Printed Originals presents
henri matisse Original posters · Le Cateau-Cambrésis 1869 – Nice 1954
He drew with scissors. The posters came after.
II · The poster came after
the poster came after.
Matisse died in Nice on 3 November 1954. Every Matisse poster we hold was printed after that day. Here they all are on one line, each placed at the year it was printed, not the year of the picture. Point at a paper dot, or tab to it, to see the poster.
33 to the right of the line. 0 to the left.
The hollow dots are posters he made in his lifetime: the Petit Palais show of 1937, which Mourlot printed; Nice, Travail et Joie, 1947; and the Maison de la Pensée Française, 1950. We hold none of them, so every poster here is “after Matisse”.
Read the line as a list
- c.1965 Nice · tourism poster for the Musée Matisse, which opened in 1963 · available
- 1970 Grand Palais, Paris · the centenary retrospective
- 1972 Venice Biennale · masterpieces of 20th-century painting
- c.1972 Mois mondial du cœur · Icarus as a health poster
- 1977–78 Detroit Institute of Arts · Paper Cut-Outs
- 1980 Céret · Blue Nude I, printed by Mourlot
- 1980 Skira · La Dame en bleu, a publication poster · available
- 1983 Athens and Mytilene · Jazz, Le Toboggan · available
- 1984 Galerie Maeght Lelong · Œuvres gravées · available
- c.1984 Centre Pompidou · Le Luxe I, collection poster · available
- 1986 Centre Pompidou · Jazz, Icarus · available
- 1986 Galerie Adrien Maeght, Paris · available
- 1986 Los Angeles County Museum of Art · paintings from the USSR
- 1987 Atelier Mourlot, Copenhagen · signature dated 52 · available
- c.1989 La Danse · publisher poster
- c.1990 La Tristesse du Roi · publisher poster · available
- 1990 Royal Academy, London · the Gelman collection · available
- 1992–93 MoMA, New York · A Retrospective
- 1997 Fondation Maeght · La sculpture des peintres · available
- 1997–98 Kunsthalle in Emden · Femmes et Fleurs, drawings · available
- 1999? Maeght · Œuvres gravées; date still to be confirmed · available
- 1999 Hamburger Kunsthalle · Jazz, The Clown · available
- c.1999 The Flight of Icarus · publisher poster
- c.2000 Blue Nude II · publisher poster
- 2004 Baltimore Museum of Art · Purple Robe and Anemones · available
- 2005 Baltimore Museum of Art · Interior with Dog
- 2005 Louisiana · Matisse, et nyt liv; Icarus · available
- 2006 Fondation Beyeler, Riehen · available
- 2006 Dallas Museum of Art · Ivy in Flower (1953) · available
- c.2021 Louisiana · plaster torso and bouquet; printing of the 1985 design · available
- c.2021 Louisiana · Red Interior; printing of the 1985 design · available
- c.2021 Louisiana · Nude with Oranges; printing of the 1985 design · available
- 2024 Fondation Louis Vuitton · L’Atelier rouge
Why the date matters
A poster printed in his lifetime is a different object from one printed after it. Five checks put a Matisse poster on the right side of the line. Read the dates printed on it: any exhibition after November 1954 settles it. Check the venue: the Musée Matisse in Nice opened in 1963. Do not lean on an imprint: Mourlot and Maeght kept printing his images for decades. Read the copyright line: “© Succession H. Matisse”, SPADEM, ARS or VISDA are all posthumous. And a date inside the picture, such as “52”, belongs to the artwork, not the print.
III · Drawing with scissors
he cut the colour first.
In his last decade Matisse cut shapes from paper painted with gouache. The four Blue Nudes and La Tristesse du Roi all date from 1952. Mourlot had printed his posters since 1937, and the studio kept lithographing these shapes long after his death. The 1952 signatures went into the picture with everything else.
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1987 Atelier Mourlot, Copenhagen. “Les grands maîtres de la lithographie”, printed by Mourlot. The “matisse 52” in the picture dates the cut-out, not the poster.
Available · from £670.00 · View this poster → -
c.1990 La Tristesse du Roi. The 1952 cut-out is 292 × 386 cm, in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. This publisher poster spells his name “HENRY”.
Available · from £340.00 · View this poster → -
c.2000 Blue Nude II. A decorative publisher poster with no event behind it. The Blue Nudes are gouache cut-outs, not lithographs.
Sold · Printed Originals Archive · View the record → -
1977–78 Paper Cut-Outs, Detroit. The first big show of the late cut-outs toured Washington, Detroit and St Louis.
Sold · Printed Originals Archive · View the record → -
2006 Ivy in Flower, Dallas. A 1953 cut-paper maquette for a window in the Lasker mausoleum.
Available · from £340.00 · View this poster → -
1980 One more cut-out poster, the Céret Blue Nude, gets a page to itself. Read it closely
The scissors came first. The press followed for decades.
Mourlot, before and after
The Mourlot studio printed Matisse’s poster for the Petit Palais in 1937 and became his lithographer. It did not stop in 1954. Mourlot printed the Céret poster in 1980 and the Copenhagen poster in 1987, and reprinted the 1953 Tate poster in 1959. So a Mourlot imprint tells you who printed a poster. It does not tell you when.
IV · Jazz, 1947
one plate, four printings.
Tériade published Jazz in 1947: twenty stencil plates made from cut-outs, in an edition of 250. Plate VIII is Icarus, and it is the image museums return to most. We hold it four times, printed across 33 years. Every one of them came after 1954.
