MATISSE, HENRI. 1869-1954.


René Leriche. Lithographic portriat, 191 x 128 mm, [1949], signed in pencil and numbered 180 of 300 at bottom margin, float mounted and matted. WITH: 1. Eight photographic prints, 90 x 90 mm and smaller, depicting Rene Leriche. One of the images included is the photograph Matisse used to create the lithograph above.2. LERICHE, RENÉ. 1879-1955. La Chirurgie, Discipline de la Connaissance. [Paris]: La Diane Francaise, 1949. 8vo. Red textured cloth gilt. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED on the front blank: "A mon ami, Maurice Gervais, Souvenir de l'Hopital Americain." LIMITED EDITION number 213 of 300. Signed portrait removed (see above).3. ---. La Chirurgie a l'Ordre de la Vie. [PARIS]: La Presse Francaise et Etranger, 1945. Blue cloth gilt.4. ---. Souvenir de ma Vie Morte. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1956. Green textured cloth gilt. INSCRIBED by Madame Leriche to Maurice Gervais, with her calling card laid in on half-title. With fragment of original dust jacket.5. ---. Les Embolies de L'Artere Pulmonaire et des Arteres des Membres. Paris: Masson, 1947. Printed wrappers. 6. ---. Lettres Choisies du Professeur Rene Leriche. Paris: G. Arnulf and A. Morel, 1990. Red printed wrappers. Sunned.7. GEORGE, ANDRE. Editor. Stele pour Rene Leriche, Chirurgien Francais. Paris: Lardanchet, 1958. Printed wrappers. Memorial publication for Rene Leriche.Henri Matisse produced a lithograph portrait of his surgeon Rene Leriche in 1949. Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling describes Leriche as "the surgeon who had saved his life in Lyon ... Matisse was seventy-one years old when he returned from the grave in the spring of 1941." The artist had been having recurrent attacks of abdominal pain for a year when he was hospitalized in Nice in December 1940. After deteriorating dramatically, he was transferred to Lyon just after the New Year. Leriche and fellow surgeon Paul Santy recommended an emergency operation. Matisse underwent a two-stage colostomy in mid-January, but he had a near-fatal pulmonary embolism shortly after surgery. He left the hospital in April 1941 and stayed in a nearby hotel. Matisse was a semi-invalid for the rest of his life, but knew that he had barely survived and referred to the period after the operation and recovery as his "second life." The eight photographs that accompany this lot are candid snapshots of Leriche in his home or garden in Cassis, France. Leriche's widow sent these original snapshots to her late husband's former pupil Maurice Gervais (1914-1998). Gervais worked with Leriche in Paris at the Hopital Americain during World War II, when Leriche was chief of surgery at the hospital. Gervais became a prominent vascular surgeon in Montreal after the war. See Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master 2003.