Beginning in 1938 a company called Verve began publishing a hard cover art book (mostly by subscription) each featuring different artists. The colour lithographs were printed by Mourlot of Paris and the black and white images were printed by Draeger Freres of Paris. The Matisse prints were included in the book titled ‘The Last Works of Matisse 1950-1954’. All of the colour images were executed by the artist with papers colored in gouache, cut with scissors and pasted into a collage; a medium that Matisse was very comfortable with. Matisse composed the cover specially for this volume. The lithographs were printed in 1954 under his direction. The whole work constitutes number 35/36 of the Verve series. The printing was completed in 1958 when the book was released to the public.