Lithograph on vélin de Lana a la forme paper. Paper size: 7.875 x 5.875 inches. Excellent condition. Inscription: signed in pencil and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Jules Romains, de l'academie Française, Pierres Levees, Poèmes, frontispice original de Henri Matisse, 1948. Published by Flammarion, Paris; printed by Mourlot Frères, Paris, 1948. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), Justification of the draw; it was shot on vélin de Lana a la forme, 300 examples, numbered on the colophons from 1 to 300, 25 examples numbered from I to XXV, and 15 personal examples. HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954) One of the undisputed masters of 20th century art, was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labeled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.