MATISSE HENRI (1869-1954).

Lot 26
Go to lot
Estimation :
4000 - 5000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 5 008EUR
MATISSE HENRI (1869-1954).
L.A.S "Henri Matisse", Vence, November 12, 1944, addressed to [Henry de MONTHERLANT]. 6 pages in-8 (erasures). Letter about his only true love, painting. He is happy to know "that you work quietly in your bed. It is a place where one is always well - even alone"... He tells her about the donation to the Swiss Red Cross of a copy of Pasiphaé on Japon, "with a drawing on the frontispiece, everything to make money", and of other volumes, through Skira, for a charity sale... Then he comes to the fate of his wife and daughter, arrested by the Gestapo in April: "My wife, after 6 months in prison in Fresnes was released some time ago - she was not brutalized. My daughter has just returned from Belfort, where she was one of 500 liberations out of 15,000 that went further. She was tortured. Fortunately she will get out of it, the doctor assures her. Against all odds, I maintain that the Germans are indeed Krauts, filthy brutes"... He thanks Montherlant for the intervention he was ready to make with Mme Micheli [delegate in France of the Swiss Red Cross]: "it would probably not have been accepted because it came a little from you. You are, may I say, hated by them - didn't you write that... etc. in the preface to Les Lépreuses. There are generally only words that are frightening". As for him: "I am always solid at the post, but in a measured way - very measured, but daily. All my attention is focused on preparing for those 2 or 3 hours of work in the afternoon that I think about and go to as if it were a love appointment - love, it's true, because painting has been the only true love of my life. I have proved it well. I have some rough satisfactions. Thus, I have just sold a 50 cm painting to the American in Nice for 710000 fr. for the benefit of the victims of the War. Work gives me other more subtle satisfactions, perhaps less certain, with which some illusions are mixed - but that is the most excellent thing. You deny the things of this order to put in front of all LIVING with your flamingo in the wind [sketch of a phallus]. You will see the end of it, and you will be left with very little memory of it. I shake hands with you, apologizing for so easily upsetting the customs, by meddling in your affairs. Just be happy, you will see me happy.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue