(via Large Reclining Nude (The Pink Nude), Henri Matisse)
Today I went for the first time to the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is perhaps more fantastic than you might expect a museum in Baltimore to be (it’s really fantastic). The collection includes an amazing selection of works purchased by Claribel and Etta Cone, Baltimore natives and important collectors in the first half of the twentieth century (and notably, close friends of Gertrude Stein). Of the paintings in the collection, this one struck me the most, not just because of its beauty, but because of the story behind its generation.
Matisse worked over a multitude of different versions of this particular painting, over several months, sending Etta Cone 22 photographs of the work in progress. Thus, when she traveled to Europe to see the final product, she was very engaged in the creative process, keen to see the final version and to buy it.
A masterful example not just of painting, but of marketing.
