Portrait in a Blue Coat

Matisse painted this in Nice in December 1935. The sitter is Lydia Delectorskaya, born in Tomsk in Siberia, orphaned as a child, who came out of Russia by way of Harbin in Manchuria and reached France stateless at 18. Matisse took her on in 1932 as a studio assistant while he was working on the mural commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, then she became his wife's companion and nurse. In 1935 she was the only model he used. It was also the year of the large reclining nude he photographed at 22 stages while he repainted it over and over. The coat here is closer to violet than blue, whatever the title says. He showed the portrait at Paul Rosenberg's gallery in Paris in May 1936, five months after finishing it.