Henri Matisse
Overview
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman
, printmaker
, and sculptor
, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso
and Marcel Duchamp
, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, printmaker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, and sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
Unanswered Questions
Discussions
Quotations
At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.
Statement to Tériade|Tériade, quoted by Tériade in "Constance de Fauvisme," Minotaure (1936-10-15), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
Time magazine (1950-06-26)
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
As quoted in obituaries (1954-11-05)
A picture must possess a real power to generate light ... for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
[I wouldn't mind turning into] a vermilion goldfish.
At age 80, as quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
As quoted by in the review of "The Drawings of Henri Matisse" exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (1985-03-25)
It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color — not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.
As quoted by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (1985-03-25)
Encyclopedia
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman
, printmaker
, and sculptor
, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso
and Marcel Duchamp
, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve
(wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.
His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art
.
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis
, Nord, France. He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois
, Picardie, France, where his parents owned a flower business; he was their first son. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis
after gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis
. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father. In 1891, he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian
and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau
and Gustave Moreau
. Initially he painted still-lifes and landscapes in a traditional style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Matisse was influenced by the works of earlier masters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
, Nicolas Poussin
, and Antoine Watteau
, as well as by modern artists such as Édouard Manet
, and by Japanese art
. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters; as an art student he made copies of four Chardin paintings in the Louvre
.
In 1896 and 1897, Matisse visited the painter John Peter Russell
on the island Belle Île
off the coast of Brittany
. Russell introduced him to Impressionism
and to the work of van Gogh
, who had been a friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me." In 1896 Matisse exhibited five paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, two of which were purchased by the state.
With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). Marguerite and Amélie often served as models for Matisse.
In 1898, on the advice of Camille Pissarro
, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner
and then went on a trip to Corsica
. Upon his return to Paris in February 1899, he worked beside Albert Marquet
and met André Derain
, Jean Puy
, and Jules Flandrin
. Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin
, a painting by Gauguin
, a drawing by van Gogh
, and Cézanne
's Three Bathers. In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour, Matisse found his main inspiration.
Many of Matisse's paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist
technique he adopted after reading Paul Signac
's essay, "D'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-impressionisme". His paintings of 1902–03, a period of material hardship for the artist, are comparatively somber and reveal a preoccupation with form. Having made his first attempt at sculpture, a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye
, in 1899, he devoted much of his energy to working in clay, completing The Slave in 1903.
His first solo exhibition was at Ambroise Vollard's
gallery in 1904, without much success. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionist
s Signac and Henri Edmond Cross. In that year he painted the most important of his works in the neo-Impressionist style, Luxe, Calme et Volupté
. In 1905 he travelled southwards again to work with André Derain
at Collioure
. His paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and use pointillism
in a less rigorous way than before.
In 1905, Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves
" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne
. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject's natural colours. Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles
described the work with the phrase "Donatello
au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance
-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas
, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. The exhibition garnered harsh criticism—"A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", said the critic Camille Mauclair
—but also some favourable attention. When the painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse's Woman with a Hat
, was bought by Gertrude
and Leo Stein
, the embattled artist's morale improved considerably.
Matisse was recognized as a leader of the Fauves, along with André Derain; the two were friendly rivals, each with his own followers. Other members were Georges Braque
, Raoul Dufy
and Maurice de Vlaminck
. The Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau
(1826–1898) was the movement's inspirational teacher; as a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts
in Paris, he pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions.
In 1907 Apollinaire
, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." But Matisse's work of the time also encountered vehement criticism, and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Nu bleu
was burned in effigy at the Armory Show
in Chicago in 1913.
The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse
, even though he did not quite fit in, with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. He continued to absorb new influences: after viewing a large exhibition of Islamic art
in Munich
in 1910, he spent two months in Spain studying Moorish art. The effect on Matisse's art was a new boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour, as in L'Atelier Rouge
(1911).
Matisse had a long association with the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin
. He created one of his major works La Danse
specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission, the other painting being Music, 1910. An earlier version of La Danse
(1909) is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso
, who was 12 years younger than Matisse. The two became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still life
, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Matisse and Picasso were first brought together at the Paris salon
of Gertrude Stein
and her companion Alice B. Toklas
. During the first decade of the 20th century, Americans in Paris — Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein
, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah — were important collectors and supporters of Matisse's paintings. In addition Gertrude Stein's two American friends from Baltimore
, the Cone sisters Clarabel and Etta, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings. The Cone collection is now exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Art
.
While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among the paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Renoir
, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso's works dominated Leo and Gertrude Stein's collection, Sarah Stein
's collection emphasized Matisse.
Contemporaries of Leo and Gertrude Stein, Matisse and Picasso became part of their social circle and routinely joined the gatherings that took place on Saturday evenings at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Gertrude attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, remarking:
More and more frequently, people began visiting to see the Matisse paintings—and the Cézannes: "Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began."
Among Pablo Picasso's acquaintances who also frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier
(Picasso's mistress), Georges Braque, André Derain, the poets Max Jacob
and Guillaume Apollinaire
, Marie Laurencin
(Apollinaire's mistress and an artist in her own right), and Henri Rousseau
.
His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris,
a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1907 until 1911. Hans Purrmann
and Sarah Stein were amongst several of his most loyal students.
In 1917 Matisse relocated to Cimiez
on the French Riviera
, a suburb of the city of Nice
. His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach. This "return to order
" is characteristic of much art of the post-World War I
period, and can be compared with the neoclassicism
of Picasso and Stravinsky
, and the return to traditionalism of Derain
.
His orientalist
odalisque
paintings are characteristic of the period; while this work was popular, some contemporary critics found it shallow and decorative.
In the late 1920s Matisse notably once again engaged in active collaborations with other artists. He worked with not only Frenchmen, Dutch, Germans, and Spanish, but also a few Americans and recent American immigrants.
After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appeared in his work. American art collector Albert C. Barnes
convinced him to produce a large mural for the Barnes Foundation, The Dance II, which was completed in 1932. The Foundation owns several dozen other Matisse paintings.
He and his wife of 41 years separated in 1939. In 1941, he underwent surgery in which a colostomy
was performed. Afterwards he started using a wheelchair, and until his death he was cared for by a Russian woman, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches découpés. His Blue Nudes
series feature prime examples of this technique he called "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.
Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the Résistance
during the war, was tortured (almost to death) in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration camp
. (Marguerite avoided further imprisonment by escaping from the Ravensbrück-bound train, which was halted during an Allied air strike; she survived in the woods until rescued by fellow resisters.)
Matisse's student Rudolf Levy
was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp
in 1944.
In 1947 he published Jazz
, a limited-edition book containing prints of colorful paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. In the 1940s he also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios
in Paris.
According to David Rockefeller
, Matisse's final work was the design for a stained-glass window installed at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills
near the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. "It was his final artistic creation; the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom when he died in November of 1954", Rockefeller writes. Installation was completed in 1956.
Jazz
1947, artist's book of about one hundred prints
based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade
, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir (stencil
) prints.
In 1951 Matisse finished a four-year project of designing the interior, the glass windows and the decorations of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, often referred to as the Matisse Chapel. This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie. He had hired her as a nurse and model in 1941 before she became a Dominican nun and they met again in Vence
and started the collaboration, a story related in her 1992 book Henri Matisse: La Chapelle de Vence and in the 2003 documentary "A Model for Matisse".
He established a museum
dedicated to his work in 1952, in his birthplace city, and this museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 1954. He is interred in the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.
The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums
(1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne
.
The Plum Blossoms
, a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased on 8 September 2005, for the Museum of Modern Art
by Henry Kravis
and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin
. Estimated price was US $25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.
Matisse's daughter Marguerite often aided Matisse scholars with insights about his working methods and his works. She died in 1982 while compiling a catalog of her father's work.
Matisse's son, Pierre Matisse
, (1900–1989) opened an important modern art gallery in New York City during the 1930s. The Pierre Matisse Gallery which was active from 1931 until 1989 represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York often for the first time. He exhibited Joan Miró
, Marc Chagall
, Alberto Giacometti
, Jean Dubuffet
, André Derain
, Yves Tanguy
, Le Corbusier
, Paul Delvaux
, Wifredo Lam
, Jean-Paul Riopelle
, Balthus
, Leonora Carrington
, Zao Wou Ki
, Sam Francis
, sculptors Theodore Roszak
, Raymond Mason and Reg Butler
, and several other important artists, including the work of Henri Matisse.
Henri Matisse's grandson, Paul Matisse
, is an artist and inventor living in Massachusetts
. Matisse's great-granddaughter Sophie Matisse is active as an artist as of 2010. Les Heritiers Matisse functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for Les Heritiers Matisse is the Artists Rights Society
.
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, printmaker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, and sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
(wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.
His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
.
Early life and education
Le Cateau-Cambrésis
Le Cateau-Cambrésis is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.The term Cambrésis indicates that it lies in the county of that name which fell to the Prince-Bishop of Cambrai.-History:...
, Nord, France. He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois
Bohain-en-Vermandois
Bohain-en-Vermandois is a commune in the department of Aisne in Picardy in northern France.It is the place where the painter Henri Matisse grew up.-History:...
, Picardie, France, where his parents owned a flower business; he was their first son. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis
Le Cateau-Cambrésis
Le Cateau-Cambrésis is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.The term Cambrésis indicates that it lies in the county of that name which fell to the Prince-Bishop of Cambrai.-History:...
after gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father. In 1891, he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.-Life and career :William-Adolphe...
and Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...
. Initially he painted still-lifes and landscapes in a traditional style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Matisse was influenced by the works of earlier masters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...
, Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, and Antoine Watteau
Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...
, as well as by modern artists such as Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, and by Japanese art
Japanese art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...
. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters; as an art student he made copies of four Chardin paintings in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
.
