Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

When Henri Matisse was asked by the publisher Albert Skira to create twenty-nine images for a limited-edition book of Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry, the idea was "to create an 'equivalent' not only to the typography of the page but to its poetry too." As both poet and artist shared an interest in the expressive possibilities of classical mythology, the match proved ideal.

This print illustrates a line from Mallarmé's poem: "When with the sun in your hair, and in the street | In the evening, you in laughter appeared to me | And I thought I saw the fairy with her cap of brightness." This "fairy" was in actuality Henri Matisse's young Russian assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya. Her long hair, like Medusa's, wraps her symmetrical, classical face in rhythmical, sinuous curls. She becomes at once both an angelic child and a siren. In Mallarmé's work, glowing blond hair is a symbol of love--a mixture of ecstasy and sadness. For Matisse, this vision of feminine beauty may have also recalled memories of his recent visit to Tahiti.