Cultural Resistance in Henri Matisse's Poèmes De Charles D

Cultural Resistance in Henri Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans

Dr Rodney Swan

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published in Visual Resources, publisher Taylor and Francis, online publication date 17 September 2018. The print publication date is pending. The final version of record is available on line from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01973762.2018.1507475

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Cultural Resistance in Henri Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans Rodney Swan

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) adopted medievalism, a motif of cultural resistance in Occupied France, as a symbol of national unity through his appropriation of the fifteenth century poems of Charles de Valois, duc d'Orléans (1394–1465). Matisse saw parallels between the plight of the medieval poet, held captive in England, and his own circumstances in France during the Second World War. Begun in 1942, while recovering from his near-death illness, aided by his friend, André Rouveyre (1879–1962), encouraged by the fugitive poet Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Matisse introduced covert symbols and coded messages of hope and rebirth into his book to highlight his nations heritage as he silently participated in the cultural battle that was being fought in France. This paper analyses the aesthetic evolution of his wartime illustrated book Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans (1950), and examines his choice of poems, the handwritten text, his decorative illuminations, the images, d’Orléans portrait and the frontispiece within the context of the disruption to the French nation and his own personal circumstance.

Keywords: Henri Matisse (1869–1954); Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465); André Rouveyre (1879- 1962); Livre d’artiste; Cultural Resistance; Tériade (Stratis Eleftheriades, 1897–1983).

Strategies and Actions of Cultural Resistance

Turbulent political and personal winds battered the elderly Henri Matisse (1869–1954) during the German Occupation of France of 1940–1944. As German troops rapidly advanced towards Paris, Matisse, who had been declared a degenerate artist by Adolph Hitler (1889–1945) in July 1937, fled the capital for the safety of Nice.1 He was dismayed by the defeat of France and horrified by the ongoing atrocities.2 Whilst his assistant Lydia Delectorskaya (1910–1998) was questioned by the Vichy authorities because of her Russian origin, he was aware that his estranged wife Amélie Parayre (1872–1958), daughter Marguerite (1895–1982) and son Jean (1899–1976) worked in the French resistance and held grave fears for their safety.3 In addition, his youngest son Pierre (1900–1989), a successful art dealer in New York, was exhibiting works by the surrealist artists who had fled France, artists also deemed to be degenerate by the Germans. Matisse was devastated when his beloved grandson, Claude Duthuit (1931–2011), was taken to the United States for safety, with the possibility that he may never see the child again. Moreover, Amélie had recently issued him with a legal Deed of Separation demanding half of all his possessions. Overlaying this was his near-death experience after two risky operations just after his flight from Paris, and his consequent frail health left him incapacitated. It was in this difficult period that Matisse commenced his illustrated book Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, which this article identifies as an act of cultural resistance. Surprisingly, this livre d’artiste has Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 3 not received the scholarly analysis of Matisse’s other illustrated books and so this paper adds to the evaluation of Matisse’s works, particularly those he created during the Second World War.4 Matisse was not known as an overtly political artist and has been subject of some criticism for not openly condemning the Vichy regime. Art historian Michèle Cone claimed that “there is the possibility that Matisse, unlike his wife and his daughter, both active in the French Resistance, sided with the nationalism of the Vichy Regime.”5 Cone based this assessment, in part, on a 1924 interview to a Danish critic where Matisse is reported to have said that he did not consider it desirable for so many foreign artists to arrive in Paris. Biographer Hilary Spurling (1940) strongly rejects Cone's view stating that it is unsubstantiated, that there is no documentary evidence supporting it and asserts that Cone seems to be responsible for the widespread assumption that Matisse supported Vichy.6 In addition, artist Françoise Gilot (1921) stated that Matisse’s sympathies did not lie with the Vichy regime and that it was only his illness and age that prevented him from taking an active role in opposition.7 In 1972, French poet and intellectual Louis Aragon (1897–1982) had repeatedly asserted Matisse’s anti-Vichy stance, including an insightful commentary on the anti-Occupation symbolism of Matisse’s cut-out (découpage) image, The Fall of Icarus. More recently, art historian Jack Flam published a reading of many of the images in Jazz as anti-War representation. Yet, Cone make no reference to Gilot, Aragon and Flam. Also, at issue was Matisse’s association with the collaborationist Henri Montherlant (1895-1972), author of Pasiphaé, and Martin Fabiani, publisher of two of the artists wartime illustrated books, Dessins: Thèmes et Variations and Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois). Fabiani, close to the Germans and widely regarded as a collaborator, was able to secure paper, ink and other materials and thus continue to publish. Fabiani attained greater visibility when he continued with some of Ambroise Vollard’s (1866–1939) unfinished illustrated books after Vollard’s untimely death in 1939, just before France declared war on Germany. Fabiani had also during the Occupation, on 26 May 1942, published Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) livre d’artiste Picasso: Eaux-Fortes Originales Pour des Textes de Buffon, a work that Vollard originally commissioned.8 Picasso, however, did not suffer any reputational damage because of this association. In fact, Fabiani was the perfect foil and using his services even offered some degree of protection as the publisher. Matisse also did not seem to be perturbed by Fabiani’s or Montherlant’s political stance. Close personal and working relationships between friends and colleagues with opposing political views was not unusual during the Occupation. Riding refers to the friendship between the fascist editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893–1945), a known collaborator, and anti-fascist campaigner and intellectual André Malraux (1901–1976), citing that in 1943 Drieu La Rochelle even became godfather to one of Malraux’s children. Likewise, the resistance leader and writer Jean Paulhan (1884–1968) remained close friends with the collaborationist writer Marcel Jouhandeau (1888–1979) even though Jouhandeau’s wife denounced Paulhan to the German Wehrmacht’s military police. Another example is Drieu La

