Matisse is said to have "liked her natural dignity, the graceful way her head sat on her neck and, above all, the fact that her body caught the light like a sculpture."
Wheaton College professor Ellen McBreen writes in the catalogue of the Matisse in the Studio,' exhibition she helped to organise in 2017, that the cultural interchange one sees in these paintings was “made possible by larger political structures, such as colonialism, which in turn made African and North African culture accessible to Matisse in the first place.
Needless to say, there would have been no West and Central African sculpture to study or collect in Paris in the early 20th century without European colonists invading those lands: African art was the spoils of this war.”[5] Greg Cook writes that "In Matisse’s art, this larger colonial context that he’s working within becomes most troubling when it’s reflected in paintings depicting European sex fantasies featuring the conquered peoples.
A consummate violinist, like Matisse with whom she would play duets, Darricarère had planned to start a musical career at a concert in Nice, however her experience of acute stage fright dissuaded her.
[2] This emphasis on Darricarère's backup plan mirrors a crisis moment in Matisse's own life, when he feared that he was going blind and turned his attention to the violin as a kind of career insurance policy.