Collection of 61 Matisse works-mostly portraying his daughter Marguerite-donated to Paris museum

"The works donated includes seven paintings, one sculpture, 28 drawings and eight etchings, most of which portray Marguerite Matisse, the painter's eldest daughter whom he had with his model Caroline Joblaud in 1894. Matisse acknowledged the child when she was three and she thereafter lived with the artist and his wife, Amélie. Marguerite married the Byzantine scholar Georges Duthuit, Claude's father, in 1923; she died in 1982."

""Spanning the first half of the 20th century, this donation casts light on each period of the tender and complicit relationship between the painter and his sitter-from the childhood images Marguerite écrivant [Marguerite Writing, 1906-07] and Études pour Marguerite lisant [Studies for Marguerite Reading, 1906]) to the deeply moving portraits created in 1945 when Marguerite escaped deportation [because of] her involvement in the French Resistance," a museum statement says."

Barbara Dauphin Duthuit donated 61 works by Henri Matisse to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, many shown in the exhibition Matisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father's Eyes. The gift includes seven paintings, one sculpture, 28 drawings and eight etchings, most portraying Marguerite Matisse, the artist's eldest daughter with model Caroline Joblaud (1894). Matisse acknowledged Marguerite at age three and she thereafter lived with him and his wife Amélie. Marguerite married Georges Duthuit in 1923 and died in 1982. The donation spans the first half of the 20th century, highlighting childhood studies and poignant 1945 portraits connected to her escape from deportation, and joins a museum collection that already contains 20 Matisse works including two monumental versions of La Danse.

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