This is a simple line drawing of a woman in profile, pencil and ink on paper, It is signed in the block below the image, but we are not sure if the signature is original to the plate. Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art of serenity and balance. From the onset of his career, women were one of the cardinal motifs of the artist's production. Matisse's uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne's painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cézanne. Much of Matisse's source of inspiration was poetic. Like his art, the poetry or poetic prose Matisse loved was intimate, sensuous and personal. Matisse's philosophy in his own words, "What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter...like a comforting influence, a mental balm---something like a good armchair in which one rests from physical fatigue". Overall size: 15 1/2 x 14 1/2 in Sight size: 4 3/4 x 4 1/4 in