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Fields of elephant gray, coral orange, and turquoise surround a fan-like, abstracted palm frond near the center of this vertical, abstract painting. The fronds of the palm radiate like a starburst against unpainted, cream-white canvas. Three black, vertical bands spaced behind the palm suggest tree trunks, with the rightmost trunk dotted with spring green, perhaps representing moss or the leaves of a vine. The fields of gray to either side of the frond, the turquoise areas below the gray, and the coral at the bottom center are painted with visible brushstrokes, creating a mottled effect. Rounded turquoise forms above the gray are silhouetted against a field of pale blue, perhaps representing the sky along the top edge. A few pointed, oval leaves painted spring green with black outlines dip into the scene from the top of the composition. The artist signed the work in dark green paint in the lower right: “Henri-Matisse.”

Henri Matisse

Palm Leaf, Tangier, 1912

East Building, Upper Level — Gallery 415-A

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 117.5 x 81.9 cm (46 1/4 x 32 1/4 in.)

framed: 142.2 x 106.7 cm (56 x 42 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Fund

Accession Number

1978.73.1

Artists / Makers

Henri Matisse (artist) French, 1869 - 1954

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right: Henri-Matisse

Provenance

Sold by the artist 27 or 30 April 1912 to (Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris); sold 15 June 1912 to Curt Glaser [1879-1943], Berlin.[1] by sale or exchange to Oskar [1875-1947] and Greta Moll, Berlin, by 1913/1914.[2] (Galerie Thannhauser, Berlin), by 1932.[3] (Valentine Gallery, New York).[4] (Erhard Weyhe Gallery, New York), by the early 1940s;[5] sold after 1945 to Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York;[6] on consignment with (Eugene Victor Thaw and Co., New York) and (Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York); sold 1978 to NGA.

[1] The April 27 date, from the Archives Henri Matisse in Paris, is given in Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912-1913, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (plus three subsequent venues), 1990: 72 note 1. The April 30 date, from the Bernheim-Jeune records (where the painting is their number 19329 and titled Matin de mars près de Tanger), is given in Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville, Henri Matisse chez Bernheim-Jeune, 2 vols., Paris, 1995: 1: 508-509, no. 122.

[2] The Matisse in Morocco catalogue (see note 1) cites a letter of 20 April 1951 from Greta Moll to Alfred Barr (in the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, Archives, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) that says in part: "... Besides we owned for a long time...the Palm Leaf... The Palm Leaf we probably had from 1913 to 1930." By 1914 Oskar Moll, who with his wife was an original class member of the school Matisse set up in Paris in 1908, had the most important collection of the artist's work in Germany. The Molls were in Berlin when they acquired the NGA painting; they went to Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1919, to Düsseldorf in 1930, and returned to Berlin in the mid-1930s. See also Siegfried and Dorothea Salzmann, Oskar Moll Leben und Werk, Munich, 1975: 62, and letter of 17 July 1997 from Peter Kropmanns, in NGA curatorial files.

[3] The painting is visible in a photograph of Thannhauser's apartment, taken c. 1932/1933 and sent to the Barrs by Thannhauser. A photocopy of the photograph is in NGA curatorial files, along with the Barr's collection record for the painting.

[4] Valentine Gallery is included in the provenance given in Henri Matisse 1904-1917, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pomidou, Paris, 1993: no. 98, but no supporting documentation is given. The Archives of American Art holds some Valentine Gallery records, but they do not include any information about this painting. See note 6.

[5] Erhard Weyhe (1882-1972) came to the United States from Germany in 1914, having apprenticed as a book dealer in his native country, Italy, and Belgium. In his New York gallery, managed for many years after World War I by Carl Zigrosser, Weyhe specialized in art books and prints, and he made annual buying trips to Europe. (See Reba White Williams, "The Weyhe Gallery Between the Wars, 1919-1940," Ph.D. diss., The City University of New York, 1996.) The extant Weyhe Gallery records at the Archives of American Art deal almost exclusively with prints, and no mention of the Matisse painting was found.