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Rochelle’s intervention with his German friends to seek the release of Paulhan who had been arrested by the German police.9 The Occupation of France included a cultural conflict of ideology and propaganda: the invading Germans attempted to supplant centuries of French cultural and historical practices and traditions, and with this cultural battle came the cultural resistance. Many scholars have tried to explain the dilemma of using the term “resistance” and at the time it was, “a territory without maps and sometimes developed differently from what the first pioneers had expected.”10 For instance, the resistance has been postulated as comprising two different but overlapping components, “active resistance” and “passive resistance”.11 Active resistance relates to primarily to the military aspects of resistance and could include actions such as physical combat, reconnaissance, sabotage, forging documents, hiding hostages, and blowing up bridges and railway lines. In contrast passive resistance is of a non-military nature which could vary from listening to illicit broadcasts on the BBC, wearing black for mourning, wearing the colours of the French flag, drawing the Croix de Lorraine and “V” for victory on walls, or even whistling patriotic music.12 By its nature cultural resistance is a form of passive resistance. The strategies and actions of cultural resistance utilised by the French during the German Occupation fall into a wide spectrum. These included attempts to preserve French culture, to propagate confidence, to memorialise the atrocities taking place and, importantly, the return to a framework of national unity that tolerated diversity of thought.13. The notion of the artist who works alone to create clandestine works of protest and national unity raises the idea of individualism and the cultural resistance. This form of resistance was neither organised nor followed a single or identifiable protocol, rather, because of its individuality, there were different expressions of resistance—each with its own myriad of complexities—and hence there was no single language of individual cultural resistance. Thus, artists deployed a wide variety of actions, ranging from the very basic form of resistance inherent in continuing to live and work in France to the refusal to work or to the use of understood codes of transgression.14 Their weapons included the printed word, the image, dance, music and film, and they used newspapers, books, radio, cinema and mass meetings.15 Some scholars took the notion of cultural resistance even further and argued that it is a state of mind, where if one has the will to resist even though the means is not available, then the mere determination to resist itself constitutes an act of resistance.16 It is therefore necessary to include as resistance literature those works that were produced during the war, remained unseen, but were published after it.17 This is an important issue as it applies to Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. Consequently, it is argued in this paper that Matisse’s livre d’artiste Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, created in large part during the Occupation, is a work imbued with cultural patriotism, a work that focuses on propagating French national unity and an instrument of cultural resistance. In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans Matisse cleverly adopted a motif acceptable to Vichy, that of medievalism, and in doing so he highlighted one of the nation’s cultural icons, Charles d’Orléans. Matisse presented an impression of normalcy, while in the confines of his studio he Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 5 embedded within the pages of his livre d’artiste a series of covert images and symbols of unity and hope for an eventual liberation. Although the book was published in 1950, long after the Occupation ended, it was created during the Occupation, and its later publication illustrated Matisse’s intent at emphasizing the nation’s cultural longevity. As he began his long recovery from his illness Matisse focused on his illustrated books, doing very little painting. He worked at an extraordinary pace, starting new artist’s books before he completed those he had already commenced. French art historian Laurence Bertrand Dorléac (1957) asserts that work was his survival mechanism and through it he could transcend the difficulties around him.18 He entered a new creative phase, experimenting with new illustrative techniques and searching for new forms of expression. He innovated with colored crayons for Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. He commenced his illustrative studies for Montherlant’s Pasiphaé on 2 September 1941 exploring the stark black background of lino-cuts.19 On June 10 that year he was approached by the Greek born publisher Tériade (Stratis Eleftheriades 1897– 1983), on a new initiative that many years later gave rise to his artist's book, Jazz (1947), in which he created his vibrant images using his emerging découpage technique. He also agreed to work with Swiss born publisher Albert Skira (1904–1973) on a new semi-autobiographical project in early April 1941, which after a flurry of misplaced activity the artist cancelled without warning.20 Later that year he began to contemplate his images for Pierre de Ronsard’s (1524– 1585) Florilège des Amours (1948), an artist's book he created as compensation to Skira for the earlier cancelled project. Through a new-found friendship with Aragon, Matisse contributed images to a magazine, Poésie 42, No 1 (1942), edited by the resistance supporter, writer Pierre Seghers (1906–1987). Aragon, a frequent contributor to the journal and a known member of the communist party, whose anti-Fascist writings had raised the ire of the Germans, had to constantly move around to avoid being arrested.21 Flushed by the success of the journal, Matisse made further contributions to a later edition, Poésie 42, No 5. Through his contribution to Poésie 42, Matisse was associating himself with other resistance supporting writers like Robert Desnos (1900–1945), Paul Eluard (1895–1952) and Francis Ponge (1899–1988), who also wrote for the same editions of the journal. Matisse and Aragon also cooperated on a wartime illustrated book, Dessins: Thèmes et Variations (1943), a work of barely disguised defiance in which Aragon’s preface, Matisse-en- France, praised the artist for his bravery in remaining in France and where Matisse’s images proclaimed his continuing aesthetic proclivity. Further cementing their relationship, Matisse also contributed a portrait of Aragon as frontispiece for a book, Brocéliande (1942), in which Aragon invokes a medieval legend of a forest in which he portrays, in coded text, the difficult situation facing the French. Medievalism became a cultural devise used by artists and writers on both sides of the cultural battle. In the lead-up to the Occupation, several highly publicized exhibitions on the medieval manuscript sought to provide an increasing appreciation of the genre and an understanding of its significance as a cultural signpost of French aesthetic leadership in the

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Middle Ages. Two exhibitions stand out because of the numbers and diversity of the manuscripts on display: one was the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s renowned 1937 exhibition Les plus beaux manuscrits français du VIIIe au XVIe siècle.22 The second exhibition, called Trois cents chefs-d’œuvre en facsimilé: manuscrits, enluminures, incunables, livres précieux, estampes, dessins, cartes, portulans, médailles et antiques, also organised by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, was the 1940 spring exhibition, just before the German Occupation.23 The Vichy regime identified with the ideals that medievalism portrayed and actively attempted to appropriate medievalism to its cause, using it to authenticate its campaign of propaganda for the purity of a rural and simple life.24 Because of its association with the traditionalist ideals that medievalism represented to the Vichy regime, Pétain personally expressed his admiration for publications that highlighted this period in French history.25 Yet it is precisely because medievalism was an acceptable motif to Vichy and its collaborators that Aragon, and his compatriot’s such as Paul Claudel (1868–1955), Paul Eluard (1895–1952), Pierre Seghers (1906-1987) and Paul Valéry (1871–1945), were able to exploit the medievalist syntax, and use medievalism as a symbol recognizable to the cultural resistance. Medieval literature thus joined with other modern poetic expressions to rally the French and to propagate the idea of liberation.26 Art historian Jennifer Brown confirms that medievalism became a coded symbol of cultural resistance, citing Aragon’s poetry as an example:

The Middle Ages provided a national mythology that was ripe for political exploitation: a vision of a medieval France broken and divided by war and language but reunited by poetry. It also provided the model for a secret code that enabled Aragon to publish his contraband poetry legitimately while also subverting the censors.27

Also, propagating medievalism, Matisse’s good friend Rouveyre drew his attention, in a letter, December 22, 1941, to the poetry of Charles d’Orléans, one of France’s foremost medieval poets, comparing him with the fifteenth century poets Pierre Ronsard and François Villon (1431– 1463).28 This was no coincidence as at the time Matisse and Rouveyre were corresponding on the artists proposed illustrations of another book of ancient poetry, Pierre de Ronsard’s Florilège des Amours. But Matisse, busy with other projects and again incapacitated by a serious relapse in his health did not pursue this suggestion. Later that year, September 1942, slowly recovering from his relapse and still bedridden, knowing of the significance of the medievalist metaphor to the cultural resistance, Matisse sought to illustrate a book on medieval French poetry. Recalling Rouveyre’s letter of nine months earlier he asked his friend to send him a book of d’Orléans’s poetry.29 After his initial review, Matisse rejected d’Orléans’s poems believing there was insufficient material for an artist's book and as an alternative asked Rouveyre for a more comprehensive book of poems, suggesting Champion’s publication of The French Classics of the Middle Ages (Les classiques Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 7

