?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
HENRI MATISSE Jeune Femme aux Poissons Rouges.
Pen and ink on the half-title page of Henri Matisse, Editions des Chroniques du Jour, circa 1929. 280x225 mm; 11x9 inches. Initialed in ink, lower right recto.
Georges Matisse has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Provenance: Margaret "Bibi" Dudensing, New York, acquired directly from the artist with an attestation of ownership by F. Valentine Dudensing in ink, verso; Perls Galleries, New York, with the label and a stock photograph with the gallery stamp and inventory numbers 6127 and P2560; acquired from the above by private collection, New York; thence by descent to current owner, New York.
F. Valentine and Margaret "Bibi" Dudensing founded and operated the Valentine Gallery in New York from 1926 to 1947. During the early years of business, Pierre Matisse worked as Dudensing's agent in Paris until the former opened up his own gallery in New York in 1930 (Matisse, along with Klaus Perls, became a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of America in 1968). The Valentine Gallery was held in high esteem and lauded by artists, writers, and leading collectors of the time, including Florine Stettheimer, Henry McBride, Albert C. Barnes, and Alfred H. Barr. In 1931, Dudensing assisted the Museum of Modern Art, New York in securing loans from American collectors for Henri Matisse's 1931 retrospective.
Matisse (1869-1954) used the subject of a woman contemplating a fish bowl in several of his works, including his 1921-22 oil on canvas, Jeune fille devant un aquarium in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, his 1921-23 oil on canvas, Woman before an Aquarium in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the series of ten etchings Matisse made in November 1929. According to the Barnes Foundation, Matisse's goldfish were a metaphor symbolic of one's perception versus reality.