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c.1972
A French health campaign: “Le cœur au cœur de la santé”.
Sold · Printed Originals Archive · View the record → -
1986
Centre Pompidou, with the script lettering of the book.
Available · from £280.00 · View this poster → -
c.1999
A decorative publisher poster; no event.
Sold · Printed Originals Archive · View the record → -
2005
Louisiana, Denmark: “Matisse, et nyt liv”.
Available · from £310.00 · View this poster →
and two more plates.
A book, not a poster
Jazz was made between 1943 and 1947 and published by Tériade as a book of 20 pochoir plates, 250 copies. A Jazz poster reproduces a plate; it is not a page from the book. Our Jazz posters run from a French health campaign of about 1972 to Louisiana in 2005.
V · Close reading · Céret, 1980
a blue nude, read slowly.
Five places to look on one Mourlot poster. Choose a pin.
Why this poster
It holds the whole lesson in one picture: a 1952 cut-out, a 1952 signature, and a 1980 printing. Our old listing called the figure Blue Nude II and dated it to the late 1940s. It is Blue Nude I, 1952, and we are correcting the listing.
VI · Signatures
read the margin.
Matisse signed his cut-outs and canvases, so many posters show “H. Matisse 52” or “Henri Matisse 37” inside the picture. That mark was printed with the picture. A signature that belongs to the poster would sit in the margin, in pencil or crayon. Every Matisse poster we hold was printed after 1954, and none is hand-signed.
Hand-signed
Matisse signs this copy himself, in pencil or crayon, usually in the margin. The Detroit Institute of Arts holds a 1952 Mourlot poster initialled “H. M.” in blue crayon. Very rare, and only possible before November 1954. None in our archive.
Plate-signed
Lettering or a signature Matisse made for the poster itself, printed in his lifetime: the 1950 Maison de la Pensée Française poster is one. Every copy carries it. None in our archive.
After Matisse
Printed after 3 November 1954 by a museum, gallery, printer or publisher. Any signature you see was copied from the artwork along with the picture. This is every Matisse poster we hold.
On this poster: H.MATISSE 52 at the lower left, copied from the 1952 Blue Nude I and printed with the picture by Mourlot in 1980. Sold · Printed Originals Archive · View the record →
Show all 33 in the archive ↓more copied marks in our archive.
- “Matisse Juin 50” Nice · from the 1950 cut-out
- “matisse 52” Copenhagen, 1987 · from a 1952 cut-out
- “Henri Matisse 1952” La Tristesse du Roi · from the cut-out
- “Henri Matisse 37” Baltimore, 2004 · from the painting
- “D10 Henri Matisse 41” Femmes et Fleurs · from the drawing
- “HM” Nude with Oranges · from the 1953 cut-out
Each date inside the picture is the artwork’s date. The brush-script “Matisse” on the Louisiana posters is a logo drawn from his handwriting, not a signature.
VII · The Printed Originals Matisse archive
every matisse poster we have held.
30 available now · 12 sold. All of them were printed after 1954, by museums, galleries, Mourlot and publishers. Each is listed under the year it was printed. Sold posters show no price.
VIII · Collecting
questions people ask us.
Short answers, from the posters themselves.
Hand-signed, plate-signed and after: what do the words mean?
Hand-signed: Matisse signed that copy himself, in pencil or crayon. Plate-signed: his signature or lettering was drawn for a poster printed in his lifetime, so every copy has it. After Matisse: the poster was printed after his death and reproduces his work. A signature inside the picture is almost always copied from the original artwork.
How can I tell if a poster was printed in his lifetime?
Matisse died on 3 November 1954. Read the dates printed on the poster first, then the venue: the Musée Matisse in Nice opened in 1963. A Mourlot or Maeght imprint does not prove an early date, because both kept printing his images for decades. Copyright lines such as “© Succession H. Matisse”, SPADEM, ARS or VISDA are posthumous. A date inside the picture, such as “52”, is the artwork’s date, not the print’s.
Are any of your Matisse posters hand-signed or from his lifetime?
No. Every Matisse poster we hold was printed after 1954. The earliest are the Nice tourism poster, printed after the Musée Matisse opened in 1963, the 1970 Grand Palais poster and the 1972 Venice Biennale poster. We list each one under the year it was printed, not the year of the artwork.
Why does a Louisiana poster say 1985 when it was printed later?
Louisiana, in Denmark, printed three posters for its Matisse exhibition of 19 January to 14 April 1985, and it has printed them again since. The exhibition dates stay on every printing. The clue is in the small print: our Red Interior copy carries the credit line “© Succession H. Matisse / VISDA 2021”, so it was printed around 2021. Each copy is an original from its own print run, and we date ours by that run: c.2021, from the 1985 design. The lesson: the big date tells you when the design was made. The small copyright line can tell you when your copy was printed.
Does a Mourlot name mean an early print?
No. Mourlot printed for Matisse from 1937, and kept printing his images after his death: our Céret poster is from 1980 and our Copenhagen poster from 1987, and the studio reprinted the 1953 Tate poster in 1959. The imprint names the printer, not the year.
Can I see more detail before I buy?
Yes. Ask us for detailed photographs of any poster. We can photograph the margins, the printer’s line and the copyright line, which show when and where it was printed.
Condition and framing
We grade condition in six steps and describe every mark (condition grading). Framing is optional, and all our framing is conservation framing (framing original posters).