Français du moyen âge) adding that “I fear that Charles d’Orléans won't be enough for me, I mean, that I won't find enough, I am ashamed to admit, to do my book.” 30 Notwithstanding his initial rejection of d’Orléans’s, it appears that Matisse returned to the poetry and not only became attracted to it but also began to empathize with the poet’s plight, telling Rouveyre; “I share the greatest intimacy with Charles d'Orléans, whom I have close to hand. I continue to find new satisfaction in it … I see myself reading it in the early morning every day as, on leaping from bed, one fills one's lungs with fresh air.”31 The French considered Charles de Valois, duc d’Orléans to be one of the landmark medieval poets of fifteenth-century France.32 Born in Paris in 1394, the nephew of King Charles VI (1368–1422) and stepfather of King Louis XII (1462–1515), d’Orléans fought in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and was wounded and taken prisoner by the British and held captive for twenty-five years in England, writing much of his poetry during his captivity.33 A pivotal figure in the chain of French poetic tradition, d’Orléans wrote poems about identity, love and confronting death. Released by the English in 1440 he returned to France and ensured that his poetry was copied out and preserved.34 Matisse choice of d’Orléans poetry was significant for another reason, there were parallels between the difficult socio-political conditions during d’Orléans time, when the French were at war with the English, and the present plight of the French under siege by the Nazis. At that ancient period in French history, encompassing the years of d’Orléans life, Paris, just as in the years leading up to the Occupation, was the center of the art world. Artists from all over Europe, came to the thriving capital.35 It was also a difficult period for France, for its people suffered considerable turmoil and conflict that eventually destroyed its ascendancy in Europe. Externally France endured the Hundred Years’ War with England, and internally it suffered from the Black Death, a plague that had devastating consequences. France faced the ignominy of defeat at the hands of the English at the Battle of Agincourt. Yet the France of the Middle Ages, demonstrating the resilience of its people, fought back to survive this turmoil and regain its cultural leadership.

Poetic Messages

It was while Matisse was considering d’Orléans’s poetry and making progress on Florilège des Amours de Ronsard, when later that year, on November 8, 1942, the Allies invaded French North Africa. In retaliation the German forces occupied the rest of France and the Italians invaded Nice, where Matisse was living.36 Now trapped in his hometown, in an overt symbol of identification with d’Orléans, Matisse copied out one of the poems, Ballade au Duc de Bourbon on 13 December 1942. As an act of companionship and a tribute to his friend, Matisse decorated the handwritten poem with a red-crayoned border and gifted it to Rouveyre.37 It read;

My dear cousin, with a good heart I thank you For the white rabbits you gave me. And furthermore, I confirm as true to you,

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As for the rabbits that I loved, Several years have passed, for me they are Forgotten. (Mon chier cousin, de bon cueur vous mercie Des blancs connins que vous m'avez donnez, Et oultre plus, pour vray vous certiffie, Quant aux connins que dittes qu'ay amez, Ilz sont pour moy, plusieurs ans a passez, Mis en oubly) 38

Coopting the words of this poem, Matisse lamented that as the years passed by, he had forgotten what freedom and hope was like. Through the poem he thanked his friend for giving him the white rabbits, a coded signal of hope for the future. In medieval France, rabbits were a recognized symbol of fertility and regeneration, signifying the embodiment of generative powers and of life itself.39 The association of rabbits with rebirth, rejuvenation and resurrection is a universal symbol of fertility and appears as a myth in medieval European literature.40 In ancient Greco–Roman myth, rabbits symbolized love, abundance and fecundity and that this symbolism continued through to modern times.41 White is the color of animals in captivity, a symbolism that Matisse used later during the Occupation in his double-page image of The Nightmare of the White Elephant in his livre d’artiste Jazz, to depict the French peoples anguish as they dream of life, free from the captivity.42 Wanting to propagate his message of hope and rebirth, Matisse recopied and redecorated the poem, adding an image of a white rabbit as a tailpiece, and included it as a double-page spread on pages fifty to fifty-one of the final illustrated book. Matisse thanked Rouveyre once again with another poem, on January 9, 1943, a further expression of trust, “Trust you there! / Who? / In what? / As I see, / Nothing is without.” (“Fiez vous y. / A qui? / En quoy? / Comme je voy, / Riens n'est sans sy.”)43 As a further tribute to his friend Matisse inserted this poem, more elaborately decorated than the original that he sent to Rouveyre, on page fifty-nine of the published book, flanked by a page of fleurs-de-lys on the left-hand page (Figure 1).44 Put Figure 1 here - Figure 1. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Fiez vous y / A qui.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 58–59. Paris: Tériade, 1950. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

Clearly captivated by Matisse’s treatment of d’Orléans’s poetry, Rouveyre encouraged him to create an artist’s book using similar decorations to his correspondence. Suggesting that he select between fifteen and twenty of d’Orléans’s poems, and to demonstrate his bond with the poet, Rouveyre emphasized to Matisse that he should hand write all the text as d’Orléans had done. In a modernized reworking of the medieval manuscript, Rouveyre highlighted that the calligraphy of handwritten text would become an image and the text and image would unite into one; "Maybe you could plan to choose only the 15 or 20 prettiest pieces and tackle then with letter drawings, text and decorations intermingled, for each imprint... a group or Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 9

a series where everything would be done by your hand, without the slightest printerly contribution of typographic characters. Of the sort which flows in a spontaneous gush on your envelopes: a close and delicious marriage between the letter and the drawing so that they are one... the drawing is the letter and the letter is the drawing.”45

The artist readily accepted Rouveyre’s advice, replying that same day with two lists of titles of d'Orléans poems from which he would make a final selection for his illustrated book. The first list contained twenty-two titles and the second had twenty-four.46 These lists became a driving force for Matisse and enabled what was just a concept of an artist's book to emerge into reality. In the days that followed, as the frequency of their correspondence increased, they discussed numerous alternate lists of poems; “…. On waking at 6 o'clock, I read all the poems I have copied and in the order I want. I move this one, or that one for a good hour before noon; I then spend at least an hour in reading at random the various books of poetry and I discover the life of a particular piece that I had read less thoroughly. I fear that this passion may leave me just as it came.”47 Matisse, now working intensely, sent Rouveyre more than seventy handwritten copies of d’Orléans’s poems with varying illustrative designs. Seeking to emulate the decorative illuminations of a medieval manuscript, using crayons, he adorned each poem with colorful borders, ornamental arabesques and scrolls.48 As he continued to experiment with his drawings, he also began to embellish the envelopes of his letters to Rouveyre, sending his first illustrated envelope on January 27, 1943.49 Although Matisse readily accepted the handwritten text as the appropriate mode for his artist’s book, Rouveyre was not the only person to advocate this format. At the time Matisse copied out his first d’Orléans’s poem on December 13, 1942, his close friend, Rouault, had completed his handwritten text for Divertissement, and Bonnard was working on his handwritten Correspondances, both of which Tériade commissioned. Given the friendship and physical proximity of Matisse to Rouault, Bonnard and Tériade, Matisse would have been aware of this development. Matisse also experimented with the handwritten text at the early stages of his work on Florilège des Amours de Ronsard, which he was compiling at the same time as he commenced Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. He went as far as preparing the first maquette of the Ronsard book with his handwriting next to the printed proofs—a concept he eventually rejected.50 Another influencing factor may have been that Tériade had proposed to Matisse as far back as November 1941 that he consider producing an illustrated book using cut outs to create his the images to be accompanied with a handwritten text, a proposal that eventually morphed into Jazz, but which Matisse rejected at the time.51 It is argued that Matisse, on hearing of Rouault’s and Bonnard’s handwritten text experiments and receiving a similar request from Tériade, reached out to trial his own approach to the handwritten text. Now with Rouveyre's

