Matisse's Second Trip to Morocco: The Most Refined Paintings of Zorah

Matisse's Second Trip to Morocco: The Most Refined Paintings of Zorah

When Matisse returned to Tanger in October 1912, he located Zorah in a local brothel so that he could paint her again, and the result was the production of three more paintings: Sur La Terrasse, Zorah debout, and Zorah assise, all presenting her as a refined woman of Moroccan culture. Zorah debout and Zorah assise show Matisse’s further concentration on capturing a woman as refined subject of the Moroccan culture, not a sex symbol as the Fauve women most nearly were. Zorah assise, although just a sketch, depicts the model seated while it focuses on her thoughtful visage, an important development from the empty faces of Matisse’s rogue women in Le Bonheur de Vivre. This simple canvas shows a deep character study of her features, nothing savage nor wild about it. The other painting, Zorah debout, is clearly finished; this colorful canvas shows the model standing, with a plain background to drive the focus inward. Douglas Mannering, author of The Art of Matisse, concludes that this painting is the paramount confirmation of the effects of colorful and exotic people and surroundings on Matisse’s painting. He asserts that as a result, “Matisse painted some of his most ‘Islamic pictures’…the outstanding example is Zorah debout” (Mannering 48). This confirms the continual transition of Matisse’s paintings from the violent, primitive Fauve women to the more refined and less primitive model Zorah.

Sur La Terrasse presents most distinctly the development of Matisse’s depictions of women as cultured subjects and not sexual objects because it shows the model kneeling on a terrace with her traditional shoes, called “babouches”, side by side near her, and a goldfish bowl to her left. This goldfish bowl is very similar to the large ones from Matisse’s two paintings done in Paris, but their relegation to mere props in the setting shows Matisse’s focus on the model herself. Moreover, his effort to depict her dress accurately, including the positioning of her babouches neatly lined up next to her as she kneels, shows his emphasis on her “civilization,” a far cry from the primitiveness of the Fauve women in Le Bonheur de Vivre. Strangely, though, art historians have hitherto failed to recognize this significance, nor have they given Matisse credit for the complete overhaul of his depictions of women. In his essay entitled “Matisse in Morocco: A Colonizing Esthetic?” author Roger Benjamin fails to see this significance when he unconvincingly concludes that:

It is worth pointing out the degree to which they [the paintings] are utterly conventional in their staging of the theme “Moroccan woman”: one may easily multiply comparable images, both from the postcards at the disposition of European tourists and middle-of-the-road orientalist pictures from the first half of the 20th century, all of which feature cross-legged women whose robes or breeches billow out in a way that, for the European audience, might imply the physical ease and reputed sensual appetite of the North African woman. (Benjamin 162).

Here, Roger Benjamin sees Matisse’s Zorah as “sensual,” referencing a certain “sensual appetite of the North African woman” to be taken from the way in which Zorah is posed. Yet this statement blatantly ignores her traditional pose of reverence and submissiveness, not seduction. Furthermore, Benjamin ignores the significance of Matisse’s new attention to Zorah’s culture in calling Zorah a “cross-legged woman whose robes billow out.” Yet these robes would have been left out had she been painted a voluptuous nude, like the primitive women Matisse painted in Collioure. Indeed, Matisse even carefully includes as props the goldfish bowl and her neatly aligned babouches, a touch that is vital in Sur La Terrasse because it incorporates both the fish from Matisse’s Parisian paintings earlier in the year and important elements of Moroccan culture – the babouches – in his presentation of Zorah. Thus, we see in Sur La Terrasse the final development of refinement as an identifying characteristic of the model Zorah, and sensuality vanishing as a qualitative attribute, one that had marked Matisse’s paintings of women in Collioure. This final painting displays the full effects of his trip to Morocco on Matisse in his ability to capture the feminine essence of Zorah in Tanger, and shows that by the end of Matisse’s time in Morocco, he truly had developed a new focus in his depictions of women away from the primitive and the sexual; Sur La Terrasse epitomizes this final touch before he returned to Paris for good.

SUR LA TERRASSE, 1912/1913
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

ZORAH DEBOUT, fall of 1912, left
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
The State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad

ZORAH ASSISE, 1912/1913, right
Henri Matisse
essence on canvas [essence: "oil paint thinned with turpentine or a similar substance that reduces the viscosity of the paint so that it may be easily applied to the surface in a thin film". Ralph Mayer, The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques (New York, 1981), 363) (qtd. Cowart et. al 78)]
Private Collection