How a simple girl from Russia became the last love and muse of the great Matisse

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"Love in Pictures" - this can be said about the unusual relationship of Matisse and Lydia Delectorskaya, which began rather unexpectedly in the early 1930s, when she was hired to care for his sick wife Amelie. But fate decreed otherwise and the young charming Lida became much more than just a nurse and a companion …

Between his marriage to Amelie and his meeting with Lydia, Henri traveled extensively, getting to know the styles of the most diverse artists of the time. In Brittany, he admired the work of Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte and subsequently presented The Dining Table to the Salon, causing a small scandal. While in London he studied Turner's paintings, but perhaps even more influenced by his travels to Corsica and the Mediterranean. Returning to Paris and fascinated by the influence of pointillism on color, Matisse began painting street scenes from the window of his apartment overlooking the Seine.

Henri was often on the verge of financial disaster and, despite the recognition of his peers, the precariousness of his position was aggravated by the need to support his wife and three children. The failure of his only exhibition at the Vollard Gallery in 1904 was a particularly hard blow.

1905 found Matisse in Collioure, a small picturesque fishing village in the south of France, beloved then (and now) by artists. Henri was always open to new painting techniques, and here at Collioure he abandoned pointillism and adopted a less structured image in its place, using vibrant curls and colored plates. Revived, he painted pictures "Open Window, Collioure" and "Woman with a Hat". He exhibited both at the Paris Motor Show. A group of artists who painted in this freer and bolder style (later called Fauvism) were soon nicknamed "Les Fauves".

But, unfortunately, all this did not ensure financial stability for Henri, but thanks to the exhibition in Paris, Matisse came to the attention of the most influential American art collectors, and his fate changed almost overnight, not only financially.

In the fall of 1932, a beggar Russian beauty knocked on the door of an apartment building near the waterfront in Nice, a resort town in southern France. Twenty-two-year-old Lydia Delektorskaya was going to fit herself into the life of one of the most famous artists in the world.

The man she was to meet was the French contemporary painter Henri Matisse. Despite the fact that he was already sixty-three years old and already enjoyed great fame, the modest but purposeful Lida had never heard of him. She was absorbed in her own dramatic life, just trying to survive.

Lida's life was extraordinary in all respects and began that way. Born in Tomsk, Siberia, in 1910, she was orphaned at the age of twelve when both of her parents died from the epidemics that swept the country after the Bolshevik revolution. The girl fled Russia with her aunt, and together they arrived in Paris without money and without much prospects. But despite this, an intelligent and promising enough girl was admitted to the Sorbonne to study medicine, like her beloved father, but she soon realized that she could never afford this training, which cost a fortune. Instead, she worked as a dancer and movie extra, and eventually came to Nice, where she first heard of Matisse.

The girl came to the Matisse apartment building on Charles Felix 1st Square in search of work as a model artist, a job she had learned to hate thanks to unwanted attention from other artists, but Lida's choices were limited and she was desperate. Matisse, known for his good attitude to models, offered the young Russian girl six months to work as his studio assistant while he worked on Dance II, a mural commissioned by wealthy American businessman Albert K. Barnes.

This work saved Lida from poverty and changed the course of her life, as well as the life of Henri. Over the next two decades, she, with her calm efficiency and complete dedication to the needs of the master, will make herself indispensable to Matisse. Lydia worked for him and cared for him until his death in 1954, and was even the subject of Matisse's most recent work, a drawing on writing paper, while Lydia brought order and precision to Henri's life, holding back the noisy world around him when he needed peace, her arrival eventually caused a personal upheaval in the artist's family.

Matisse's wife Amelie initially welcomed the pretty girl into the house, and after her six months as studio assistant expired, Lida remained as Amelie's bedridden companion and guardian. But Amelie soon became enraged at the close bond that had developed between her husband and the pretty young Russian. Maybe they were having an affair? Friends and relatives of Matisse thought so. But the artist and his model both denied this, and Matisse biographer Hilary Sperling, who met and interviewed Lida before her death in 1998, is convinced that they were not lovers. Sperling wrote in her book The Matisse the Master.

Most of all, Madame Matisse was angry that she was pushed aside by the Russian, who took complete control over the economy and workshop. Lida kept Matisse's correspondence, his archive of works and organized all the family's trips. Lida calmed Henri's temper with stories about her snowy childhood in Siberia. And she posed for him, relieved that, - wrote Hilary.

Lydia has modeled many of Matisse's famous paintings, including Blue Eyes, Romanian Blouse, Woman in Blue, and Large Nude Reclining. She was also the subject of hundreds of drawings by Henri, some of which she donated to the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. When Amelie finally insisted on Lida's dismissal, a Russian émigré shot herself in the chest in despair at what she had just lost. what she considered the only purpose of her life. But the wound was not fatal and she managed to survive. Despite the fact that Madame Matisse managed to get rid of Lydia, Amelie divorced her marriage to Matisse. In response, the artist immediately invited Lida to return as his trusted assistant. She continued to take care of all of Anri's needs until his death. During the war, she hung carpets on the windows of their apartment to keep him warm, and rode her bicycle all over Paris to buy groceries.

According to Jacques Murlot, whose father owned and operated the famous Atelier Mourlot engraving workshop, the Russian émigré was always close to the master. The atelier and its skilled craftsmen worked with Matisse on his many printed works, such as lithographs. Jacques regularly took proofs of his work to the Parisian house of the artist for approval. Lydia died in Paris and is buried in Pavlovsk, near St. Petersburg. But her beautiful face continues to live in the drawings and paintings of the great painter.

And in continuation of the theme - a fascinating story about being in a wheelchair, drawing his masterpieces with scissors.