10 Swan active encouragement, transcribing d’Orléans’s poetry in his own hand offered Matisse just such an opportunity. He made rapid progress in the ensuing weeks giving Rouveyre regular, almost daily updates and often requesting his opinion, “…I am strolling through Charles d'O, with a machete. The difficulty I felt to start with has ceased and I am redoing my little bouquet not too stupidly it seems to me, you will see…”52 As he contemplated the structure of his book, Matisse sought to make the first poem a public assertion of his identification and empathy with the medieval poet, asking Rouveyre, “How can I indicate that the first piece by Charles d’Orléans is a declaration of sympathy between him and myself?”53 Rouveyre, responded the next day, suggesting a poem but also counselling Matisse to avoid modifying any of the poems: But I advise you to put absolutely nothing printed in the text which would not already be found in the texts of Charles. If the piece "Il me plaist bien" [It Well Pleases Me] doesn't have a title, you should leave it this way. ."54

Put Figure 2 here Figure 2. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Il me Pleust Bien.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 10–11. Paris: Tériade, 1950. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

Matisse, agreeing with Rouveyre, chose for the first poem the rondeau “He pleased me well” (“Il me Pleust Bien”) (Figure 2). His choice was very apt, for this was Matisse’s salutation to the poet, a statement of acceptance of the poet by Matisse, as it may well have been d’Orléans speaking about the artist sometime in the future, one endorsing the other: It well pleases me (In this journey) I wake to see It was all mine.

(Il me pleust bien [Se tour il a] Quan me monstra Que estoit tout mien.) 55

Emulating the common medieval artistic practice of copying, Matisse linked d’Orléans’s fifteenth–century social history to his own present-day France.56 In copying d’Orléans’s poetry, Matisse took on the role of the medieval copy artist whose copied works not only retained many of the characteristics of the original but also reflected the copyist’s own creativity. The copy artist often introduced a new style and iconography that transformed the copy to reflect a new context.57 Although the copy had a direct “genealogical” link to the original, the copy transformed itself into a “new original”. The new original, while holding on to the cultural history of the actual original, now had added to it the cultural history of the time and location in which the new original was created.58 Matisse, the copy artist, transported d’Orléans’s poetry Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 11 from the fifteenth century into the twentieth century and, in the process, he gave it a new life in a new context. He worked hard at copying the poems, and evaluated several options with different-sized letters, words, spacing and thickness. Acknowledging that d’Orléans’s poetry had its own literary interpretations and independence, he sought not to overpower the text with his imagery. His ornamental embroidery, illuminations and borders drawn in crayon—green, blue, red, orange, gold, gold-yellow, brown and violet—surrounded the handwritten lithographic black text and captured a visual and interpretive aesthetic reminiscent of medieval religious texts. In his handwritten appropriation of d’Orléans’s poems, the text left untouched, exactly as d’Orléans written, Matisse added his own creative visual character to give rise to a new work in which they were both participants. Now emphasizing his authority of this new original, he re-ordered the poetry into the sequence he wanted, quite different to the order in which d’Orléans had written, a practice he adopted in many of his illustrated books. Visual Symbols

The Portrait Matisse introduced a symbolic acknowledgement of d’Orléans’s original authorship by including a stylized portrait of the poet. There being no know portrait of d’Orléans, he shared his idea of a creating his own composite version with Rouveyre, writing on March 11, 1943: “I am doing a portrait of Charles after his uncle Charles VI the brother of his father Louis Duke of Turin and Orléans, and after Charles VII whom we all know from the portraits in the Louvre.”59 The image he finally created is an amalgam of two portraits in the Louvre: one of d’Orléans’s uncle Charles VI painted by the anonymous artist known as Maréchal de Boucicaut in 1412, and the other was of Charles VII painted by Jean Fouquet (1420–1481) in 1445. The inclusion of Charles VII’s portrait in the composition, a King who recaptured Paris from the English and reunited France under his rule, emphasizes Matisse’s symbolic call for unity and regeneration. In an endeavor to strike an acceptable representation of the poet and to obtain the correct aesthetic balance, he experimented with different portrait options, telling Rouveyre that he had drawn three different images: I am hooked on to this Charles: I have 3 figures with Mad. Lydia, which are stylistically very good, of this aristocratic poet. By only putting the figures, faces-if their expression varies, despite a style which is refined-I will have the most beautiful, the purest illustration of the work. But for me to convince you would just have to see them. I only have three; will I be capable of doing more? How difficult everything is.60 The portrait he selected, drawn in profile, the poet’s face shown to his shoulders, eyes open, lips pursed and an elongated downward pointing nose, d’Orléans has a furled forehead and frowns with a slight look of disdain (Figure 3). He is dressed in a medieval decorative gown befitting an aristocrat and is wearing a medieval style bag hat. Satisfied with the image, Matisse dated the portrait 3/43 and turned his attention to creating the title page.

