MATISSE
Woman in Red Madras
I have before me six of Jawlensky’s heads, painted a year or so apart. They range from almost conventional portrait studies in strong impressionistic manner to heads very like Matisse’s “Madras Rouge,” thence to the head reproduced, which was the last painted.
The series shows an interesting development of the painter’s convictions, his technic remains essentially the same, facile and competent, only the latest picture places a much greater stress upon his resources.
It was apparent from things in his studio, canvases ten or twelve years old, that he could have made a commercial success as a painter of portraits.
To say that Jawlensky’s latest heads with their strange, expressive, exaggerated eyes are not wholly new one has only to turn to any work on Greek painting wherein are reproduced some of the encaustic and tempera portraits found in the Fayum some twenty-odd years ago.