A Page from the #Drawing Papers Archive This page from Drawing Papers 121 features Portrait of Franz Villier, a charcoal on paper drawing created by Henri Matisse. The 2015 exhibition Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts explored four hundred years of portrait drawings, emphasizing work from live models. Forty portraits were chosen from the Beaux-Arts de Paris’ collection based on diverse criteria such as the male and female gestures, caricature, frontal gaze, social class, and profession of the model. The selection of works was extensive, ranging from seventeenth-century to the present. This portrait, for Matisse, is not a representation of an anatomical truth but a projection of the artist’s feelings in front of the “particular asymmetry” of a face whose rhythm guides the painter’s hand. He was inspired by the emaciated features, high cheekbones, and deep gaze of Franz Villier, the pen name of the avant-garde writer Francois Thomassin. The Drawing Papers are a series of public...