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Put Figure 3 here - Figure 3. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Portrait of d’Orléans and Title Page.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Tériade, 1950. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

The Tri-colour Sitting on the recto, facing d’Orléans’s portrait is the title page in which he incorporated symbols of French patriotism. He wrote out the text in blue and decorated parts of the text with an ornamental red scroll which imprinted on white paper projected the French tri-color, a symbolic color combination he would use for the covers of Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois) a few months later in November. In 1943, at the time he was working on d’Orléans and Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois), the French national colors red, white and blue had become recognized as covert symbols for a long-expected Liberation. It is possible to trace the red, white and blue nationalistic colors the French art world used as symbols of cultural resistance as far back as 1941.61 The widespread use of the pro-resistance symbol of red–white–blue attracted the attention of the German censors, who attempted to halt its use in artworks but with limited success. Cone reveals one such instance when the Germans ordered artist Francis Gruber (1912- 1948), a member of the Resistance Front national des arts, to remove the red, white and blue bouquet in his 1942 painting Homage à Jacques Callot, fearing that viewers would recognise it as a symbol of an independent France. Gruber cleverly over-painted the bouquet, replacing it with red, white and blue spots so small that the censors did not notice them.62

Fleur-de-lys Put Figure 4 here - Figure 4. Matisse, Henri. “Symphonie Chromatique.” In Verve, volume 2, number 8 – Nature de la France, edited by Tériade. Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1940. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

Throughout the book Matisse inserted another French national symbol, the fleur-de-lys recalling the stylized fleur-de-lys images in Symphonie Chromatique (Figure 4). He created Symphonie Chromatique, the cover for Tériade’s Verve, volume 2, number 8, Nature de la France, on August 31, 1939 at a period of high tension, just a day before Hitler invaded Poland and three days before France and Britain declared war on Germany. The artist, then deeply worried at the international situation, cut out a complex series of patterns which he reconstructed as twelve luminescent, colorful floating abstract representations of the fleur-de-lys, an intensive historic symbol of ancient France, epitomizing the longevity of French cultural heritage. Not only was the fleur-de-lys a symbol of d’Orléans, but it was also the recognized emblem of the French Monarchy, particularly the Bourbon dynasty, which Louis le Jeune adopted in 1147, and in ancient times it signified life and was a powerful national symbol of a unified country.63 With its subtle patriotic connotations, Symphonie Chromatique had a political dimension that went far beyond the simplicity of its colored imagery. Through Symphonie Chromatique he appealed to the French people to remember the “truest spiritual qualities of French art” to propagate a sense Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 13 of optimism.64 Matisse once again reached out to the fleur-de-lys to acknowledge d’Orléans’s French heritage and therefore once again making a patriotic assertion.65 In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, a book of one hundred and eight pages, Matisse introduced forty-eight pages of fleurs-de-lys, far outnumbering the thirty-five pages of single page handwritten poems and five double page handwritten ballades. He embellished the front cover with the black handwritten name “Charles d’Orléans” which he surrounded with three green fleurs-de-lys (Figure 5). The opening four pages and the final two pages were composed entirely of fleurs-de-lys. Within the main body of the book, he paired each of the thirty-five poems, placed on the recto, with a page of fleur-de-lys on the verso.

Put Figure 5 here - Figure 5 Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Front Cover opened out showing back cover on left-hand side.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Tériade, 1950. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

Eight Rabbits In addition to the fleur-de-lys, Matisse introduced another symbolic image of hope, a full-page drawing of eight rabbits frolicking in the grass around a tree. The image preceding the Ballade au duc de Bourbon, a poem he had earlier gifted to Rouveyre, which also references a rabbit, and which adds a certain light-heartedness that fits with the visual mood of the whole work (Figure 6). In medieval numerology, the number eight symbolized baptism, the spiritual rebirth of a person.66 Number symbolism was very important to early and medieval Christianity.67 Medieval French cathedrals recognized the symbolism of the number eight by adopting octagonal baptisteries—a place where the birth of life was celebrated.68 The eight rabbits in this image represents a powerful code calling for the rebirth and resurrection of his country, a vision of liberation.

Put Figure 6 here - Figure 6. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Eight Rabbits frolicking” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 48–49. Paris: Tériade, 1950. © Succession H. Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018.

Lydia In addition to the image of the eight rabbits, Matisse included four full page sketches of women as a visual pause, each preceding a double page ballade. The first of the female images, on page 21, was that of a demure looking Delectorskaya, placed in front of a Ballade, “Beautiful, good, peerless, pleasant” (“Belle, bonne, nompareille, plaisant”) whose first verse ends “Like the one who can comfort me, / For I take you as my only mistress” (“Comme celle qui me peut conforter, / Car je vous tiens pour ma seule maistresse”).69 Perhaps a tribute and a rare public declaration of Delectorskaya’s importance to him. 70 Liberation

As Matisse worked on Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, conditions in France worsened, food rations were reduced, and it was difficult to envision that Hitler would be defeated. 71 Just as he

14 Swan was preparing to close the chapter on d’Orléans to give more time to Jazz, the Allies bombed the Quartier Saint-Roch near his house in Cimiez on June 30, 1943. Fearing for his safety he once again fled, this time to a residence, Villa le Rêve, which Rouveyre had found just outside the old town of Vence, not far from where Rouveyre himself lived. Around the same time de Gaulle formed the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité français de libération nationale) in Algiers, which a year later became the provisional Government of France. On 3 November, de Gaulle joined with the Resistance to form a Provisional Consultative Committee in readiness for the Liberation. The summer of 1943 was a very unsettling period for Matisse and his work seemed to resonate with his difficulties as he settled into Vence. It was when he created his politically charged images Icarus for Jazz and the Fall of Icarus for De la Couleur. Matisse served the rest of the Occupation at Vence, corresponding and meeting Rouveyre as he had done before.72 The Allied invasion of France commenced just after midnight on Tuesday June 6, 1944 along the Normandy coastline and after hard fought battles, Paris was liberated on 24 August 1944. As the war ended, Matisse was hailed as a hero for remaining in France. The Salon d’Automne honored him with a retrospective in 1945 and he began to move around France freely. At the beginning of January 1945, busy at age 75, he was in no hurry to publish Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans.73 Although he completed most of the fundamentals of the book in 1943, he made some minor alterations to the imagery of the poems in the winter of 1945–46 and seriously took up d’Orléans once more in spring 1947. In the months following the Liberation, Matisse began to focus his attention to a new and grander project, the design, construction and fit out of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence. In December 1947, he formally accepted the Vence Chapel commission and consequently decided to finalize his unpublished books, including Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. That same month, on December 22, 1947, just two days after he published Jazz, Tériade signed a contract with Matisse to publish Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. It has been incorrectly stated that it was Tériade who had originally encouraged Matisse to create the d'Orléans book and had considered himself to be the publisher.74 Although Tériade finally published the book, this was not the arrangement when Matisse commenced the work. While he had no agreement, neither is there any evidence that they had discussed the issue, Matisse had always considered that Martin Fabiani would be the publisher. This seemed to be a reasonable assumption as Fabiani had published Dessins: Thèmes et Variations and already had a contract for Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois). Matisse went so far as to sketch four alternative title pages with Fabiani’s name as the publisher, sending a draft of the pages to Rouveyre on March 23, 1943 for comment.75 Fabiani, however, declined to publish the book as he did not think that the crayon sketched imagery was commercial enough to sell.76 Tériade, by now close to Matisse, had amassed experience in publishing handwritten artists books through his wartime innovation the manuscript modern, a modernized derivation of the medieval manuscript. He had already published Rouault’s Divertissement and Bonnard’s Correspondances and was readying to publish Reverdy’s handwritten Le Chant’s des Morts Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 15

