Portrait of Georges Besson with Glasses

In December 1917 the war was in its fourth winter, and George Besson, an art critic excused from the army on health grounds, was spending time in Marseille with his friend the painter Albert Marquet. Matisse was in the city that month. On the 18th of December Besson sat for him at the Hôtel Beauvau on the harbour, just once, and this portrait is what came out of that single session. The speed shows. The grey hair is a few loaded strokes, the round spectacles are drawn in dark lines, and in places the paint barely covers the ground. On the back Matisse wrote a dedication to Besson as a souvenir of Marseille. The following year he painted the critic again, without the glasses, and that second version took 14 sittings.