Matisse and the Sea

A new view of Henri Matisse’s important painting Bathers with a Turtle.

Matisse and the Sea examines the influence of the sea across modernist artist Henri Matisse’s career, which included painting in coastal locations on the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This book brings together artwork in a range of media (painting, sculptures, paper cutouts, drawings, prints, ceramics, and textiles), and has a particular focus on Matisse’s iconic coastal painting, Bathers with a Turtle, exploring the range of sources, from Cezanne to African sculpture, that informed this picture.

Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, is the lead author and editor of the exhibition catalog, with essays from the prominent Matisse scholars, John Klein, professor, Washington University at Saint Louis and Ellen McBreen, professor, Wheaton College. Paintings conservator Melissa Gardner provides a technical essay highlighting a new conservation analysis of Bathers with a Turtle. Matisse and the Sea offers a new approach to the understanding of the important painting, Bathers with a Turtle, exploring, for the first time, the seminal role of African sculpture in the evolution of the painting. The book reexamines the significant connection with Cezanne, and provides fascinating new information on the afterlife of the picture. Matisse and the Sea focuses on the Saint Louis Art Museum’s iconic painting, Bathers with a Turtle. The exhibition catalogue brings together related works by Matisse in a range of media (paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, prints, textiles, paper cutouts) and objects that influenced the picture, including African sculpture and painting by Cezanne. It also includes revealing new conservation analysis. The book examines two themes related to Bathers with a Turtle. First, the evolution of the picture, exploring Matisse’s appropriation of a range of sources as he sought to develop an experimental and novel visual language. The second examines the afterlife of the picture, looking at its impact on Matisse’s later imagery of bathers and the sea, as well as its collector and exhibition history in Germany and the USA.

• | Author: Simon Kelly
• | Publisher: Hirmer Verlag
• | Publication Date: Mar 15, 2024
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9783777442693
• | ISBN-10: 3777442690