Matisse's First Trip to Morocco: The Respectable Model Zorah

First Trip to Morocco: Zorah en Jaune

We see this change from wild Fauve women to a concentration on painting one woman respectably when, towards the end of Matisse’s first trip to Morocco in 1912, he began to paint the model Zorah; the resulting collection of paintings of her that grew out of Matisse’s two separate trips to Morocco provides the perfect lens through which to compare basic differences with Matisse’s highly sexualized Fauve women in Le Bonheur de Vivre. John Elderfield in his essay entitled “Matisse in Morocco: An Interpretive Guide� from Matisse in Morocco asserts, “Matisse seems to have had difficulties finding models who would pose for him, particularly women because of the law of the veil. Only Jewesses and prostitutes were exempt� (Cowart et. al 216). Matisse is thus lucky to have found the prostitute Zorah, yet importantly he does not paint her as a prostitute. Instead, in his first picture of her, Zorah en Jaune, sexual themes are most conspicuously absent from the canvas. As a prostitute used to exposing and flaunting her body, Zorah could have easily been painted nude or with less clothing to show herself off, but instead Matisse chooses to keep her clothed and posed with prudence. Unlike the primitive, nude Western women in the Fauve Le Bonheur de Vivre, Moroccan Zorah is clothed with respect and detail to her finer characteristics. She is kneeling in a way that does not flatter her body nor draw attention to her small, flat breasts that have not been enhanced with paint. This lack of attention to her body as a sex symbol shows a certain maturity in Matisse as an artist: he is developing his ability to paint with awareness of the non-sexual qualities of his subject, a movement away from Fauve women.

Furthermore, a second item of interest that immediately deserves notice about Zorah en Jaune that makes it distinctly different from the primitive Le Bonheur de Vivre, is the title: as a model, Zorah is still named. Instead of titling the painting generically, as “Moroccan Woman� would suffice, Matisse calls Zorah by her name. This automatically gives her a less primitive, less sexual suggestion than randy Le Bonheur de Vivre, which translates to “the happiness of life,� connotes. It makes Zorah a subject, not an object, on canvas. This difference is tantamount to the distinction between the Fauve women and Zorah. These two careful deliberations by the artist as to how to depict a specific Moroccan woman show the beginnings of his development away from the raging sensuality of Fauve women and towards a calculated construction of culture and humanity of a single female within a painting.



ZORAH EN JAUNE, 1912
Henri Matisse
oil on canvas
Private Collection. Location Unknown

TROIS ETUDES DE ZORAH, 1912
Henri Matisse
Pen and Ink on Paper
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

This pen and ink study of Zorah's visage shows the careful technique of Matisse to truly render her on canvas as lifelike and beautiful as she was in person. We see the development of her face from simple sketches to a finished painting, as in Zorah en Jaune above. This further exemplifies the artist's new focus on a woman as a subject, not an object.