Installation view of Matisse's "Madeleine I" (1901), "Madeleine II" (1903) and "Standing Model (Nude Study in Blue)" (1899-1900)

" 'Matisse: Painter as Sculptor,' a stunning exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is probably the largest consideration of Matisse's sculpture mounted in this country in about 40 years," says Roberta Smith. (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

Installation view of the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2001: "Jaguar Devouring a Hare" by Antoine-Louis Barye, center right, and "Serf" by Matisse behind it.

"Henri Matisse began attending classes in clay modeling and sculpture in 1899. Assigned to copy one of the sculptural masterpieces in the Louvre, Matisse settled on 'Jaguar Devouring a Hare,' a violently precise work by Antoine-Louis Barye."
"Was the choice a metaphor for gnawing ambition or the artistic survival instinct? Perhaps. Matisse was 29 and had spent four impatient years (from 1887 to 1891) as a law student and clerk before his father allowed him to study art full time." (Photo: Erik Kvalsvik/Baltimore Museum of Art )

"Large Seated Nude" (1922-1929)

"Later, whenever his paintings seemed stuck, he turned to sculpture to organize his thoughts and sensations." (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

"The Serf" (1900-1903)

"Pride of place in this elegant installation actually goes to Matisse's second sculpture, the burly 'Serf,' which he began in 1900 after an important visit to Rodin's studio. Rodin's headless, armless 'Walking Man,' to which it is directly indebted, lurks nearby. But the Barye-Matisse comparison is more primal in several senses. Mainly, it underscores Matisse's instinctive rejection of the academic tradition embodied by Barye more effectively than the Rodin-Matisse comparison, partly because Matisse learned a great deal from Rodin." (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

"The Serpentine" (1909)

This exhibition illuminates how, "through an emphasis on process, distortion and distillation, Matisse created a new immediacy in sculpture. Turning to Cézanne several years before Picasso and Braque did, Matisse achieved his own restrained three-dimensional form of Cubist fragmentation. He emphasized the inert material reality of sculpture by showing it to be a static, energetically handmade object. Yet he also removed it a bit from experience by making his objects, nearly all of which depict women, difficult to grasp as neatly resolved wholes." (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

"Two Negresses" (1907-08)

"It is useful to note that the roughness of Matisse's modeling gives his sculptures of women an unusual air of independence. You don't need to touch the surfaces to understand their textures, and they certainly don't invite caressing the way smooth bronze or marble does. This assertiveness matches the spirited poses. Matisse's figures are never in motion, but they are also rarely relaxed. Their spines twist, their heads lift, their bodies balance; their poses are taut, actively held." (Photo: David Heald/Baltimore Museum of Art)

"Large Nude" (1906)

"This show centers on more than 60 of the 82 sculptures that Matisse completed. Drawings, prints and paintings are interspersed, creating a continual interplay across mediums. That Matisse saw drawing as a form of sculpture is borne out repeatedly here. Even his simplest line drawings are explorations of three-dimensional possibilities, and often surge ahead of the sculpture. The astounding 1906 pencil study "Large Nude" seems more carved than drawn. And while this study may come to three-dimensional fruition in the majestic 'Large Seated Nude' of 1922-29, it also presages the abbreviation of Matisse's paintings of the teens and his late cutouts. It is the antecedent of the 'Blue Nude' cutout of 1952, at the end of the show." (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

"Blue Nude I" (1952)  (Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art)

(by courtesy of www.nytimes.com)