(1948) which featured Picasso’s arabesque designs. He was also in advanced discussions with Fernand Leger (1881–1955) about a handwritten accompaniment to his Cirque (1950) images. Tériade eventually published Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans in 1950, nearly eight years after Matisse commenced working on the project. As is the normal practice with his artist's books, Tériade included a colophon which provided essential bibliographic information. The colophon is the only text in Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans to be printed using a font, rather than with the ubiquitous handwriting, thus making it unmistakably the publishers own composition. Nevertheless, Matisse was closely involved in its wording. In the colophon Tériade makes it clear that the entire artist's book is Matisse's own work. He acknowledged Matisse role in hand writing and illuminating the text and directing the printing of the lithographs. Art Historian Kathryn Brown considers that the use of the term “illumination” in the colophon is important as it links Matisse with d’Orléans and invokes "the style of the medieval illuminated manuscript."77 Tériade noted in the colophon that the book was printed on January 25, 1950. The book that Tériade finally published included Matisse's original March 1943 portrait of d’Orléans as the frontispiece, on the verso, with the medieval poet facing a reconfigured title page on the recto (Figure 3). Thus, the portrait frontispiece sits aside the textual title page with d’Orléans dominating both the visual and textual experience. In the title page Matisse retained the essential elements of his earlier preferred wartime draft “Fabiani” title page and keeping his changes to a minimum, he replaced Fabiani’s name with Tériade’s. He retained the blue text of the title page and the red ornamental scroll that coupled the title ‘Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans’ and his own name ‘Henri Matisse’. With this simple symbolic coupling of his name with that of d’Orléans’s, Matisse maintained his original wartime linkage between himself as a proxy for the present–day French people with that of d’Orléans as a pillar of France’s medieval national cultural heritage. Symbolizing France’s long cultural heritage Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans was a vigorous demonstration of the safeguarding and regeneration of French culture at a time when it was endangered. This artist’s book which propelled d’Orléans poetry out of its medieval and baroque past into the Second World War context was an act of cultural resistance. Recognizing the potency of his patriotic assertion by creating this book, Gilot later declared that Matisse’s illustrations of the poems of Charles d’Orléans were “an active expression of trust in the survival of French culture at a time when it was threatened in its very essence, in its life and its love of life.”78 Art historian Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, suggests that perhaps out of all of Matisse’s books, d’Orléans seems to have given him the greatest joy.79

RODNEY T SWAN is an Adjunct Academic at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He holds a Masters in Arts Administration (2011) and a PhD in Art History (2016) from the same university, with a thesis titled “Resistance and Resurgence; the cultural and political dynamic of the livre d’artiste and the German Occupation of France”. His research focuses on how the livre d’artiste became a strategic instrument of cultural resistance in

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Occupied France, specifically examining the codes and symbols that artists embedded in the images of their books to circumvent the censor. His research has led him to identify a resurgence of the livre d’artiste in post-War France. He has written extensively and presented numerous papers on artist’s books. He published "Turning Point–the Aesthetic Genealogy Surrounding Picasso’s Illustrations of Reverdy’s Le Chant Des Morts." as a chapter in Art and Book. Illustration and Innovation, edited by Peter Stupples, 85-104. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. In addition, he published "Cultural Resistance through the Manuscrit Moderne. Tériades Editions of Rouault’s Divertissement and Bonnard’s Correspondances.", in RELIEF - Revue Électronique de Littérature Française 11, no. 1 (2017): 40 - 65. In his former career, he was in commercial business and holds a BSc (Hons) (Engineering) and a Master of Technology.

Images

Figure 1. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Fiez-vous-y / À qui.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 58–59. Paris: Tériade, 1950.

Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 17

Figure 2. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Il me Pleust Bien.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 10–11. Paris: Tériade, 1950.

Figure 3. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Portrait of d’Orléans and Title Page.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Tériade, 1950.

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Figure 4. Matisse, Henri. “Symphonie Chromatique.” In Verve, volume 2, number 8 – Nature de la France, edited by Tériade. Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1940.

Figure 5 Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Front Cover opened out showing back cover on left-hand side.” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Tériade, 1950.

. Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 19

Figure 6. Matisse, Henri, and Charles d’Orléans. “Eight Rabbits frolicking” In Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, 48–49. Paris: Tériade, 1950.

1 The exhibition of “degenerate” art, the Entartete Kunst, depicting artists the that the Nazis declared degenerate and subsequently banned opened in Munich on 19 July 1937. The exhibition showed over six hundred and fifty paintings, sculptures, prints and books from the collections of thirty-two German museums and included art from movements including expressionism, cubism, Dada, fauvism, impressionism and surrealism. Matisse’s work was among them. See “Entartete Kunst (Digital Reproduction),” ed. Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014), i. The British Victoria and Albert Museum publicly released in January 2014 a digital reproduction of the only known copy of the catalogue of “degenerate art” seized in Germany in the period surrounding the Entartete Kunst exhibition, but mainly between 1937 and 1938. The catalogue was completed around 1942 as a final record of the art confiscated by the authorities throughout Germany. The catalogue is in two volumes and comprises four hundred and eighty-two pages. The original catalogue was donated to the Museum by a former Viennese book dealer Heinrich Robert (Harry) Fisher in 1996. Fisher became a naturalized British citizen in 1946 and went on to become a successful art dealer in London. It is not known how or why the catalogue came into Fisher’s possession. 2 Matisse to Bonnard, 7 September 1943, in Jean Clair, ed. Bonnard/Matisse: Letters between Friends (New York: N. H. Abrams, 1992), 87; Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909–1954 (New York: Knopf, 2005), 393. 3 Spurling, Matisse, 393. Rewald and Dabrowski, Also see The American Matisse: The Dealer, His Artists, His Collection: The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 98. Marguerite was the daughter of Matisse and Caroline Joblaud, who was Matisse’s mistress from 1892 until 1897. Amélie adopted the four-year-old Marguerite after she married Matisse in 1898. The two women stayed close to each other throughout their lives. 4 For a scholarly analysis of Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, an illustrated book that has not received the critical review of many of Matisse’s other works see Kathryn Brown, "Occupation and Imprisonment: Les Poèmes De

