During his career, Henri Matisse returned repeatedly to paint his favorite model: his illegitimate daughter, Margerit.
In what is considered his most famous portrait, she is shown holding a black cat. In other paintings, she is reading, relaxing, or sleeping, often wearing a high-necked blouse, a bandana, or a scarf covering her tracheotomy scar.
Although her face is well-known, little is known about the artist's eldest child. Despite her frail health, Marguerite joined the French Resistance, was tortured by the Gestapo, faced deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, and remained a discreet and calming presence in Matisse's life until his death in November 1954, at the age of 84.
The exhibition opening in April at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris will bring together more than 110 works: paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and ceramics, depicting Marguerite, many of which are from private collections and have never before been exhibited to the public in France.
"We think we know everything about Matisse, but here we have a completely unknown painting of him for the general public," she said. Charlotte Barat-Mabil, one of the exhibition curators.
"And while Marguerite's face is known around the world thanks to Matisse's portraits, apart from art experts and historians, very few people know much about her."
Henri Matisse, the son of a wealthy grain merchant from northern France, was working as a court administrator in Paris when, at the age of 20, he was bedridden after an attack of appendicitis. To relieve his boredom, his mother bought him painting supplies, and he discovered in art what he called “a kind of paradise,” much to his father’s disappointment.
Marguerite was born in 1894 during Matisse's relationship with one of his models, Karolin Zoblo, while he was studying art in Paris. Unusually for the time, Matisse acknowledged the child after the couple separated. Four years later, when he married Ameli Noel Parer, brought Margerit to live with his new family, where she grew up with two half-brothers, Jean i Piero.
At the age of six, Marguerite contracted diphtheria and underwent an emergency tracheotomy. The damage to her larynx caused her pain and discomfort for the next 20 years, interrupting her education and confining her to her home, where she spent hours with her father in his studio.
Matisse's portraits from this period show Marguerite wearing a black ribbon around her neck or high-necked blouses to cover her scar. The most famous of these is Marguerite with a Black Cat, completed in 1910, which was considered bold and radical when exhibited in Berlin and New York. Matisse decided to keep it rather than sell it.
Matisse's portraits and drawings of his daughter proliferated during World War I and depict an elegant young woman, fashionably dressed and wearing elaborate hats. In 1920, at the age of 26, Marguerite underwent a final, painful operation to repair a scar on her neck, after which she was painted without accessories. Three years later, she married the writer and art critic Georges DutouilleAlthough she began her painting career and was involved in group exhibitions during the war, she stopped creating her own works in 1925 and devoted herself to working as Matisse's assistant and agent, carefully supervising the printing of his engravings, organizing exhibitions, cataloguing his works, and handling requests for them.
"As Matisse's daughter, she grew up surrounded by painting and it came naturally to her. However, being Matisse's daughter was not easy, even though she had a natural talent and a good sense of art, she gave up," said Barat-Mabil.
In addition to five of Marguerite's works, the exhibition will include excerpts from thousands of letters they exchanged while Matisse lived in Nice and his daughter in Paris.
"They wrote to each other almost daily, mostly about the banalities of everyday life, but through these letters we see another side of Matisse – a caring, concerned and attentive father. They are very moving," Barratt-Mabil added.
In 1935, after she divorced Dutui and was left alone in Paris with their son Klodom, Marguerite attempted to build a career as a fashion designer, with a collection sent to be shown in London. However, the attempt was not successful.
During World War II, Marguerite and her stepmother were active in the French Resistance. In 1945, Marguerite was betrayed to the Gestapo in Rennes, where she was arrested and tortured. After several months in prison, she was scheduled to be deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, but Allied bombing disrupted the train transporting the prisoners, allowing her to escape before reaching Germany.
Matisse's last portraits of Marguerite date from 1945 and reflect his concern for the dangers and suffering she endured during the war.
Marguerite Dutoit Matisse died in Paris in 1982, at the age of 87, while still cataloging her father's work.
"This exhibition is not only an opportunity to pay tribute and rediscover Matisse the artist, but it also allows us to see his more personal side. Here we see Matisse as a family man and father," said Barat-Mabil.
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