Matisse created his illustrations for this exceptional project before the author’s text had been completed. The story, by his son-in-law, Georges Duthuit, was a fictional account of the meeting between a modern civilized society and a primitive one, that of “Cimmérie”, which he based on North American Inuits. Because of the nature of the subject, Matisse relied upon second-hand sources for his illustrations: photography, film, reference books, and Inuit masks.