In 1896 and 1897, Matisse visited the painter John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter.-Life and work:John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, née Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir...
on the island Belle Île
Belle Île
Belle-Île or Belle-Île-en-Mer is a French island off the coast of Brittany in the département of Morbihan, and the largest of Brittany's islands. It is 14 km from the Quiberon peninsula.Administratively, the island forms a canton: the canton of Belle-Île...
off the coast of Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
. Russell introduced him to Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and to the work of van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, who had been a friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time. Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me." In 1896 Matisse exhibited five paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, two of which were purchased by the state.
With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). Marguerite and Amélie often served as models for Matisse.
In 1898, on the advice of Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
and then went on a trip to Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
. Upon his return to Paris in February 1899, he worked beside Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement.-Life and work:Marquet was born in 1875 at Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work...
and met André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, Jean Puy
Jean Puy
Jean Puy was a French Fauvist artist. He studied architecture in Lyon and painting with Jean-Paul Laurens at l'Académie Julian between 1897 and 1898. He met Henri Matisse and other like-minded artists when he transferred to the l'Academie Carriere in 1899...
, and Jules Flandrin
Jules Flandrin
Jules Flandrin was a French painter, printer and draughtsman. He was a pupil of Gustave Moreau. He was a contemporary of Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet. He became somewhat famous for being fairly conformist early in his career but later in life he made more emotional and less...
. Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
, a painting by Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, a drawing by van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, and Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
's Three Bathers. In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour, Matisse found his main inspiration.
Many of Matisse's paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist
Divisionism
Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically....
technique he adopted after reading Paul Signac
Paul Signac
Paul Signac was a French neo-impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillist style.-Biography:Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863...
's essay, "D'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-impressionisme". His paintings of 1902–03, a period of material hardship for the artist, are comparatively somber and reveal a preoccupation with form. Having made his first attempt at sculpture, a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye was a French sculptor most famous for his work as an animalier, a sculptor of animals.-Biography:Born in Paris, Barye began his career as a goldsmith, like many sculptors of the Romantic Period...
, in 1899, he devoted much of his energy to working in clay, completing The Slave in 1903.
Fauvism
Ambroise Vollard
Ambroise Vollard is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century...
gallery in 1904, without much success. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionist
Neo-impressionism
Neo-impressionism was coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s greatest masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition...
s Signac and Henri Edmond Cross. In that year he painted the most important of his works in the neo-Impressionist style, Luxe, Calme et Volupté
Luxe, Calme et Volupté
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is an oil painting by Henri Matisse. It was painted in 1904, after a summer spent working in St. Tropez on the French Riviera alongside the neo-Impressionist painters Paul Signac and Henri Edmond Cross...
. In 1905 he travelled southwards again to work with André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
at Collioure
Collioure
Collioure is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France.It lies on the Mediterranean and was a part of the ancient Roussillon province....
. His paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and use pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
in a less rigorous way than before.
In 1905, Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne
In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...
. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject's natural colours. Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles
Louis Vauxcelles
Louis Vauxcelles was an influential French art critic. He is credited with coining the terms Fauvism , and Cubism ....
described the work with the phrase "Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...
au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas
Gil Blas (periodical)
Gil Blas was a Parisian literary periodical founded by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont in November 1879. It was in publication until 1914...
, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. The exhibition garnered harsh criticism—"A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", said the critic Camille Mauclair
Camille Mauclair
Séverin Faust , better known by his pseudonym Camille Mauclair, was a French poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, and art critic....
—but also some favourable attention. When the painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse's Woman with a Hat
Woman with a Hat
Woman with a Hat is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905.It is believed that the woman in the painting was Matisse's wife, Amelie....
, was bought by Gertrude
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and Leo Stein
Leo Stein
Leo Stein was an American art collector and critic. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the older brother of Gertrude Stein. He became an influential promoter of 20th-century paintings. Beginning in 1892, he studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for two years. The...
, the embattled artist's morale improved considerably.
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
, Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy[p] was a French Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles, as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. He is noted for scenes of open-air social events...
and Maurice de Vlaminck
Maurice de Vlaminck
Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense color.-Life:Maurice de Vlaminck was born in Paris to a family...
. The Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...
(1826–1898) was the movement's inspirational teacher; as a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in Paris, he pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions.
In 1907 Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable." But Matisse's work of the time also encountered vehement criticism, and it was difficult for him to provide for his family. His controversial 1907 painting Nu bleu
Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)
Blue Nude is an early 1907 oil painting by Henri Matisse. It is located at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the Cone Collection....
was burned in effigy at the Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
in Chicago in 1913.
The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
, even though he did not quite fit in, with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. He continued to absorb new influences: after viewing a large exhibition of Islamic art
Islamic art
Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations...
in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in 1910, he spent two months in Spain studying Moorish art. The effect on Matisse's art was a new boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour, as in L'Atelier Rouge
L'Atelier Rouge
L'Atelier Rouge, also known as The Red Studio, is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1911, in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art New York City....
(1911).
