Henri Matisse (1869-1954) lived during an ascendant period of book publishing in France. It was the height of achievement in letterpress printing and in printed editions of books that combined poetry, literature, and art as a collaborative expression.

During his lifetime, Matisse was engaged in creating art, typographic and layout design, and hand lettering for nearly fifty book illustration projects. A perfectionist and a seeker of intense refinement in his art, he became involved in every aspect of bringing a book together; in addition to collaborating with authors on the images, he also engaged with publishers in the selection of papers, inks, printing methods—at times, taking on those tasks in advance of discussions with publishers.

Matisse’s world of book art is presented in the exhibition Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts, which opens tomorrow at the Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibition covers his designs and artwork for books he worked on between 1912 and his death in 1954.

On his first independent artist’s book project, begun in 1931, Matisse was fortunate to have become involved with Albert Skira at the beginning of the legendary publisher's career. According to curator John Bidwell, Skira offered Matisse a princely sum—and complete artistic control—to create the illustrations for Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poésies; to take his time (“it would be good to have the illustrations in about three years”) and to express his ideas about book arts (“just do what you want; I’ll pay the bills”). 

Several of Matisse’s preliminary studies for illustrations and typography for Poésies are on view, in addition to cover designs and the book itself. When working on a book project, Matisse would spend ceaseless hours exploring, designing, and refining his ideas for the work. For this project, he created studies for many of what would become the final illustrations by drawing directly on press proofs of the texts. It was the unity of word and image that obsessed Matisse.

Numerous studies for Poésies demonstrate his search for perfection; and a photograph of his face-to-face encounter with a swan, while drawing in his sketchbook, on a rowboat, in the Bois de Boulogne (right), points to the intensity of his involvement in this endeavor. His final art for "The Swan" became what can be considered the signature image of Mallarmé’s Poésies.

The exhibition shows, in depth, the extent to which Matisse immersed himself in the art of the book. Once, when commissioned to do a frontispiece and a few illustrations for a book of poetry—a common type of illustration assignment at the time—he became so involved in seeking to meld the artistic struggle and the poetic aspiration that he finally submitted over a hundred drawings. This became a challenge for the publisher, who eventually modified his plans for the edition.

The exhibition demonstrates the variety of printmaking processes that absorbed Matisse. After creating etchings for Poésies, he then turned the tables, making linocuts that yielded white lines on black backgrounds for Henry de Montherlant’s play, Pasiphaé (1932). The solid black, nearly full-page backgrounds of his images, yielded a presence unlike anything he had done so far as an illustrator. The exhibition also expands upon the depth of Matisse’s interest in literature, from contemporary avant-garde poetry to the classics, including The Letters of a Portugese Nun.

At the end of his life, Matisse was at the height of his powers to create an absolute unity of word and image. The next feature on Matisse and the Book Arts, in DART, will explore his historic creation of Jazz, and the final covers he created for Verve.

Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts opens tomorrow at the Morgan Library & Museum, where it will be on view through January 18, 2016. Information.

Top: Henri Matisse (1869–1954), Circus, pochoir, plate II in Jazz (1947). Courtesy of Frances and Michael Baylson © 2015 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2015.
Above right: Pierre Matisse (1900–1989). Photograph of Henri Matisse in the Bois de Boulogne, ca. 1931–32. The Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, 1997.

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