Thanarat Asvasirayothin Valuation Appraisal Report Appraisal Date: November 12, 2019 Word Count: Title: Olive Trees at Collioure Artist: Henri Matisse (French, Le Cateau-Cambrésis 1869–1954 Nice) Date: Summer 1906 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 17 1/2 x 21 3/4 in. (44.5 x 55.2 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 Accession Number: 1975.1.194 Appraisal Value: $ USD Purpose of Appraisal: Fair Market Value Description Artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Title Olive Trees at Collioure Country France Medium Oil on canvas Year 1906 Dimensions 17 1/2 x 21 3/4 in. (44.5 x 55.2 cm) Markings Signed lower left: "Henri Matisse" Detailed Description Painted in Collioure, a scenic town on the Mediterranean coast that drew many painters in the early years of the twentieth century, this is one of the earliest and most important paintings of Matisse’s Fauve period. Inspired by the works of his older contemporaries Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, who also lived in the south of France at this time, Matisse adopted the vibrant, unnatural colors favored by the Fauves. The artist found great inspiration in the sun- drenched landscape of Collioure, writing to a friend that it was full of “charming sites.” This painting was acquired by the collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein shortly after it was completed. Catalogue Raisonne The closest thing to a catalogue raisonne of the paintings is Mario Luzi and Massino Carra’s L’Opera di Matisse: Dalla rivolta Fauve all’intimismo 1904-28, which is by no means complete or fully accurate but still useful. Provenance Purchased by Leo Stein, Paris, autumn 1906; Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein, Paris; acquired from an undocumented source, Paris, by Robert Lehman, New York, May/June 1949. Exhibition History Paris 1908c, no. 894 (as Paysage aux oliviers); Paris 1910a, no. 43 (or 45; as Paysage de Collioure, 1906); New York - Minneapolis - San Francisco - Toronto 1952 - 53, no. 93 (as Landscape, Collioure, 1904-5); Chicago 1956; Paris 1957, no. 70 (erroneously titled Promenade dans les oliviers 1905); Cincinnati 1959, no. 175 (as Landscape, Collioure); New York-Baltimore-Ottawa-San Franscisco 1970-71 (as Olive Trees, 1905); New York 1973, no. 3; Zurich- Dusseldorf 1986, no. 62 (erroreously titled Promenade among the Olive Trees); Los Angeles-New York-London 1990-91 (dated 1905). https://books.google.com/books?id=75KozG4DODwC&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=Olive +Trees+at+Collioure+provenance&source=bl&ots=J5LHL9pXEV&sig=ACfU3U31eyue4- gS8wnG2uOYwzAr_Gq8rw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi759uR0frlAhULh- AKHUqjDu0Q6AEwFnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Olive%20Trees%20at%20Collioure %20provenance&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=6KzrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PR91&dq=mario+luzi+henri +matisse&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_7tip1_rlAhWxTN8KHQF NBAsQ6AEwAXoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=mario%20luzi%20henri%20matisse&f=false Comparable Work #1: Artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Title Oliviers à Collioure Country France Medium Oil and black ink on canvas Year Painted in 1905 Dimensions Height 18 in.; Width 21.8 in. / Height 45.7 cm.; Width 55.3 cm. Markings Signed ‘H. Matisse’ (lower center) Detailed Description Title Oliviers à Collioure Medium Oil and black ink on canvas Dimension Height 18 in.; Width 21.8 in. / Height 45.7 cm.; Width 55.3 cm. Auction/Auction Date Christie's London: Wednesday, June 20, 2018 [Lot 00029B] Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale Estimated (3,302,509 - 4,623,513 USD) Sold For 3,974,570 USD Premium http://www.artnet.com.ezproxy.sothebysinstitute.com/PDB/FAADSearch/ LotDetailView.aspx?Page=1&artType=FineArt&subTypeId=11 Comparable Work #1: Description Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work. ‘What I dream of is an art of expression [...] expression for me, is not the passion that bursts forth on a face or demonstrates itself in a violent movement. It exists throughout my whole painting.’ Henri Matisse (quoted in J.L. Ferrier, The Fauves: The Reign of Colour, Paris, 1992, p. 23). ‘The search for colour did not come to me from studying other paintings, but from the outside – that is to say from the light of nature’ Henri Matisse (quoted in P. Schneider, Matisse, London, 1984, p. 209). ‘In art, truth and reality begin when you no longer understand anything you do or know...’ Matisse (quoted in P. Schneider, Matisse, London, 1984, p. 210). Painted during one of the most crucial creative moments in Henri Matisse’s entire career, Oliviers à Collioure illustrates the highly experimental nature of the artist’s work during the seminal summer he spent in secluded seaside town of Collioure. It was here, surrounded by the luminous colours and rich fecundity of the untamed natural landscape of the southern coastline of France, that Matisse began to boldly push beyond the established boundaries of art and experiment with a more spontaneous, expressive means of painting. Focusing on the form of a lone woman as she wanders through a grove of olive trees, the scene is rendered in a flurry of vibrantly coloured brushstrokes, each touch of paint capturing the fervour and energy that Matisse felt before the landscape. The entire summer was devoted to investigating the visual potential of the pointillist language, with the artist exploring and playing with the central tenets of Neo-Impressionism in a series of experiments that would prove fundamental to the development of Fauvism. Indeed, as John Elderfield has explained, NeoImpressionism was ‘the foundation of Fauvism – but the foundation that Matisse dismantled in order to create Fauvism’ (J. Elderfield, Henri Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1992, p. 50). Collioure, with its dramatic play of light and vibrant colours, played a fundamental role in this period of experimentation, feeding Matisse’s imagination and inspiring him to embark upon this revolutionary new path. Matisse’s first experiences of the Mediterranean coast came in the summer of 1904, when he had spent an extended sojourn in SaintTropez, visiting the painter Paul Signac. That June had seen Matisse’s first oneman show open at the Ambroise Vollard gallery, featuring forty-five paintings and one drawing which encapsulated the full range of his oeuvre up to this point. While his work drew complements from the critic Roger Marx, the exhibition was not as commercially successful as the artist had hoped. Despondent and unsure of his next steps, Matisse departed Paris for the summer. Arriving in the South in mid-July with his wife and young son, Matisse felt the impact of his new surroundings immediately. A native of Northern France, he was bowled over by the bright light and bold colours of the sun drenched Midi, as well as the variety of sub-tropical flora which filled the rolling hills as they descended towards the sea. These new surroundings slowly began to shape and influence Matisse’s paintings, brightening his palette, introducing a new sense luminosity to his pigments, and reviving his interest in Neo-Impressionism. Although reluctant at first to submit his painting to the methodical, rigorous techniques of the pointillist style zealously espoused by Signac, by the end of the summer the artist had begun to construct his compositions using small dots of carefully layered pigment. The richly coloured canvas Le goûter (Le golfe de SaintTropez, 1904 (Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfalen, Düsseldorf), created during this summer sojourn and depicting the artist’s wife and son in front of the town’s iconic bay, clearly illustrates the beginnings of this shift in Matisse’s approach, which would ultimately lead to his renowned composition Luxe, calme et volupté, 1904 (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), painted on his return to Paris that autumn. Explaining the appeal of Neo-Impressionism at this stage in his career, Matisse later wrote: ‘The simplification of form to its fundamental geometric shapes, as interpreted by Seurat, was the great innovation of that day. This new technique made a great impression on me. Painting had at last been reduced to a scientific formula; it was the secession from the empiricism of the preceding eras’ (Matisse, quoted in J. Elderfield, Matisse in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, p. 36). The following summer, Matisse returned to the inspiring landscapes of the South of France in the hope of finding inspiration once again, settling in Collioure from May to September. The trip proved revelatory for Matisse, ushering in experiments in which he pushed the Neo-Impressionist style to its very limits, and began to investigate the expressive properties of independent colour. Describing the inherent appeal of Collioure, a local wine-grower Paul Soulier wrote: ‘One is struck above all by the bright light, and by colours so strong and so harmonious that they possess you like an enchantment’ (P. Soulier, quoted in H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Volume One: 1869 - 1908, London, 1998, p. 300). Indeed, it appears to have been these aspects of the picturesque hamlet on the Catalan coast which fascinated Matisse most upon his arrival. This secluded seaside town, framed by rolling hills on one side and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean on the other, had remained an isolated outpost until the arrival of the coastal railway in the late nineteenth century. Apart from Signac, who had stopped briefly in the town on his way to Saint-Tropez over a decade previously, Matisse was the first artist to base himself in Collioure, renting rooms at the Hôtel de la Gare by the station. Unused to visitors, the locals appear to have been suspicious of the fair-haired stranger when he first arrived. Undeterred, Matisse began to work in this vibrant environment, absorbing the hustle and bustle of the busy port, the play of life as it unfolded on the streets, and the rich exotic flora, from banana and date palms to figs, oranges and lemons, that filled the lush landscape.