Matisse had a long association with the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin
Sergei Shchukin
Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, following a trip to Paris in 1897, when he bought his first Monet. He later bought numerous works by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, among...
. He created one of his major works La Danse
The Dance (painting)
The Dance are two related paintings made by Henri Matisse between 1909 and 1910. The first, preliminary version is Matisse's study for the second version...
specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting commission, the other painting being Music, 1910. An earlier version of La Danse
The Dance (painting)
The Dance are two related paintings made by Henri Matisse between 1909 and 1910. The first, preliminary version is Matisse's study for the second version...
(1909) is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Gertrude Stein, Académie Matisse, and the Cone sisters
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, who was 12 years younger than Matisse. The two became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still life
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Matisse and Picasso were first brought together at the Paris salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and her companion Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
. During the first decade of the 20th century, Americans in Paris — Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein
Leo Stein
Leo Stein was an American art collector and critic. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the older brother of Gertrude Stein. He became an influential promoter of 20th-century paintings. Beginning in 1892, he studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for two years. The...
, Michael Stein and Michael's wife Sarah — were important collectors and supporters of Matisse's paintings. In addition Gertrude Stein's two American friends from Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, the Cone sisters Clarabel and Etta, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings. The Cone collection is now exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
.
While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among the paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso's works dominated Leo and Gertrude Stein's collection, Sarah Stein
Sarah Stein
Sarah Stein , was born on July 26, 1870 San Francisco. She married Michael Stein on March 1894. She was the outspoken and academically successful daughter of a wealthy German Jewish merchant. She was given the nickname "Sally" by Jack London. She gave birth to Allan Daniel Stein on November 1,...
's collection emphasized Matisse.
Contemporaries of Leo and Gertrude Stein, Matisse and Picasso became part of their social circle and routinely joined the gatherings that took place on Saturday evenings at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Gertrude attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, remarking:
More and more frequently, people began visiting to see the Matisse paintings—and the Cézannes: "Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began."
Among Pablo Picasso's acquaintances who also frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier
Fernande Olivier
Fernande Olivier , was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Picasso painted over 60 portraits of Olivier.-Youth:...
(Picasso's mistress), Georges Braque, André Derain, the poets Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
and Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. -Biography:Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres...
(Apollinaire's mistress and an artist in her own right), and Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
.
His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris,
a private and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1907 until 1911. Hans Purrmann
Hans Purrmann
Hans Marsilius Purrmann was a German artist. He was born in Speyer where he also grew up. He completed an apprenticeship as a scene painter and interior decorator, and subsequently studied in Karlsruhe and Munich before going to Paris in 1906. It was here he became a student and later a friend of...
and Sarah Stein were amongst several of his most loyal students.
After Paris
Cimiez
Cimiez is a neighborhood in Nice, southern France. The area contains the Musée Matisse and the ruins of Cemenelum, capital of the Ancient Roman province Alpes Maritimae on the Ligurian coast...
on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
, a suburb of the city of Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
. His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach. This "return to order
Return to order
The return to order was a European art movement that followed the First World War, rejecting the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and taking its inspiration from traditional art instead. The movement was a reaction to the War...
" is characteristic of much art of the post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
period, and can be compared with the neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
of Picasso and Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and the return to traditionalism of Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
.
His orientalist
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
odalisque
Odalisque
An odalisque was a female slave in an Ottoman seraglio. She was an assistant or apprentice to the concubines and wives, and she might rise in status to become one of them...
paintings are characteristic of the period; while this work was popular, some contemporary critics found it shallow and decorative.
In the late 1920s Matisse notably once again engaged in active collaborations with other artists. He worked with not only Frenchmen, Dutch, Germans, and Spanish, but also a few Americans and recent American immigrants.
After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appeared in his work. American art collector Albert C. Barnes
Albert C. Barnes
Albert Coombs Barnes was an American chemist and art collector. With the fortune made from the development of the antiseptic, anti-blindness drug Argyrol, he founded the Barnes Foundation, an educational institution based on his private collection of art...
convinced him to produce a large mural for the Barnes Foundation, The Dance II, which was completed in 1932. The Foundation owns several dozen other Matisse paintings.
He and his wife of 41 years separated in 1939. In 1941, he underwent surgery in which a colostomy
Colostomy
A colostomy is a surgical procedure in which a stoma is formed by drawing the healthy end of the large intestine or colon through an incision in the anterior abdominal wall and suturing it into place. This opening, in conjunction with the attached stoma appliance, provides an alternative channel...
was performed. Afterwards he started using a wheelchair, and until his death he was cared for by a Russian woman, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages, often on a large scale, called gouaches découpés. His Blue Nudes
Blue Nudes
Blue Nudes refer to a series of gouaches découpées by Henri Matisse, executed in 1952. They represent female nudes either seated or standing, and are among Matisse's final works in any medium.During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor...
series feature prime examples of this technique he called "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.
Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the Résistance
Resistance
- Physics :* Electrical resistance, a measure of the degree to which an object opposes an electric current through it* Friction, the force that opposes motion** Drag , fluid or gas forces opposing motion and flow...
during the war, was tortured (almost to death) in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
. (Marguerite avoided further imprisonment by escaping from the Ravensbrück-bound train, which was halted during an Allied air strike; she survived in the woods until rescued by fellow resisters.)
Matisse's student Rudolf Levy
Rudolf Levy
Rudolf Levy was a renowned painter who worked with and was a student of Henri Matisse. According to historian Cecil Roth, Levy was one of the "pioneers of the modern art movement in Germany."...
was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
in 1944.
In 1947 he published Jazz
Jazz (Henri Matisse)
Jazz is an artist's book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir prints.-Original creation:...
, a limited-edition book containing prints of colorful paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. In the 1940s he also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios
Mourlot Studios
Mourlot Studios was a commercial print shop founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family and located in Paris, France. It was also known as Imprimerie Mourlot, Mourlot Freres and Atelier Mourlot. Founded by Francois Mourlot, it started off producing wallpaper...
in Paris.
According to David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller, Sr. is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were...
, Matisse's final work was the design for a stained-glass window installed at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills
Union Church of Pocantico Hills
Union Church of Pocantico Hills is a historic church located at 555-559 Bedford Road in Pocantico Hills, New York. The church was built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1921, as part of his plans to develop the town of Pocantico Hills, which was below his estate Kykuit...
near the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. "It was his final artistic creation; the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom when he died in November of 1954", Rockefeller writes. Installation was completed in 1956.
The cutouts
Jazz (Henri Matisse)
Jazz is an artist's book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir prints.-Original creation:...
1947, artist's book of about one hundred prints
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade
Tériade
Tériade was a native of Mytilene who went to Paris in 1915 at the age of eighteen to study law, but who instead became an art critic, patron, and, most significantly, a publisher....
, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir (stencil
Stencil
A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to...
) prints.
Legacy
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...
and started the collaboration, a story related in her 1992 book Henri Matisse: La Chapelle de Vence and in the 2003 documentary "A Model for Matisse".
He established a museum
Matisse Museum (Le Cateau)
The Matisse Museum is a museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France that primarily displays paintings by Henri Matisse. The museum was established by Matisse himself on 8 November 1952; he also defined the way his works should be arranged...
dedicated to his work in 1952, in his birthplace city, and this museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 1954. He is interred in the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.
The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums
Still Life with Geraniums
Still Life with Geraniums is a 1910 oil on canvas painting by Henri Matisse.It is in the collection of Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, to whom it was given in 1912, thus becoming, according to the museum, the first Matisse to enter a public collection...
(1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne
Pinakothek der Moderne
The Pinakothek der Moderne is a modern art museum, situated in the city centre of Munich, Germany. Together with its two predecessors Alte Pinakothek and Neue Pinakothek The Pinakothek der Moderne (= "(Art) Gallery of the Modern"; from Greek: "pinax" = "board", "tablet") is a modern art museum,...
.
The Plum Blossoms
The Plum Blossoms
The Plum Blossoms is a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse. On September 8, 2005, it was purchased for the Museum of Modern Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970. This is an example of one of the final group...
, a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased on 8 September 2005, for the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
by Henry Kravis
Henry Kravis
Henry R. Kravis is an American businessman and private equity investor. He is the co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a private equity firm with over $62 billion in assets as of 2011. He has an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion as of September 2011, ranked by Forbes as the 88th richest...
and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin
Marie-Josée Drouin
Marie-Josée Kravis is an economist and philanthropist. She is from Montreal, Quebec, and is the third wife of financier Henry Kravis.-Background:...
. Estimated price was US $25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.
Matisse's daughter Marguerite often aided Matisse scholars with insights about his working methods and his works. She died in 1982 while compiling a catalog of her father's work.
Matisse's son, Pierre Matisse
Pierre Matisse
Pierre Matisse was an art dealer active in New York City. He was the youngest child of French painter Henri Matisse.-Background and early years:...
, (1900–1989) opened an important modern art gallery in New York City during the 1930s. The Pierre Matisse Gallery which was active from 1931 until 1989 represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York often for the first time. He exhibited Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
, André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, Paul Delvaux
Paul Delvaux
Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter, associated with Surrealism, famous for his paintings of female nudes.-Biography:...
, Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
, Jean-Paul Riopelle
Jean-Paul Riopelle
Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a painter and sculptor from Quebec, Canada.-Biography:Born in Montreal, he studied under Paul-Émile Borduas in the 1940s and was a member of Les Automatistes movement. He was one of the signers of the Refus global manifesto...
, Balthus
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
, Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...
, Zao Wou Ki
Zao Wou Ki
-Biography:He was born in a cultivated family and studied calligraphy in his childhood and from 1935 to 1941 painting at the school of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. In 1948, he went with his wife Lan-lan, a composer, to Paris to live on the same block in Montparnasse where the classes of Émile Othon...
, Sam Francis
Sam Francis
Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.-Early life:...
