Two Women in Street Costumes (Deux femmes en costume de ville)

Two Women in Street Costumes (Deux femmes en costume de ville) is an early and intimate print created by Henri Matisse around 1900. This piece is classified as a drypoint, a highly specialized form of intaglio printmaking. In drypoint, the artist draws directly onto a copper plate with a sharp metal point, displacing material to form a burr along the line. When the plate is inked, this raised burr holds a substantial amount of ink, resulting in the characteristic soft, velvety lines and rich tonal effects visible in the final impression.

Created during the transitional period spanning 1900–03, this French print captures two figures dressed in contemporary costume de ville (street clothes). The composition contrasts sharply with the explosion of color that would define Matisse’s later Fauvist experiments. Here, Matisse focuses solely on the economy of line and the structural relationship between the figures. The drypoint technique accentuates the weight and texture of the women’s early 20th-century garments, emphasizing their contours and the overall geometry of the scene. The subject matter reflects the artist’s early engagement with depicting everyday life and the anonymous figures encountered in urban Parisian environments.

The sophisticated control Matisse demonstrates over this exacting medium reveals his foundation in traditional draftsmanship. The sparse yet powerful approach foreshadows the minimalist tendencies the artist would occasionally revisit throughout his career, even while pursuing radical advancements in painting. This important work of graphic art is housed in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where it serves as a crucial document for tracking the artist’s development prior to his major stylistic shifts. As a significant early print, images of this work are often made available through public domain archives for scholarly study of Matisse's formative period.