague Tom Primo, who is conservator at the Baltimore Museum, is now at the National Archives, for asking a lot of questions about the nature of Matisse's drawings, such as one might consider in this particular comparison. So I've selected one of the music lesson pictures that the Kohns bought in 1921 and asked myself, well, just exactly what could be called a preparatory drawing? Is this drawing that I've picked here have anything to do with these particular works? And I think what I would say is that when one looks at this drawing and then one following, these are clearly drawings of another kind of category that we don't usually see, rarely actually coming on the market in a way, I would say. But to see how Matisse is really using this drawing as a way of planning out the composition, where the decorated material certainly communicating the closeness between these two at their music lesson, I believe this is Marguerite, on a very familiar couch. And then this particular drawing, where there's absolutely no attention to the background at all, to locating them in space. But rather the emphasis in Matisse's drawings is on the, I think, communicating this intertwining of the two figures together, particularly with these dark graphite lines that create a kind of arabesque. But I don't think this was definitely a drawing that was made in the context of figuring out this particular picture, rather than achieving a specific, another purpose in terms of an independent drawing. One has to show the great pictures of the two sisters. Of course, Clarabel, who died in 1934, doesn't play. I mean, you see, Clarabel died. How could I forget this? Clarabel died in 1939. And this particular portrait is legendary, because Eda had ordered a single portrait to remember and to be published in a book on the Cone Collection. And then it took a long time. Matisse took a long time getting to the actual work. And Eda kept after him until he arrived with the surprise of a complete set of five drawings of Clarabel and then another six or seven of Eda, both of which they were totally not expecting. But it underlines this sense of appreciation that Eda had for these drawings made in cereal. Now, these certainly would not be in any way referred to as a preparatory drawing, because they really do move from one drawing to the next in a very definite way. This wonderful drawing of Lisette, a charcoal drawing from 1929, 1931, is probably the first of the drawings that kind of introduce Lisette as a model. So not in any way at this point necessarily part of the Yellow Dress campaign, but rather a drawing which is extraordinarily perceptive in terms of her personality, which you can read a lot about in Hilary Sperling. And sketching out the Yellow Dress with the ribbons, but it's this concentration on the face that one really thinks about. So again, not a drawing that I would in any way call preparatory, but one that really stands by in its own, in isolation. A recent gift from Barbara and Claude to the museum has brought together a suite of 14 drawings that were made that I would definitely call preparatory, exploratory drawings for the Yellow Dress. You'll remember that this picture started in 1929, and it's a bit unclear when the campaign actually was certainly either late 31 or maybe possibly even into 32. But let's take a look at these drawings that have come into a company. Tom Primo has taught me a lot about looking at the very precise details of drawing in terms of paper, the texture of the paper, how the graphite comes off the tool on the paper. And clearly, these drawings that were made of 14 were about learning something about Lisette's personality, learning something about very quickly almost what would be called unconscious or reflexive drawings, very flat. I mean, these graphite lines are right against the paper, very flat, very little indication at this moment of any sense of volume. Evelyn and I have spent some time looking at these drawings, and his point very well made that what Matisse was doing here was gradually turning the figure frontally so that it would, and you can see it in this one as well, this wonderful curved chair is a kind of holder in a way to keep the figure sort of draped on these figures. So you do get this precise sense of volume, but still the face really isn't forward sort of turning to the left. Another one of the yellow dress drawings, which is particularly wonderful because of the degree of concentration on her face looking absolutely straightforward. Some of the personality that we see saw in that early black chalk drawing. Another one of the drawings for the yellow dress where you see Lisette in the familiar hat. Now, this time we've made quite a bit of progress in terms of the model turning frontally, which as you know from looking back at the painting is a key factor to the way that the figure is changing in the course of Matisse's work on the painting. Now, this drawing is particularly problematic, but I think it brings a very important change to the sequence of drawings. What we've been looking at previously have been these graphite line drawings, which are very, very much straightforward in terms of really getting something to learning about the model, exploring her personality, looking at her expression, seeing the way what she can teach Matisse in showing her within the chair. But when we get to this, we've come upon a different kind of graphite line, a thicker, heavier, softer line against the whiteness of the paper. Pretty much all the details that we see in the picture are there. But what's so extraordinary is how the sense of scale is so different. She looks like