From Textile to Painting

 [Detail, Henri Matisse, 1869 - 1954, BOUQUET DE FLEURS POUR LE QUATORZE JUILLET via Sotheby's.]

[Henri Matisse, 1869 - 1954, BOUQUET DE FLEURS POUR LE QUATORZE JUILLET via Sotheby's.]

If you follow the major art auctions, you probably already know that Matisse's 1919 Bouquet de Fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet sold tonight, above estimate, at Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale. (Hammer price here.)

 [Click here for video coverage of the key lots in the sale.]

The painting, Matisse's celebration of the first Bastille Day following the World War I Armistice, was earlier chosen by Sotheby's for the cover of the sale catalog.

[Henri Matisse textile collection as seen in Matisse, His Art and His Textiles and at Sotheby's online.]

I'm mentioning it hastily now, in part, because one of Matisse's treasured textiles (a 19th-century French printed cloth from the book I've been going on and on about) inspired the painting's background.

Above is Bennison's Matisse linen.

[Kuba cloth from Allan Arthur.]

And here, Kuba cloth in the background of a Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph of Matisse in his studio 1943-44, from Matisse, His Art and His Textiles. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, an exhibition currently on view at MoMA, includes the photographer's famous portrait of Matisse with his birds and is traveling to the High in 2011.