(Cateau-Cambresis 1869–1954 Nice)
Colombe, c. 1946, paper cut-out mounted on red colored paper with notice paper on the reverse Quand c’est y qu’on part à Grenade voir la danse du ... Tu peux toujours mettre cela à coté de ta colombe, 23.9 x 32.9 cm, framed

Certificate:
Georges Matisse, Archives Matisse, Issy-les-Moulineaux, 23 August 2020

Provenance:
Gift of the artist to André Rouveyre (1879–1962), Paris
Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 29 November 1989, lot 490
Private Collection, New York

Henri Matisse’s Colombe is the cutout of a white dove composed of two parts on a red background. The dove evinces several small holes suggesting that it was once attached to a wall and contemporary photographs of the artist’s studio and flat show the walls decorated with cutouts. The reason for Matisse’s devotion to cutouts lay in his advancing age and in illness-predicated limited mobility. Matisse began using the cutout technique when it became increasingly difficult for him to work with a brush and the older he became, the more he employed this medium to realise his artistic vision. Matisse himself called this way of working “painting with scissors”. He composed his pictures from thrown-together forms like a musician might and not coincidentally titled the book in 1944 in which he published his cutouts Jazz. Scissors, paper and drawing pins were the tools Henri Matisse used in the last years of his life. Characteristic of his works on paper are the simplicity and levity conveyed.