she, Lisette looks like she's just absolutely overwhelmed by the exterior decoration and has none of the monumentality that we'll eventually see in the painting. I believe it feels to me that what's beginning to happen in these drawings where Matisse has added shading is that he's beginning to look at this, the figure volumetrically, and particularly using the chair in the background as a way to kind of structure the composition, bringing her more vertical. And it seems, in fact, what I would say is very painterly the application of shading. It even reminds me a little bit of Cezanne, the way these lines are suggested like that and then given some volume by these narrowly spaced lines. Another drawing of the, what I would call this, Group B, the second drawings that, again, show Matisse beginning to add these volumetric. It seems as if, I mean, Matisse knew how to do everything when it came to drawing. I mean, there was, and he took on these challenges. But he knew what he needed to explore, what he needed to record in terms of this series of drawings. These kinds of drawings are, as I said, not that common on the market. And when you can link them together, it's exciting to see. Another drawing that shows us, again, a remarkable change we're getting ever closer to the picture. First of all, with the exception of that slight mean of the head, we're definitely approaching a vertical composition. And we, Tom figured out that all these little dots down here are the result of erasure over time, just kind of discoloring. But I think the fact that we can know so clearly that there is this very strong involvement with erasure and all these little bits have been left from that procedure, it, again, reminds us or tells us that we've moved into a different category of drawing, which is more about, yes, still concerned about the verticality, but more working on the volumetric aspects of her figure. And these little bits of erasure tell us that there's an awful lot of erasing going on as that modeling takes place, which seems to be a sensibility, an objective which is very close to painting, and very much unlike the contour drawings we saw previously. So again, going back to the actual painting, I think particularly in here when one sorts out the lights and the darks and the highlighted areas, they actually correspond very closely to what we see in those later preparatory drawings. Another picture here where one looks up close at some of the areas of dark and light, which, again, follow very closely on the drawings that we see for the yellow dress at this stage. The drawing that is the very closest to the painting is this one here, and we could number it the last in the group of group B drawings, where it's certainly the closest in every way, whether it's the position of the hands. He's still using elements of the chair to create, to sort of form the shape of her lower figure. The hands, as I said, are very similar. The head is in no way sort of turning from right to left. It's really less now about personality and instead a really strong communication of the form of the figure. Now there are a couple of drawings that are somewhat odd and hard to explain. This is a pen and ink drawing. So made obviously for the elder dress, so 29, 31 in that pair, probably a later drawing. It's very much out of the sequence of the drawings that we've seen before. It sort of looks mysterious what the objective of this drawing is. I have the feeling, especially knowing a story about the combs. Edda came to Nice to see the yellow dress for the first time. And she became really set on acquiring it. And Matisse did this very lovely thing. He created a reenactment really of the painting in the studio by bringing Lisette in, dressing her up in the yellow dress. And in a way sort of creating a souvenir after the process is gone. We don't know when this particular drawing is dated. But it seems that the use of pen and ink in the articulation of the figure is very much different than the other drawings we've seen. So I think more in the presentation realm rather than the preparatory realm. Again, these may seem like Picciune considerations of drawings, curators. But it's very important, especially in working with an artist who's so motivated and in tune with every aspect that can be achieved in thinking through an object like this. It's very challenging but worthwhile to try to get a picture of it. Eve Land talks in the book about the importance that we eventually will get to having more x-rays and more a close look of painting construction. We've actually done very little study of our Matisse paintings to this point. But in terms of really peeling back the layers of meaning that we can find from doing that like the great exhibition in Chicago did. But here it's that same sensibility of trying to find a sense of what is happening. This is a wonderful photograph of Lisette dressed up in that amazing hat and this wonderfully yellow dress. This probably was, I believe this to be, have been probably the event that Matisse staged for Ada when she came actually down to see the picture for the first time in Nice and actually make the purchase. This same photograph is often paired with another one that shows probably the last stage of work on the painting but there's really very little to see there that helps us out to know in what order these things are occurring. I also wanted to call attention to this funny little etching that I hadn't ever seen before which shows Lisette here looking at the mirror. This is a very contrasting kind of line. It almost feels in a way like a graphite drawing but actually it's etched on with a fairly heavy