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Charles d’Orléans," in Matisse’s Poets: Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book, ed. Kathryn Brown (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 215-30. See John Bidwell, Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2015), 205-07, for a bibliographic assessment. While Claude Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné des Ouvrages Illustrés (Paris: Duthuit, 1988), 451-52, provides much background information. For an excellent investigation of d’Orléans life and poetry, including English translations of all his works refer to John Fox et al., Poetry of Charles d’Orléans and His Circle a Critical Edition of Bnf Ms. Fr. 25458, Charles d’Orléans's Personal Manuscript (Tempe (Ariz.); Turnhout: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; In collaboration with Brepols, 2010), 451-52. 5 Michèle C. Cone, Artists under Vichy: A Case of Prejudice and Persecution (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992), 52. 6 Spurling, Matisse, 494n160. 7 Aragon, Henri Matisse: A Novel; Volume 2, trans. Jean Stewart (London: Collins, 1972), 35; Jack D. Flam, “Jazz,” in Henri Matisse; Paper Cut-Outs, ed. Jack Cowart (St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum 1977), 101–05; Françoise Gilot, Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art (London: Bloomsbury, 1990), 240. 8 Sebastian Goeppert, Herma Goeppert-Frank, and Patrick Cramer, Pablo Picasso: The Illustrated Books; Catalogue Raisonné (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, 1983), 106; Una E. Johnson, Ambroise Vollard, Editeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977), 162; Pablo Picasso and George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Picasso: Eaux-Fortes Originales Pour des Textes de Buffon (Paris: Martin Fabiani, 1942). 9 Riding, And the Show Went On, 228. 10 Aparna Nayak-Guercio, “The Project of Liberation and the Projection of National Identity: Calvo, Aragon, Jouhandeau, 1944–1945” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2006), 80; Julian, Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 406; Colin W. Nettelbeck, War and Identity: The French and the Second World War: An Anthology of Texts (London: Methuen Educational, 1987), 57. 11 Colin W. Nettelbeck, War and Identity: The French and the Second World War: An Anthology of Texts (London: Methuen Educational, 1987), 57. 12 Nayak-Guercio, “The Project of Liberation and the Projection of National Identity: Calvo, Aragon, Jouhandeau, 1944–1945”, 55; Nettelbeck, War and Identity, 55. 13 Mary Jane Cowan, “Defense D'afficher: The Wartime Art of Jean Lurçat and Jean Dubuffet” (MArt diss., University of British Columbia, 1993), 2–8. 14 Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, Art of the Defeat: France 1940–1944 (LA: Getty Research Institute, 2008), 294. 15 Margaret Atack, Literature and the French Resistance: Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms, 1940–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 3. 16 Jackson, France, 385. 17 Atack, Literature and the French Resistance, 8. 18 Bertrand Dorléac, “Ignoring History,” in Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, ed. Serge Guilbaut (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013), 243. 19 John Bidwell, Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2015), 122. 20 Serge Guilbaut, ed. Chatting with Henri Matisse 12. 21 Aragon, Henri Matisse: A Novel; Volume 1, trans. Jean Stewart (London: Collins, 1972), 36–38; Spurling, Matisse, 405. 22 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ed. Les Plus Beaux Manuscrits Français Du Huitième Au Xvie Siècle: Conservés Dans Les Bibliothèques Nationales De Paris (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1937); Dorléac, 280. 23 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ed. Trois Cents Chefs-d'Oeuvre En Facsimilé: Manuscrits, Enluminures, Incunables, Livres Précieux, Estampes, Dessins, Cartes, Portulans, Médailles Et Antiques (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1940), 6–7. 24 Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 160–61. 25 Chara Kolokytha, “L’amour De L’art En France Est Toujours Aussi Fécond : La Maison d’Éditions Verve et la Reproduction de Manuscrits À Peintures Conservés Dans Les Bibliothèques de France Pendant Les Années Noires (1939–1944),” French Cultural Studies 25, no. 2 (2014): 130. Kolokytha reveals that Maréchal Philippe Pétain (1856–1951) was aware of Tériade’s reproduction of the Calendar of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. 26 Anne Davenport, “The Mask of Villon. Neo-Medievalist Realism in Rouault's Divertissement,” in Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871–1958, ed. S. Schloesser and McMullen Museum of Art (Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2008), 367–68. A revealing account of French artist Georges Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 21

Rouault association with medieavilism and his creation of the wartime livre d'artiste Divertissement, also published by Tériade. Medievalism was an important cultural motif in France well before the Second World War. Medieval specialists like Léon Gautier (1882–1897) felt it was important for the French at every level to learn of their medieval culture to become acquainted with their national heritage, believing that this was a period in which France was loved and respected. Other late nineteenth century scholars like Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1897) and Joseph Bédier (1864–1935) worked hard to promote the significance of the medieval period to French heritage. 27 Jennifer Stafford Brown, “‘Au Feu De Ce Qui Fut Brule Ce Qui Sera’: Louis Aragon and the Subversive Medieval,” Romanic Review 101, no. 3 (2010): 325–26. Brown supports her argument by nominating Aragon’s essays, especially in “La Leçon de Ribérac” and his seven-poem cycle La Leçon de Ribérac ou l’Europe Française, published in 1942, as excellent examples of the use of the Middle Ages in resistance texts. 28 Rouveyre to Matisse, 22 December 1941, in Hanne Finsen, ed. Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance (Paris: Flammarion, 2001), Ltr136, 90. During the Occupation Rouveyre grew closer to Matisse, becoming a confidant and advisor with whom Matisse corresponded frequently, each bringing comfort to the other. An examination of their extensive correspondence shows that Rouveyre gave widespread advice to Matisse on many of his illustrated books, including the choice of texts, illustrations, color and layout, particularly for Florilège des Amours de Ronsard, Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, Jazz, Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1947), and Rouveyre’s own Repli (1947) and Apollinaire (1952). 29 Matisse to Rouveyre, 25 September 1942, in Finsen, Ltr 219, 145. 30 Matisse to Rouveyre, 2 October 1942, in Claude Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné Des Ouvrages Illustrés (Paris: Duthuit, 1988), 451. Matisse may have been referring to the book Les Classiques Français du moyen âge which Mario Roques (1875–1961) wrote and which Librairie Honoré Champion published in Paris in 1910. On the other hand, Peter Champion was the editor of the two-volume work called Poésies de Charles d’Orléans, which was part of the series Histoire portique du quinzième siècle and which corresponds to volumes XXVII and XXVIII. See Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, 147n3. 31 Matisse to Rouveyre, 25 October 1942, in Duthuit, 453; Hanne Finsen, Matisse: A Second Life (Paris: Hazan, 2005), 21. 32 Alfred Hamilton Barr, Matisse, His Art and His Public (London: Secker, 1975), 272. 33 Sarah Spence, The French Chansons of Charles d'Orléans, with the Corresponding Middle English Chansons, The Garland Library of Medieval Literature (New York: Garland, 1986), xiii, xix. 34 John Fox et al., Poetry of Charles d'Orléans and His Circle a Critical Edition of Bnf Ms. Fr. 25458, Charles d’Orléans's Personal Manuscript (Tempe (Ariz.); Turnhout: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies ; In collaboration with Brepols, 2010), xviii. This is the first English translation of the entire works of d'Orléans which provides a new ordering of the individual lyrics according to the date in which they were written and not the order in which they appear in the original manuscript. The original manuscript composed by d'Orléans is made of vellum and consists of two hundred and ninety-nine pages which also includes poetry written by residents and visitors to the Duke’s court. This is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, BnF MS. Fr. 25458. 35 Lillian Schacherl, Très Riches Heures: Behind the Gothic Masterpiece, Pegasus Library (Munich ; New York: Prestel, 1997), 26. 36 Spurling, Matisse, 413. 37 Matisse to Rouveyre, 13 December 1942, in Finsen, Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, Ltr 247, 155. 38 Matisse and d’Orléans, Poèmes, 50–51, All translations are by the author. 39 Claude K. Abraham, “Myth and Symbol: The Rabbit in Medieval France,” Studies in Philology 60, no. 4 (1963): 589–97; J. C. Cooper, Symbolic and Mythological Animals (London: Aquarian/Thorsons, 1992), 120; Terri Windling, “The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares,” Journal of Mythic Arts (2005), http://www.endicott- studio.com/rdrm/rrRabbits.html. 40 Cooper, Symbolic and Mythological Animals, 120. 41 Windling, “The Symbolism of Rabbits and Hares,” 3. 42 Rebecca A. Rabinow, “The Legacy of La Rue Férou: 'Livres d'Artiste' Created for Tériade by Rouault, Bonnard, Matisse, Léger, Le Corbusier, Chagall, Giacometti, and Miró” (PhD diss., New York University, 1995), 99. 43 Matisse and d’Orléans, Poèmes, 59. For a different interpretation of the ballade, in a noteworthy study, see Brown, “Occupation and Imprisonment” in Matisse’s Poets, 222. Here Brown references Enid McLeod, a scholar of d’Orléans works who considers that the ballade is d’Orléans’s reply to his cousin, the Duc du Bourbon, who gifted him some white rabbits. The white rabbits, according to McLeod may be interpreted as a sexual pun and is a shrewd question to Charles about his “love life abroad.” Charles’s response, says Brown, can be interpreted to mean that he “enjoys the gift, but laments his enforced celibacy.” It should be noted that in their authoritative translation of d’Orléans’s poetry and study of his life in Fox et al., Poetry of Charles d'Orléans xxxii., John Fox and Mary-Jo Arn

