In 1947, the Second World War had just ended and Henri Matisse, then aged 78, was at the height of his graphic career. That year, Jacqueline, or Jacky as she was known, was around 16 years old when she served as a model for her grandfather Henri Matisse's series of portrait drawings. As with the Variations, from a few years earlier, Matisse explores the same subject - his granddaughter Jacky - in different drawings, using the same medium - pen-and-ink - and similar dimensions to capture every emotion of the model. Through this creative process unique to the artist, Matisse produced a number of drawings with fine, pure lines and great precision to get to the heart of the matter. Intimate yet masterful, these drawings bear witness to the artist's love for his granddaughter.

Henri MATISSE                         
JAKY, 1947                          
Indian ink on paper           
Signed, dated and titled lower right          
JAKY / H. Matisse 47                    
49,4 x 37,2 cm    

Henri MATISSE                         
JACKY, 1947                          
Indian ink on paper           
Signed, dated and titled lower right          
JACKY / H. Matisse 47                    
49,8 x 37,5 cm  

Jacqueline Matisse Monnier (1931-2021)

Jacqueline, or Jacky/Jackie as she was known, was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1931, but grew up in New York. 
The year she was born, her father, Pierre Matisse, opened his gallery in the Fuller Building on East 57th Street, and her grandfather, Henri Matisse, was the subject of MoMA's first monographic exhibition. 
She spent her childhood surrounded by the works of artists such as Giacometti, Balthus and Miró, who was her godfather and whose work her father introduced to the American public. 
Jacky attended the Brearley School for Girls, where one of her classmates was the Franco-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, who became a lifelong friend. 
After the war, Jacky returned to Paris, where she studied literature at the Sorbonne.
She often visited the studio and home of sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who had taught Jacky's mother when she was a student at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Back in New York, Jacky met Bernard Monnier, a young French banker, whom she married in 1954. They settled in Paris, where Bernard worked in the family bank and Jacky looked after their four children. They began to fill their house, a large apartment on the rue du Bac in the 7th arrondissement, with works of art.
Also in 1954, Marcel Duchamp became Jacky's stepfather after marrying his mother, Alexina "Teeny" Sattler, following Teeny's divorce from Pierre.

Some thoughts by Henri Matisse from his collection Écrits et propos sur l'art, Savoir collection, éditions Hermann, Paris, 1972:

"Accuracy is not truth."
"WHEN I EXECUTE my "Variations" drawings, the path my pencil makes on the sheet of paper is, in part, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the dark. What I mean is that there's nothing planned about my route: I'm being led, I'm not being led {...}. As the spider casts (or hangs?) its thread at the asperity, which seems to it the most propitious and from there to another which it then sees, and from point to point establishes its web."