Location

003 Special Exhibition Hall

Fun Fact

Matisse once wrote that he felt as though all the natural charm was lost from a bouquet of flowers picked from his garden when he arranged them.

Description

Henri Matisse, leader of the French Fauves (“Wild Beasts”), advocated the complete liberation of color from natural appearances and reducing formal elements to absolute essentials. “What I dream of,” he wrote, “is an art of balance, purity, and serenity.” In Tulips a vase of flowers floats mysteriously against fields of thinly applied turquoise, aqua, and lavender. While the colorful tulips express a joyful sentiment, the vase rests precariously on a planar shape, perhaps a tabletop. The uncertainty of the vase’s position as it extends over the edge, and whether the tabletop continues to the right through a plane of transparent color, together with the strange black rectangle in the background, inserts a contravening feeling of disquiet and visual tension into the time-honored genre of still-life painting.

Inscriptions

Inscription

Artist's signature: ‘Henri.Matisse’

Provenance

1914

Collection of the Artist

1914

(Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, France, April 4, 1914, acquired from the artist)

1914

(Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, France, June 5, 1914, sold to Fritz Gurlitt) ¹

possibly by 1930

(Galerie Thannhauser, Berlin Germany) ²

by 1931

(Galerien Mattiesen, Berlin, Germany sold to Karl Bett) ³

about 1985

Karl Bett, Berlin, Germany and Hampstead, London, sold to Marlborough Fine Art, London, and E.V. Thaw and Co., New York, NY ⁴

1996

(Sold at Christie's New York, NY, April 30, 1996, lot 52)

May 7, 2001

(Sold at Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, New York, NY, May 7, 2001, lot 36)

Private collection, New York, NY

Richard Feigen and Co., New York, NY

2001–2020

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art

2020–

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Provenance Footnotes

¹According to Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Michel Dauberville, Matisse: Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune (Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1995), vol. I, p. 533, cat. no. 141, ill.

²This painting was included in the exhibition “Henri Matisse,” at the Galerien Thannhauser, Berlin, in 1930, cat. no. 24. See also Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Marlborough Gallery, 1986), cat. no. 31.

³“Henri Matisse,” Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland, August 9 – September 15, 1931, cat. no. 43, noted this painting was in the Collection de Monsieur Karl Bett, Berlin.

⁴Provenance between 1930 and 1996 is according to Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Marlborough Gallery, 1986), cat. no. 31, and documentation supplied by Richard Feigen and Co. in the curatorial file.

Citations

Purrmann, Hans. Henri Matisse. Berlin, Germany: Galerien Thannhauser, 1930. Mentioned: p. 16, no. 24

Henri Matisse. Kunsthalle, Basel, 9. August-15 September 1931. Basel: Kunsthalle, 1931. Mentioned: P. 12, no. 43

Flam, Jack D. Matisse, the Man and His Art, 1869-1918. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Mentioned: P. 380; Reproduced: P. 384, fig. 381

Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries: 5 November-2 December 1986, Marlborough Gallery, Inc. New York, N.Y.: Marlborough Gallery, 1986. Mentioned and Reproduced: no. 31

Dauberville, Guy-Patrice, and Michel Dauberville. Matisse: Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune. Paris, France: Bernheim-Jeune, 1995. Reproduced: Vol. 1, P. 533, no. 141

“A Historic Gift. Longtime CMA supporters Joseph and Nancy Keithley give 114 works, the largest gift in more than 60 years.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 3 (Summer 2020): Cover, 6-9. Reproduced: P. 8; Mentioned: P. 7.

Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “Color, Sensation, and Memory: Themes in the Keithleys’ gift and promised gift.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 62, no. 3, 2022: 4-7. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 5.

Exhibition history

Henri Matisse. Galerien Thannhauser, Berlin, Germany (1930).

Henri Matisse. Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland (August 9–September 15, 1931).

Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY (November 5–December 2, 1986).

Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).