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writes that “He did not, however, live in isolation. He had a number of French servants around him, including a French secretary; he received delegations from his French estates regularly; and he travelled frequently in the company of one or other of his keepers on various kinds of business.” Hence, any enforced celibacy may well have been temporary as d’Orléans, though held captive in England, did have freedom of movement and association. 44 Matisse to Rouveyre, 9 January 1943, in Finsen, Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, Ltr 254, 157. In comparing the two versions of the images, Matisse gave the original poem he sent to Rouveyre only rudimentary illustrative treatment however in the final published version he provided increased ornamentation. 45 Rouveyre to Matisse, 3 February 1943, in Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné Des Ouvrages Illustrés, 451. 46 Matisse to Rouveyre, 3 February 1943, in Finsen, Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, Ltr 293, 06. 47 Matisse to Rouveyre, 5 February 1943, in Spurling, Matisse, 126. 48 Spurling, Matisse, 128. 49 Matisse to Rouveyre, 27 Janurary 1943, in Finsen, Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, Ltr 280, 01. 50 Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné Des Ouvrages Illustrés, 420. 51 Matisse eventually accepted Tériade’s proposal which later morphed into two texts: the livre d’artiste Jazz and Verve, volume 3, number 13, De la Couleur – Matisse. 52 Matisse to Rouveyre, 15 February 1943, in Finsen, Matisse: A Second Life, 130. 53 Matisse to Rouveyre, 29 March 1943, in ibid., 128. 54 Rouveyre to Matisse, 30 March1943, in Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné Des Ouvrages Illustrés, 451. 55 Matisse and d’Orléans, Poèmes, 10–11. 56 Renee N. Vara, “Issues of Authenticity” (paper presented at the SPIE - Scientific Detection of Fakery in Art II, Boston, MA, 16 March 2000), np. 57 Sarah Blick, “Exceptions to Krautheimer's Theory of Copying,” Visual Resources 20, no. 2–3 (2004): 129. 58 Anda Lopazan, “Creation and Deception in the Evolution of Art Forgery” (BA.Hons., diss., Emory University, 2012), 8. 59 Matisse to Rouveyre, 11 March 1943, in Finsen, Matisse: A Second Life, 128. 60 Matisse to Rouveyre, 27 March 1943, in Duthuit, Henri Matisse: Catalogue Raisonné Des Ouvrages Illustrés, 451.] 61 Cone, Artists under Vichy, 46. 62 Cone, Artists under Vichy, 176–79. 63 Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs, and Their Meaning (London: L. Hill, 1960), 188. 64 Casimiro Di Crescenzo, Matisse and Tériade: Collaborative Works by the Artist and Art Publisher from Verve (1937–1960); Lettres Portugaises, 1946 (New York: Yoshii Gallery, 1997), 50. 65 Aragon, Henri Matisse: A Novel; Volume 1, 184, 240–44; Barr, Matisse, 273. 66 Blick, “Exceptions to Krautheimer's Theory of Copying,” 124. 67 Tessa Morrison, “The Art of Early Medieval Number Symbolism,” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 2 (2006): 181. 68 Morrison, “Medieval Number Symbolism,” 174. 69 Matisse and d’Orléans, Poèmes, 22. 70 Finsen, Matisse: A Second Life, 137–39. Matisse had earlier sketched four similar images of Delectorskaya on the introductory pages of a dictionary of medieval French, Little Dictionary of Ancient French (Petit Dictionnaire de l’ancien française) which Delectorskaya dedicated and presented as a gift to Rouveyre when he visited Matisse on March 18 and 19, 1943. Matisse wrote out the date of Rouveyre’s birthday, “29/3/43. The dictionary with 536 pages was produced by Hilaire van Daele in 1901, published by Garnier. 71 Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 281–82, 85. 72 Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, “Vence 1943–1948; Interior/Exterior Studio Visits,” in Matisse: A Second Life, ed. Finsen Hanne (Paris: Hazan, 2005), 44; Spurling, Matisse, 416. 73 Matisse had so far presented only two of his books for publication, Dessins: Thèmes et Variations, his collaboration with Aragon, which Martin Fabiani published in February 27, 1943, and Montherlant’s Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois), which Fabiani published in May 1944, just days before the Normandy landings. He continued to work on Jazz, Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, Florilège des Amour de Ronsard, Reverdy’s Visages, Rouveyre’s Apollinaire and Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Even though these works had yet to be sent for publication, he started on two more books: Marianna Alcaforado’s Lettres Portugaises (1946) and John-Antoine Nau’s Poésies Antillaises (1972). 74 Rabinow, “The Legacy of La Rue Férou,” 93 Cultural Resistance in Matisse’s Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans 23

75 Matisse to Rouveyre, 23 March 1943, in Finsen, Matisse, Rouveyre: Correspondance, Ltr 331, 223. 76 Di Crescenzo, Matisse and Tériade, 54. 77 Brown, Influence as Appropriation, 91. 78 Gilot, Matisse and Picasso, 239. 79 Barr, Matisse, 273.