, sculptors Theodore Roszak
Theodore Roszak (artist)
Theodore Roszak was an American sculptor and painter. He was born in Posen, Prussia , now Poznań, Poland, as a son of Polish parents, and emigrated to the United States at the age of two...
, Raymond Mason and Reg Butler
Reg Butler
Reginald Cotterell Butler was an English sculptor. He studied and lectured at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London from 1937 to 1939. He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, being exempted from military service conditional upon setting up a small...
, and several other important artists, including the work of Henri Matisse.
Henri Matisse's grandson, Paul Matisse
Paul Matisse
Paul Matisse is an artist and inventor. He is known especially for his public art installations, many of which are interactive. He is also inventor of the Kalliroscope....
, is an artist and inventor living in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. Matisse's great-granddaughter Sophie Matisse is active as an artist as of 2010. Les Heritiers Matisse functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for Les Heritiers Matisse is the Artists Rights Society
Artists Rights Society
Artists Rights Society is a copyright, licensing, and monitoring organization for visual artists in the United States. Founded in 1987, ARS represents the intellectual property rights interests of over 50,000 visual artists and estates of visual artists from around the world .- Member Artists &...
.
Partial list of works
- Woman ReadingWoman ReadingWoman Reading is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1894. It hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris....
(1894), Musée National d'Art ModerneMusée National d'Art ModerneThe Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...
Paris - Le Mur RoseLe Mur RoseLe Mur Rose , is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1898.It was bought in Paris by Jewish entrepreneur Harry Fuld, who founded Frankfurt, Germany based H. Fuld & Co. Telefon und Telegraphenwerke AG, which made telephones...
(1898), Musée National d'Art Moderne - Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midiNotre-Dame, une fin d'après-midiNotre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1902. Its somber coloration is typical of Matisse's works executed between the end of 1901 and the end of 1903, a period of personal difficulties for the artist...
(1902), Albright-Knox Art GalleryAlbright-Knox Art GalleryThe Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
, BuffaloBuffalo, New YorkBuffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, New York - Green StripeGreen StripeThe Green Line also known as The Green Stripe or Mme Matisse, is a portrait of Henri Matisse's wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre...
(1905) - The Open WindowThe Open WindowThe Open Window also known as Open Window, Collioure, is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905, oil on canvas, former collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.....
(1905) - Woman with a HatWoman with a HatWoman with a Hat is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905.It is believed that the woman in the painting was Matisse's wife, Amelie....
(1905) - Les toits de CollioureLes toits de CollioureLes toits de Collioure is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905. It is an example of the Pointillist style that Matisse employed during his early period of Fauvism. The painting is in the collection of The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia....
(1905) - Landscape at CollioureLandscape at CollioureLandscape at Collioure is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905, part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.-External links:*...
(1905) - Le bonheur de vivreLe bonheur de vivreLe bonheur de vivre , is a painting by Henri Matisse. In the central background of the piece is a group of figures that is similar to the group depicted in his painting The Dance ....
(1906) - The Young Sailor IIThe Young Sailor II-Painting style:In the second version of The Young Sailor, Matisse expresses sharper edges, and brighter, flatter colors than in his earlier version of the painting. Painted in vivid pink, blue, and green, the expression of the sailor is playful and primitive...
(1906) - Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirtSelf-Portrait in a Striped T-shirtSelf-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt is a painting by Henri Matisse from his Fauvism period, in the collection of Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark....
(1906) - Madras RougeMadras RougeMadras Rouge is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1907. The woman depicted is the painter's wife, Amélie Noellie Parayre Matisse....
(1907)
- Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)Blue Nude is an early 1907 oil painting by Henri Matisse. It is located at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the Cone Collection....
(1907), Baltimore Museum of ArtBaltimore Museum of ArtThe Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works... - The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room)The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room)The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a painting by French artist Henri Matisse, from 1908. It is considered by some critics to be Matisse's masterpiece...
(1908) - Bathers with a TurtleBathers with a TurtleBathers with a Turtle is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1908, collection: The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis.It was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer, Jr...
(1908), Saint Louis Art MuseumSaint Louis Art MuseumThe Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.Located in Forest Park in St...
, MissouriMissouriMissouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It... - La DanseThe Dance (painting)The Dance are two related paintings made by Henri Matisse between 1909 and 1910. The first, preliminary version is Matisse's study for the second version...
(1909) - Still Life with GeraniumsStill Life with GeraniumsStill Life with Geraniums is a 1910 oil on canvas painting by Henri Matisse.It is in the collection of Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, to whom it was given in 1912, thus becoming, according to the museum, the first Matisse to enter a public collection...
(1910) - L'Atelier RougeL'Atelier RougeL'Atelier Rouge, also known as The Red Studio, is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1911, in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art New York City....
(1911) - The ConversationThe Conversation (painting)The Conversation is a painting by Henri Matisse dating from 1908–1912, depicting the artist and his wife facing each other before a background of intense blue. It is in the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia....
