Matisse and Marguerite

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is staging a groundbreaking exhibition of works by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Bringing together more than 110 works – paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and ceramics – the exhibition shows Matisse's view of his eldest daughter, Marguerite Duthuit-Matisse (1894–1982), an essential but discreet figure in his family circle. From the first images of childhood to adultlood at the end of the Second World War, Marguerite remained Matisse's most constant model - the only one to have inhabited his work over several decades. The artist seemed to see in her a kind of mirror of himself, as if, by depicting her, he were finally achieving the “almost complete identification of painter and model” to which he aspired.