Nasher Sculpture Center

Decorative Figure was modeled during Matisse's summer sojourn at the Mediterranean seaside village of Collioure in 1908. As with The Serf (1900-03) and Madeleine I (1901), he may have worked from a live model but took his pose from an earlier production, in this case, his 1907 painting La Coiffure (Mezzatesta, 1984, fig. 42). Similarly frontal and direct renditions of seated nudes are found in the small sculpture Seated Woman of 1904 and the well-known painting Carmelina of 1903. In transforming the relaxed pose and linear style of the nude in La Coiffure into an assertively three-dimensional, tactile composition, Matisse made certain key adjustments: the legs are swung around to form a more strictly organized diagonal continuum with the upper body; intersecting arabesques play against the geometry of the base and the vertical axis of the head, emphasizing the body's sensuous volumes; gaps are left between arms and torso to multiply the flow of outlines; and the support itself is given a simple blocky presence that works in concert with the assertive modeling of the anatomy. It has been stressed by various authors that the figure's large head, protruding breasts, and exaggerated buttocks reveal the influence of African sculpture, although absorbed into a style which, unlike Picasso's of the period, proffers a calm and pleasurable rather than aggressive emotion. It is possible that the archaizing face may derive from Etruscan art (Flam, 1984, p. 230; Mezzatesta, 1984, p. 73).

When first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1908 (no. 919) and at Matisse's 1913 one-man show at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris (no. 13), this work was called Femme assise and Figure assise et accoudée, respectively. It is not known precisely when or by whom the appellation Decorative Figure was first assigned, but it has remained the favored title for the sculpture and reflects the role of the arabesque in Matisse's theories on "decorative" art as well as the hedonistic appeal of the figure. John Elderfield points out that "the sensuous and voluptuous dominate Matisse's sculpture of this period, as they do his paintings, which reveal a preoccupation both with decorative figure compositions and, in still life, with the extreme arabesque" (Matisse in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, p. 61).

Matisse generally cast his sculptures in editions numbered 0 to 10, but the individual castings were often considerably separated in time, and the sequence of numbers is sometimes inconsistent. Two casts of Decorative Figure are numbered 2/10, the Nasher example and one in another Texas private collection (ex-Wilfred P. Cohen). The Nasher cast is traditionally though to have belonged to the Brummer Gallery, New York, by 1931, the year of an exhibition of Matisse sculptures at that gallery, but this information has not been confirmed. The second cast marked "no. 2" was made in 1952.