(1908–1912) - Zorah on the TerraceZorah on the TerraceZorah on the Terrace , oil on canvas, is a painting by Henri Matisse in the collection of The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia....
(1912) - Le Rifain assisLe Rifain assisLe Rifain assis 1912-1913, oil on canvas, is a painting by Henri Matisse in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA, USA....
(1912) - Window at Tangier (1912)
- Le rideau jauneLe rideau jauneLe rideau jaune is a painting by Henri Matisse painted in 1915. Its size is 57½ × 38⅛" .It is currently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It was donated to them as a gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Nelson Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Weintraub,...
(the yellow curtain) (1915) - The Window (1916), Detroit Institute of ArtsDetroit Institute of ArtsThe Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
, MichiganMichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
- La leçon de musique (1917)
- The Painter and His ModelThe Painter and His ModelThe Painter and His Model is a painting by Henri Matisse from the year 1917. It is currently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Paris. In this work Matisse depicted himself in his studio on the fourth floor of 19 Quai Saint-Michel, at work on his painting Laurette in a Green Robe ....
(1917) - Interior A Nice (1920)
- Odalisque with Raised ArmsOdalisque with Raised ArmsOdalisque with Raised Arms is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1923. The full title is Odalisque assise aux bras levés, fauteuil rayé vert, which translates as "Odalisque with raised arms sitting on a green striped armchair". It is located in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, which...
(1923), National Gallery of ArtNational Gallery of ArtThe National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, Washington, D.C. - Yellow OdalisqueYellow OdalisqueYellow Odalisque is the title of two paintings by Henri Matisse:* From 1926, at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa* From 1937, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia...
(1926) - The Dance IIThe Dance IIThe Dance II by Henri Matisse is a triptych mural in the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia. It was created in 1932 at the request of Albert C. Barnes after he met Matisse in the United States. Barnes was an art enthusiast and long-time collector of Matisse's works...
(1932), triptychTriptychA triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
muralMuralA mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
(45 ft by 15 ft) in the Barnes Foundation of PhiladelphiaBarnes Foundation of PhiladelphiaThe Barnes Foundation is an American educational art and horticultural institution in Lower Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1922 by Albert C... - Robe violette et AnémonesRobe violette et AnémonesRobe violette et Anémones is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1937....
(1937) - Woman in a Purple CoatWoman in a Purple CoatWoman In A Purple Coat or The Purple Coat is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1937. It depicts Matisse's assistant Lydia Delectorskaya. This painting is an example of Henri Matisse's mature decorative style...
(1937) - Le Rêve de 1940 (the dream of 1940) (1940)
- La Blouse RoumaineLa Blouse RoumaineLa Blouse Roumaine is an oil-on-canvas painting by Henri Matisse from 1940. It measures 92 × 73 cm and is held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.- External links :*...
(1940) - Le Lanceur De CouteauxLe Lanceur De CouteauxLe Lanceur De Couteaux is a paper cut by Henri Matisse from 1947. It is from Jazz, 1947.Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir prints. The knife thrower was a popular print from the Jazz portfolio....
(1943) - Annelies, White Tulips and AnemonesAnnelies, White Tulips and AnemonesAnnelies, White Tulips and Anemones is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1944.The painting depicts a woman smiling at a table with flowers aligned on it. The painting is currently in the Honolulu Academy of Arts. During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped...
(1944), Honolulu Academy of ArtsHonolulu Academy of ArtsThe Honolulu Academy of Arts is an art museum in Honolulu in the state of Hawaii. Since its founding in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and opening April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to over 40,000 works of art.-Description:...
- L'AsieL'AsieL'Asie is a painting by Henri Matisse. It is an oil on canvas painting from 1946.The painting is in the collection of and on public display at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas .-Provenance:...
(1946) - Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rougeDeux fillettes, fond jaune et rougeDeux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge , oil on canvas, 61 x 49.8 cm is a painting by Henri Matisse in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania. Alfred Barnes became one of Matisse's most important patrons...
(1947) - JazzJazz (Henri Matisse)Jazz is an artist's book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir prints.-Original creation:...
(1947) - The Plum BlossomsThe Plum BlossomsThe Plum Blossoms is a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse. On September 8, 2005, it was purchased for the Museum of Modern Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970. This is an example of one of the final group...
(1948) - Chapelle du Saint-Marie du RosaireChapelle du Saint-Marie du RosaireThe Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence , often referred to as the Matisse Chapel or the Vence Chapel, is a small chapel built for Dominican nuns in the town of Vence on the French Riviera. It was built and decorated between 1949 and 1951 under a plan devised by Henri Matisse...
(1948–1951) - Beasts of the SeaBeasts of the SeaBeasts of the Sea is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1950. It is a paper collage on canvas. It is currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC..During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of his paper cutouts...
(1950) - The Sorrows of the KingThe Sorrows of the KingThe Sorrows of the King is a collage using cut out paper shapes by Henri Matisse from 1952. It was made from paper he had coloured with gouache paint and is mounted on canvas. Its size is 292 x 386 cm. It is his final self-portrait.During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health....
