Matisse Museum Receives Landmark Bequest

LE CATEAU, France—The Matisse museum in the village of Le Cateau in northeast France, the post-Impressionist painter's birthplace, has received an important bequest of 39 works.

The highlight of the gift is an entire dining room decorated by a stained glass window by Matisse and a tiled wall on which the artist painted a giant tree. The room also contains a white plaster chandelier by Giacometti and a sculpture by Henri Laurens.

The works are from the collection of the Greek-born art publisher Efstratios Eleftheriades, better known as Tériade, a close friend of Matisse who died two decades ago, and his wife Alice, who died last year. Alice Tériade had promised her husband she would not allow the works to be split up, and donated the first portion of his estate, a collection of 27 books of paintings artists had done with him, to the museum in 2002. The Matisse museum was set up during the artist's lifetime and contains more than 170 of his works.

The dining room was previously seen only by close friends and family of the couple in their villa near Nice. "The painters were our family," said Alice Tériade. "Picasso and Chagall used to come to lunch on a Sunday. We never knew how many there would be."