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Adrian Mayer with a picture of the Matisse painting his wife Kaia may have modelled for |
Impressionist’s muse
Sunita Rappai tells the story of a woman who modelled for Matisse and went on to be an artist in her own right
IT’S wartime France, and a beautiful young woman meets the artist Matisse.
Kaia Mayer, born in Argentina to Danish/ English parents, had moved with her family to Vence in the South of France in 1929 aged six. Matisse, 73, had moved there in 1943, fearing he would be evacuated from his home in Nice.
That Kaia, who died two years ago, modelled for the great artist is not in doubt but whether or not she featured in any of his paintings remains a mystery – even to her husband, Highgate anthropologist Adrian Mayer.
“There were a lot of artists in the area at the time,” he says, from the home in Highgate Hill that he shared with Kaia for more than 40 years. “So she was knocking about with artists and poets and people like that in her teens and 20s. In those days, young women did not have jobs.
“She was always very modest about her modelling for Matisse so I never did find out exactly which of his paintings she appears in. A lot of his paintings of women do not have any facial features. It may be a family myth but I always assumed it was Jeune Anglaise (Young Englishwoman).
“She modelled for a bit but I think she was always very conscious of his fame and that made her self-conscious.”
Kaia, who later became a prolific artist in her own right, is currently the subject of a retrospective at Lauderdale House in Highgate organised by her husband, partly to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society. Kaia, who was 82 when she died, suffered from Alzheimer’s in the latter part of her life.
The young Kaia moved to Highgate in 1949 after meeting Adrian in Vence a year earlier. “My parents had met her and told me there was a very nice girl I should meet there,” he says. “And we did and got married a year later.”
Having been surrounded by artists for much of her life, Kaia’s interest was further sparked by research trips abroad to Fiji and India with her husband.
But her lack of formal education frustrated her, leading her to seek training at both the Byam School of Art and St Martin’s. For many years she also worked and studied at the Camden Institute.
Later, Kaia took her passion to the Highgate Society, organising annual buy-and-borrow exhibitions, Sunday salons and a children’s art exhibition. Throughout, she continued painting, experimenting with etchings, oils, batiks, monoprints and watercolours.
“I don’t know whether she was influenced by Matisse but she was always passionate about painting,” says Adrian. “I would love people to see just how diverse she was and how many different mediums she worked in.
“It would be wonderful also if people bought her paintings so that we could help the Alzheimer’s Society and find a good home for the paintings. I would like her paintings to be in more houses so that her memory lives on through them.”
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