[6] Mrs. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in a letter of 27 June 1981 (in NGA curatorial files), relates that when Justin Thannhauser left Germany for Paris prior to World War II, he did not take the painting. Mrs. Barr suggests that it may have been entrusted to the Molls, or was re-bought by them, as her husband's impression was that "Weyhe had come upon it or heard about it in Dresden and that it belonged to Greta Moll by that time impoverished;" she also writes that her husband must have bought the painting "after 1945."

Associated Names

Barr, Jr., Alfred H., Mr. and Mrs.
Bernheim-Jeune
Glaser, Curt
Moll, Oskar
Thannhauser, Justin K.
Valentine Gallery
Weyhe Gallery
Xavier Fourcade Gallery

Exhibition History

1913: Kollektionen: Henri Matisse, Franz Heckendorf, E.L. Kirchner, Georg Leschnitzer, Kunst-Salon Fritz Gurlitt, Berlin, 1913, no. 60, as Die Palme.

1913: Possibly Exposition Henri-Matisse tableaux du Maroc et sculpture, Bernheim-Jeune & Cie., Paris, 1913, not in cat.

1952: Six Centuries of Landscape, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; National Gallerie, Berlin, 1952, no. 64, repro.

1956: Rétrospective Henri Matisse, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1956, no. 32, repro.

1959: The Dial and the Dial Collection, Worcester Art Museum, 1959, no. 60

1970: Henri Matisse, Exposition du Centenaire, Grand Palais, Paris, 1970, no. 114, repro.

1982: Henri Matisse, Kunsthaus Zurich; Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1982-1983, no. 35.

1984: Henri Matisse, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 1984-1985, no. 20, repro.

1984: The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse, The Allure of North Africa and the Near East, Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1984, no. 99c (London catalogue), no. 77c (Washington catalogue), repro.

1990: Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912-1913, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 1990-1991, no. 7, repro.

1993: Henri Matisse 1904-1917, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1993, no. 98, repro., as La palme.

1996: Matisse-Bonnard, une amitié, Musée Matisse, Nice, 1996, no catalogue.

1997: Henri Matisse: 'La révélation m'est venue de l'Orient', Musei Capitolini, Rome, 1997-1998, no. 28, repro.

1999: Le Maroc de Matisse, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 1999-2000, no. 6, repro., as La Palme (Matin de mars près de Tamger).

2012: Matisse: In Search of True Painting, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2012-2013, no. 21, repro.

2014: Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse, Museé des beaux-arts du Québec; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, 2014-2015, no. 20, repro. (shown only in Quebec).

2015: Matisse. Arabesque, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2015, no. 6, repro.

2015: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, Cleveland Museum of Art; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2015-2016, no. 109, repro.

Bibliography

1925: The Dial 78, no. 2 (Februay 1925): 90, color repro. as Still Life.

1951: Barr, Alfred H., Jr. Matisse: His Art and His Public. New York:145, 156, 157, 381 repro.

1954: Diehl, Gaston and Agnes Humbert. Henri Matisse. Paris, 1954: 69, as La palme.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 594, no. 923, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 265, repro.

1989: Strick, Jeremy. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture: Selections for the Tenth Anniversary of the East Building. Washington, D.C., 1989: 26, repro. 27.

1995: Dauberville, Guy-Patrice and Michel. Henri Matisse Chez Bernheim-Jeune. 2 vols. Paris, 1995: I:no. 122.

1997: Matisse: La révélation m'est venue de l'Orient, Exh. cat., Musei capitolini, Rome, 1997: 142, no. 28, repro.

2004: Henri Matisse: Processus/Variation. Exh. cat. National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Tokyo, 2004: 47, fig. 22.

2009: Cooper, Harry. The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2009: 6-7, repro.