(1952) - Black Leaf on Green BackgroundBlack Leaf on Green BackgroundBlack Leaf on Green Background is a painting by Henri Matisse. It was made by Matisse with Gouache and cut paper on paper. It is currently in the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of his paper...
(1952) - La NégresseLa NégresseLa Négresse 1952/1953; by Henri Matisse is a gouache découpée. During the early to mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of his paper cutouts. La Negresse, is an example of Matisse's final body of works known as the cutouts.He initially created this...
(1952) - Blue Nude II (1952)
- The SnailThe SnailThe Snail , is a collage by Henri Matisse,The work was created at the Hotel Regina in Cimiez, Nice in the summer 1952 to early 1953...
(1953) - Le BateauLe BateauLe Bateau is a paper-cut from 1953 by Henri Matisse. The picture is composed from pieces of paper cut out of sheets painted with gouache, and was created during the last years of Matisse's life.-History:...
(1954) This gouacheGouacheGouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
created a minor stir when the MoMAMomaMoma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
mistakenly displayed it upside-down for 47 days in 1961.
Film dramatizations
- Veteran US actor Al PacinoAl PacinoAlfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
is to play Henri Matisse in an upcoming film called "Masterpiece," about the pioneering French artist and his relationship with his nurse and model Monique Bourgeois. It will be directed by Deepa MehtaDeepa MehtaDeepa Mehta, LLD is a Genie Award-winning Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire , Earth , and Water , among which Earth was submitted by Indian government for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film...
, whose previous work includes 2003's Bollywood Hollywood and Water in 2006.
Books/Essays
- Notes of a Painter,1908
- Painter's Notes on Drawing,1930.
- JazzJazz (Henri Matisse)Jazz is an artist's book of about one hundred prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Tériade, a noted 20th century art publisher, arranged to have Matisse's cutouts rendered as pochoir prints.-Original creation:...
, 1947 - Matisse on Art, collected by Jack D. Flam, 1973. ISBN 0-7148-1518-7
Resources
- Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1951. ISBN 0-87070-469-9; ISBN 978-0-87070-469-7.
- F. Celdran, R.R. Vidal y Plana. Triangle : Henri Matisse – Georgette Agutte – Marcel Sembat Paris, Yvelinedition, 2007. ISBN 978-2-84668-131-5.
- Raymond Escholier. Matisse. A Portrait of the Artist and the Man. London, Faber & Faber, 1960.
- Lawrence GowingLawrence GowingSir Lawrence Gowing was a British artist, writer, curator and teacher. Initially recognized as a portrait and landscape painter, he quickly rose to prominence as an art educator, writer, and eventually, curator and museum trustee...
. Matisse. New York, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-19-520157-4. - David Lewis. "Matisse and Byzantium, or, Mechanization Takes Command" in Modernism/modernityModernism/modernityModernism/modernity is a peer-reviewed academic journal founded in 1994 by Lawrence Rainey and Robert van Hallberg. Since 2001 it has been the official publication of the Modernist Studies Association and each September issue presents papers from their annual conference.The journal is...
16:1 (January 2009), 51–59. - John RussellJohn Russell (art critic)John Russell CBE was a British American art critic.-Life and career:John Russell was born in Fleet, Hampshire, England, in 1919. He attended St Paul's School and then Magdalen College, Oxford....
. Matisse, Father & Son, published by Harry N. Abrams, NYC. Copyright John Russell 1999, ISBN 0 81094378 6 - Pierre Schneider. Matisse. New York, Rizzoli, 1984. ISBN 0-8478-0546-8.
- Hilary SpurlingHilary SpurlingHilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL is a British writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006...
. The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 1, 1869–1908. London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1998. ISBN 0-679-43428-3. - Hilary Spurling. Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 2, The Conquest of Colour 1909–1954. London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 2005. ISBN 0-241-13339-4.
- Alastair Wright. Matisse and the Subject of Modernism Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-691-11830-2.
Further reading
- Nancy Marmer, "Matisse and the Strategy of Decoration," Artforum, March 1966, pp. 28–33.
External links
- Artchive
- Artists Rights Society, Matisse's U.S. Copyright Representatives
- Dance (I) in the MoMA Online Collection
- Flam, Jack. Matisse in the Cone Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2001 ISBN 0-912298-73-1
- Footage of Henri Matisse in Vence, France working on the New Chapel of Vence
- Henri Matisse Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
- Henri Matisse: Life and Work 500 hi-res images
- Hillary Spurling, Matisse's pajamas, online article
- Matisse and Rodin
- Matisse at Statens Museum for Kunst ("The Danish National Gallery")
- Matisse's ‘Bathers by the River’ – interactive slideshow by The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
- Matisse-Picasso
- Matisse: Radical Invention NPR, audio
- Musée Matisse Nice
- The Dance II. 1932. The Barnes Foundation, Merion Station
- The Morozov-Shchukin collection
- The nude in Matisse
- Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Henri Matisse. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
- Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves, 1910