The two Sarah Steins at SFMOMA, part II

Yesterday I started talking about how a nice installation at SFMOMA reveals that Matisse's 1916 portrait of Sarah Stein and its related drawing (at right) mark the end of Matisse's cubist period and his transition to what was next. The Stein painting is up all the time; the drawing isn't.

It appears to be derived from Matisse's greatest cubist portrait, a 1914 painting of his daughter, Marguerite (identifiable by the black band around her neck, a legacy of a childhood surgery). The most distinctive feature of both the drawing and the painting of Marguerite is the radically flat nose that Matisse gives to both subjects.

Matisse made Stein's nose with two straight lines which end off center in 'V' (which is echoed in classic Matisse style by the 'V' of Stein's sweater). Marguerite's nose is a vertical black stripe, which is as flat as flat gets. The shorthand also recalls Matisse's famed 'green stripe' portraits, in which he painted his wife's nose with a scandalous green stripe. (It sits across an SFMOMA gallery from the 1916 drawing.)

The other shared distinctive feature is the v-shape of whatever both Stein and Marguerite are wearing. In both portraits it serves to push the viewer's eye back up toward the subject's face.

There are other parts of the drawing that remind me of the flatness of Matisse's most dramatic cubist paintings, especially Stein's brow. The 'twin eyebrows' give Stein a certain intense severeness, but the two sets of parallel lines also flatten her whole face. (Unlike Matisse's other portraits from about this period, Stein's visage never becomes mask-like, not in the drawing nor in the painting.) 

The 'flat nose' of the 1914 painting and the 1916 drawing is gone by the time Sarah Stein's portrait made it into oils. And it's not just the nose: Everything's softer in the painted portrait: The harsh 'V' of the sweater has been rubbed into a blur. Stein's nose becomes a single, elegant curving line. Her straight mouth has been softened into rounded lips. In the drawing Stein is menacingly staring off to our left. In the painting she is engaging us with a questioning look. (Perhaps she's asking, 'Why am I raising my arms?')