Portraits dominated the later years of Matisse’s printmaking. He created this powerful depiction of the model Carmen Lahens, a Haitian dancer, while working on the illustrated book Les Fleurs du Mal by poet Charles Baudelaire. In 1944, Matisse began to work on this collection of poetry, finishing the publication in 1947. The 33 prints, including this work, are mostly images of female faces seen from up close alongside portraits of the French poets Baudelaire and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as a self-portrait. Matisse included models of African and Asian descent in this book and other work from the 1940s. His titles sometimes reflect a greater interest in racial subjects rather than in accurately characterizing nationality. Here, Matisse recasts Lahens as a woman from Martinique.