Tempera on paper, painting. 9,3 x 12 in. (23,7 x 30,2 cm). Henri Matisse (1869-1954, French). It is being sold in the manner or style of the artist. Depicts a female portrait in the interior.

Henri Matisse was one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century. Matisse’s use of unmodulated color, inventive figuration, and decorative patterns helped redefine many of the formal tenets of painting. He took to art relatively late in life after initially pursuing law. First studying painting under Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he quickly adopted the Pointillist ideas espoused by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. With Pointillism as a point of departure, Matisse, along with Albert Marquet and André Derain, developed a radical method of using pure color to express light in what became known as Fauvism. In the decades that followed, the artist spent much of his time in the South of France, painting models dressed as odalisques and the ocean views he saw from his hotel room.