Henri Matisse was born in 1869 and became one of the most famous figures in the history of art. His masterpieces, from the first Fauvist works to the period of cutouts that Matisse saw as “cutouts in pure colors”, are present in many of the world's most important collections. He had three children, all portrayed in his paintings, but none as much as his eldest daughter, Marguerite.
Marguerite Matisse was born in 1894. Her mother was the model Caroline Joblau (known as Camille) with whom Matisse had a relationship before marrying Amélie Noellie Parayre, when Marguerite was four years old. Marguerite was raised by her father and Amélie alongside her two half-brothers Jean and Pierre. He appeared many times in his father's paintings, and two portraits of him are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
During World War II, Marguerite, her half-brother Pierre, and her stepmother (who separated from Matisse in 1939, in part due to relationship conflict caused by the presence of Matisse's new assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya) actively supported the effort of French resistance. Pierre moved to New York at age 24 and established a successful career as an art dealer, featuring European artists such as Marc Chagall, Leonora Carrington, Le Corbusier and Alberto Giacometti to the American public.
Pierre helped Jewish artists trying to leave occupied France, and his 1942 exhibition “Artists in Exile” featured the work of 14 artists who fled Europe, including Piet Mondrian, Max Ernst and Chagall. Amélie worked as a typist for an underground publication (while Marguerite helped as a courier), which resulted in her imprisonment for half a year. Matisse stayed in Nice, writing to his son: “If everyone who has any value leaves France, what will be left of France?”
Marguerite was an active member of the French Resistance, which led to her being captured and almost fatally tortured by Gestapo officers in a prison in Rennes, before being sent to the all-female concentration camp of Ravensbrück, less than 60 miles away. north of Berlin. The train to Ravensbrück that Marguerite was traveling on was stopped by an air raid by Allied Forces, which gave her the opportunity to escape by hiding in the forest, before being rescued by other members of the Resistance. In 1945, Matisse wrote of seeing Marguerite after her escape: “I saw in reality, materially, the atrocious scenes which she described and represented to me.”
In 1923 she married the art critic Georges Duthuit, whom she met during his military leave in Issy. Duthuit first saw Matisse's work in 1907, at the Salon des Indépendents, and wrote extensively about his father-in-law's practice. However, when the critic cheated on Marguerite with Georgia Sitwell – wife of critic Sacheverell Reresby Sitwell – Henri Matisse demanded that he never write about his work again.
Marguerite spent much of her life cataloging her father's work and collaborating with students of his work. She was at her father's side when he passed away, at Delectorskaya's side; biographer Hilary Spurling said, then “left immediately with the suitcase she had kept packed for 15 years.” When Marguerite died of a heart attack in 1982, she was working on an almost complete catalog of Matisse's works. She and Duthuit are buried together in Nice and share a sculptural tombstone in the shape of an abstract geometric flower.
Source: Artnet News