Matisse and the Joy of Drawing
Christopher Lloyd
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
12 April 2022
ISBN:
978-1-9163474-4-1
Dimensions:
194 pages: 279 x 215 mm
Illustrations:
152 colour and black-and-white images
An internationally recognised expert in the European tradition of draughtsmanship, Christopher Lloyd offers rare insights about the technical qualities of Matisse’s drawings. This book traces the evolution of Matisse’s large and varied body of drawings and works on paper—including graphic work, the celebrated cut-outs and the famous decoration of the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, France. The artist’s drawings are contextualized within his own biography and times, from vibrant early twentieth-century Paris to later periods in luxurious Nice. Lively prose and a wealth of reproductions illustrate Matisse’s versatility in different media and his innovative, expansive concept of drawing. Despite the variety of his output, the work always reflects the artist’s constant desire to express pure emotion in visual terms.
Since 2014, Christopher Lloyd has published four highly successful books on the drawings of modern artists. This book follows his most recent publication, Picasso and the Art of Drawing. With over 150 illustrations, including archival photographs of Matisse’s studio and the artist at work, this volume concisely covers Matisse’s entire graphic oeuvre.
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‘Matisse the master of colour also aimed life-long to make drawings “with a large variety of feeling and a minimum of means”. Lloyd unfolds the miracle of his brevity of line — in charcoal, ink, pencil, paint, gouache cut-outs: how so few marks convey such supple, powerful, defining images.’ – Jackie Wullschlager, Best Summer Books of 2002, Financial Times
Christopher Lloyd is an art historian and writer, who worked in the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford from 1968 to 1988. He was appointed Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures in the British Royal Collection in 1988 and retired from that post in 2005.