Marguerite che legge

The girl reading is Marguerite, Matisse's daughter, 12 years old here. The black ribbon at her throat is not just fashion. As a small child she had an emergency tracheotomy during a bout of diphtheria, and she wore a band around her neck for the rest of her life to cover the scar. Her father painted her constantly, and that dark ribbon turns up again and again in his work. He showed this canvas at the Salon d'Automne of 1906, a year after he and his friends had been mocked there as fauves, the wild beasts, for their raw color. This time the color is quieter. It was bought by Marcel Sembat, a socialist politician who became one of Matisse's earliest serious collectors.