Artist Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Title Dancing Nymph
Plate Number Plate 1, page 8
Series Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé
Date 1930–1931, published 1932
Medium Etching on paper
Dimensions Image: 13 x 9 7/8 in. (33 x 25.1 cm)
Sheet: 13 x 9 7/8 in. (33 x 25.1 cm)
Credit Line Collection of Diether Thimme, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 98.391
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.
Henri Matisse's mural "The Dance" for the Barnes Foundation, as well his illustrations for this publication of Mallarmé's poetry (created during the same period), share similar themes: dance and scenes of myths and fauns from mythology. They also possess a dreamlike, airy quality, which Matisse described as a more "Dionysiac" interpretation than his earlier imagery. Rendered with deceptively simple lines, these images were often drawn from memory. Matisse recalled: "The unconscious enrichment of the artist is accomplished by all he sees and translates pictorially without thinking about it. An acacia on Vésubie, its movement, its svelte grace, led me perhaps to conceive the body of a dancing woman."
