Museum displays Matisse work

“The Plum Blossoms,” a major painting by the French master Henri Matisse that had not been publicly displayed in 35 years, has resurfaced as a new acquisition of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The work, created in 1948, was purchased for MoMA by the museum’s new president, Marie-Josee Kravis, and her husband, financier Henry Kravis. One of the artist’s late works before his death in 1954, it was last publicly displayed in 1970 at the Grand Palais in Paris and was then sold to an unidentified buyer, said John Elderfield, the museum’s chief curator of painting and sculpture.

This summer, MoMA was approached by a New York dealer on behalf of a European collector who did not wish to be named. The price was not disclosed because the transaction with the Kravises was private.