I have a good friend who lives in Château Noir, a few miles outside of Aix-en-Provence. He is an artist, and he does beautiful drawings, etchings, and lithography, many of which I have been pleased to purchase. Like me, he is a great worshipper of Cézanne, and when I go to Aix we often visit the places where Cézanne stood when doing various of the paintings I've collected. In the late nineteen-fifties, my artist friend, being a good friend of Mme. Henri Matisse, asked whether my wife and I would like to visit her, which we were of course very happy to do. A telephone call was made to Mme. Matisse, who said that she wasn't feeling well at the time. When our friend advised her that we were only going to be in Aix for another day, Madame Matisse, who was then in her eighties, replied, "Well, if they don't come this year, perhaps they will come next year, or the year after." However, she called back the next day, an appointment was made, and we met a most charming woman.

She had wonderful little paintings all around her living room: a Cézanne still life, a small Seurat, and paintings of the Paris school. She wasn't satisfied with our just looking at these paintings; she would take a painting off the wall, and show it to us close up, and then put it back, and do the same with the next painting. After standing for about an hour and a half, going through this procedure, I sat down, but Mme. Matisse kept going. After a while, my wife asked her how it was that all her paintings were so small. She answered, "When I suddenly parted with Henri, there wasn't much time, and I had to put into a bag as many paintings as I could, and that is the reason I picked out all the small paintings."