Odalisca con le braccia alzate

Matisse took an apartment on the place Charles-Félix in Nice in 1921, over the open-air flower market, and turned the rooms into a stage. Patterned hangings, a screen, a shutter half closed, and a model. Henriette Darricarrère was a local girl who had worked as an extra at the film studios in Nice, and she posed for him for about seven years. The odalisques came directly after the war years, when his painting in Paris had been severe and close to grey. This one is small, 45.9 by 38.2 centimetres, oil on canvas board. It is in Tokyo, in the collection Ishibashi Shojiro built with the fortune from Bridgestone tyres, opened to the public in 1952 and now the Artizon Museum.