This is a groundbreaking exhibition of works by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) bringing together more than 110 works – paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and ceramics – revealing Matisse's view of his daughter, Marguerite Duthuit-Matisse (1894–1982), an essential but discreet figure in his family circle. Photographs, archival material and paintings by Marguerite herself fill out the portrait of this little-known personality.

From Matisse’s images of her childhood to the end of the Second World War, Marguerite remained his most constant model and the only one to have featured in his work over several decades. Child of an ephemeral liaison with a model in his early career, Matisse nearly lost Marguerite at the age of seven, when suffering from diphtheria she underwent a dangerous tracheotomy. This experience undoubtedly forged the unusually strong bond between the artist and his eldest child.

Remarkably frank and intense, his portraits of Marguerite convey an emotion that reflects the depth of the artist's affection for his daughter. Matisse seemed to see in her a kind of mirror of himself, as if in his depictions he was finally achieving the "almost complete identification of painter and model" to which he aspired.