push on the tool as he's drawing it. It's so whimsical in a way and personal that it again feels like something that could have come later, some kind of done in a smaller edition, something more private and personal as again a kind of souvenir of the end of what was a long campaign for this work. Now the great Malermay maquette. I've chosen to portray myself in here because I want to emphasize the fact that viewing the maquette is such an extraordinarily difficult thing to do properly. It really needs to be, this is actually how it came in these leather boxes with gold tool. Then I credit Marguerite with doing all of this arrangement. In this remarkable maquette, we are taken through the book one plate after another where Matisse shows every possibility that he's thinking about not only in making his choices but also offering commentary in the way of refused plates as to which things are not working or need to go in another direction. I look at the maquette in a way as a performative thing where you can imagine Matisse in back of you with commentary about this and that. But actually it's very self-explanatory. For instance, as one works from these early drawings, which are in fact tracings of other drawings and then moves forward to where he finally wants to get stage after stage refused plate after refused plate to get everything just exactly right in terms of the way the figure on the left sort of moves through the sheet, the attentiveness to the image and the text, everything, the choice of the red A, everything about it is laid out in such a personal and remarkable way that it really deserves the kind of notoriety. I wish that I could take each of you through a tour of the maquette plate by plate because that really was the most fun for me. But it's also the most accurate way to really show what's going on. For the plate apparition, Matisse worked very carefully through a number of inspirations going back to the great plume cat drawing from 1919, which is in the Cone Collection. But then by doing tracing, so he would have drawn the work on the left first and then by doing a tracing of it, he's able to do the reductive way that his eye is moving in terms of creating the simple figure, but still with all the flow and sensibility that one comes in the earlier one. Or this wonderful sequence of Matisse sketching swans. This is a work which is in the Pierre Matisse Foundation in New York, which we think is actually a kind of mock-up, which is something that was very unusual among these books. The paper looks familiar in some ways in terms of lining up with some of the papers we've seen other graphite drawings on. But clearly what could be a kind of introductory sketch, and then on the left, again, all very carefully numbered. Matisse would say what comes first with the Roman numerals, also with the blind stamp of the cat to make sure that nothing was confused. You can see how these swans are beginning to take visual shape as they are arranged on the page. And then the extraordinary transformation to one of the later swans, where you see how it's completely filled the page and is moving out in every direction. And then the final swan that we see carefully placed in relation to the text. I think my favorite of the drawings in the maquette is this one, Chevalier, where, again, this drawing is traced from the original drawing so that it begins to open up and flow, but is absolutely centered in the way in which these dark graphite lines picking up against the laid paper are drawn. I thought I could probably skip some of these, but it is important that Matisse continued to send at, of course, the photographs of the pink nude, which she was going to acquire. But a number of these amazing charcoal drawings, which eventually lead into the seated pink nude, and what Matisse's aim in was doing this, I don't think that he was campaigning necessarily for her to, say, purchase this work to go with the pink nude. I wish she had. That would have been extraordinary to have them together. But I think that he really understood her interest, particularly in this serial development of images. Also, there was this acquisition made of the early version of the large lacquering nude with the wonderful checked fabric that you see on the painting. Now, obviously, I wouldn't call this a preparatory drawing based on its distance from the painting by any means, but certainly it stands alone as an extraordinary example of the way that that figure is modeled and it's amazing to think of its evolution into the flattened figures that we're familiar with. Another challenge is a work like this called Blue Eyes. It was always thought that this was a drawing for Blue Eyes, but when in fact the drawing comes after the painting. You can certainly see in this the attentiveness to shading and the power and how this design needed more space. We added a sheet so that it could extend further, really taking over the wholeness of the sheet. Okay, and then I just wanted to bring this little announcement and surprise to us about this very strange little ceramic work that arrived with us only in the past month. This is actually a work that Max Weber owned and had actually purchased from Matisse when he was a student of Matisse. So it lived in Max Weber's studio for a long time and when Joy Weber died recently, this marvelous, although I think somewhat humorous, take on the blue nude has come our way. So I think that's the story of those works and I hope that what can be achieved is that we can look more deliberately at the drawings to try to figure out at every stage what they tell us about the evolution of Matisse's scene. Thank you.