When the great Matisse retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art ended, in January 1993, it was followed for one amazing week by an unpublicized epilogue—a small show that could only be described as modernist heaven. Improvised at the last minute by the retrospective’s curator, John Elderfield, the two-room installation set a nearly ideal selection of iconic Matisses among equally iconic Picassos. The Matisses included the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) (1907) with her wrenched hip, the Pompidou’s sketchily brushed trio of nude bathers, Le Luxe I (1907), the monumental Bathers with a Turtle (1908) from St. Louis, and their austere, near-abstract sisters, Bathers by a River (1909–1910, 1913, 1916) from the Art Institute of Chicago, plus three of MOMA’s bronze Backs. The Picassos, all from MOMA’s own holdings, included the hefty Two Nudes (1906), ...

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