The Académie Julian, where Henri Matisse studied from 1891 to 1892 under William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Career
Gallery of Henri Matisse
1913
Paris, France
Henri Matisse in his Paris studio. Photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
1929
Nice, France
Henri Matisse at work in his studio in Nice. Photo by ullstein bild.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
1931
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, France
Henri Matisse (left) at an exhibition of his work at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, with its organizer, the collector Etienne Bignou (right). Photo by Hulton Archive.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
1949
Nice, France
Henri Matisse at easel, drawing from live model, at his home in Nice. Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse at work
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, modelling one of his sculptures.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Nice, France
Henri Matisse with one of his drawings at his home in Nice. Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse at his easel, drawing from live model. Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, sketching model Carmen Leschennes, whom he called Katia. Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse in his studio with one of his works in the background. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Vence, France
Henri Matisse at his villa in Vence, near Nice, South of France. Photo by Hulton Archive.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, working on medallion of Virgin & Child for his chapel at Vence, in his studio. Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse in about 1954. Photo by ullstein bild.
Gallery of Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse in chapel he created. Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection.
Achievements
Palais Fénelon, Place du Commandant Edouard Richez, 59360 Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France
The Matisse Museum (Musée Départemental Henri Matisse), founded by Henri Matisse himself in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in 1952.
Henri Matisse (left) at an exhibition of his work at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, with its organizer, the collector Etienne Bignou (right). Photo by Hulton Archive.
Henri Matisse was a French artist, draftsman, printmaker and sculptor. One of the major colorists of the 20th century, he was first known as a representative of Post-Impressionism and then became a pivotal figure of Fauvism. He painted in domestic and figurative style, favoring Mediterranean subjects, still lifes and nudes quite more, than any others.
Background
Henri Matisse, in full Henri Émile Benoît Matisse, was born on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Hauts-de-France, France. The eldest son of Émile Hippolyte Henri Matisse, a grain and hardware merchant, and Anna Heloise Gérard, a milliner and amateur painter, he was named after his father.
Matisse had two brothers, Émile Auguste Gérard and Auguste Émile Gérard.
Education
Henri Matisse was raised near Bohain-en-Vermandois and attended the secondary school in Saint-Quentin from 1882 to 1887. He then studied law in Paris for a while and came back to Saint-Quentin in 1889.
A son of business parents, Matisse wasn't much interested in art until he had appendicitis later that year. While recovering from the disease, he occasionally followed early-morning drawing classes at the local École Quentin-Latour and copied the colored reproductions from his mother's box of oils. In 1891, Matisse left behind his career in law and went to Paris with an intention to become a painter.
That same year, he became a student at the Académie Julian to prepare for the École des Beaux-Arts admission. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was one of his teachers at the school. Matisse's works of that early period were influenced by the 17th-century Dutch manner.
Henri Matisse failed the entrance exams to the École des Beaux-Arts, but joined, however, the Gustave Moreau's atelier at the school in 1892. He studied under the symbolist painter until Moreau's death and then dropped the studio in 1899, unsatisfied with the teaching methods of Fernand Cormon, who had succeeded Moreau on the post.
Being close to his thirties, Matisse continued his studies in art and followed the classes at the private academy of the portraitist Eugène Carrière. While there, Matisse got acquainted with Albert Marquet and André Derain, among others.
The start of Henri Matisse's career can be counted from his brief service as a clerk in Saint-Quentin at the end of the 1880's. The job was tiresome for him and soon he turned his attention to painting.
The election as an associate member of the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts gave him the right to exhibit his paintings during the Salon de la Société each year. His first showing in 1896 was successful as the state purchased two of the five paintings he exhibited. During the next two years, his color palette became, for a while, lighter in hue and at the same time more intense. His first great work, The Dinner Table, made in an impressionist manner, caused a little scandal at the Salon of 1897 as the show didn't welcome impressionism.
Although Matisse and his family were struggling financially during the early 1900's, except a number of successful exhibitions, including the Salon des Indépendants of 1901 and a group show at the small gallery of Berthe Weill in 1902, the artist didn't give up on his métier and continued painting. He mastered nude paintings and still lifes, which he produced, inspired by the work of Paul Cézanne, and he also discovered the art of sculpture, finishing his first own piece in 1899 and completing his famous sculpture The Slave in 1903.
Better times were around the corner as Henri Matisse had his first solo exhibition in 1904. It was organized at the gallery of Ambroise Villard, but gained very little attention. The next year, Matisse participated in another group exhibit at the Salon d'Automne, along with André Derain and several other painters. He demonstrated two paintings, Woman with a Hat and Open Window. An art critic compared the artists with "wild beasts" (fauves) in his review because they used dissonant and wild colors. The review generated a bad press, but Matisse's morale and reputation strongly improved, when Gertrude and Leo Stein purchased Woman with a Hat. Fauvism was born, and Matisse became its acknowledged leader almost immediately.
Matisse secured a stable income from Gertrude Stein and her rich friends, who continued to buy his works. The Fauvist movement lasted only for several years, but that didn't affect Matisse, who, passionate for pure color, remained true to the movement all his life. He used his newly acquired finances to buy a home and a studio in Paris, where he created some of his most important works.
In 1906, Henri Matisse exhibited twelve lithographs with the variations on a seated nude theme at the Druet Gallery in Paris and came back again to the Salons des Indépendants and d'Automne. In 1907, with the help of Sarah Stein and Hans Purrmann and a group of his other admirers, Academie Matisse was founded in Paris, where he taught until 1911. In 1908, he was introduced to the public of New York City, Moscow and Berlin. He was on view in Cologne, London and these cities since then throughout the early 1910's. It's possible to say, that the foreigners appreciated Matisse's work much more, than the French. His acquaintanceship with Sergei Shchukin, a Russian art collector, led him to create La Danse, one of his greatest works.
Henri Matisse began to gradually distance himself from the centers of avant-garde over time, and by 1917, he had spent mostly all his time in Nice or its environs. He worked in his studio and produced primarily female nudes in staged settings, also pursuing his newly-found interest in printmaking. The works of the period, like Odalisque with Magnolias and Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background, were less daring in conception and less economical in means.
The artist was often on various journeys as well, to Italy, Tahiti, Venice and Padua, among other destinations, studying the works of other painters and absorbing their influence. In 1933, he completed and installed his large mural The Dance II, commissioned by Albert C. Barnes for the Barnes Foundation.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Matisse decided to stay in Nice despite the efforts of his son, Pierre, living in New York at the time, to get him to flee to the United States. Luckily for the artist, Nazis weren't so cruel, when it came to the "degenerate art" in Paris, so he was allowed to exhibit his work, along with fellow Fauves and Cubists. Mastisse was also active as a graphic artist during the war. He produced black-and-white illustrations for various books, including Henry de Montherlant's Pasiphaé, Pierre Reverdy's Visages and Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, and about hundred lithographs at the Mourlot Studios in Paris.
Although successful, the surgery on abdominal cancer, diagnosed in 1941, forced Matisse to be bed and chair bound for much of the time. During this period, he started creating collages from cut paper, gouaches découpés. In 1947, he published Jazz, a book, that contained prints of colorful collages from the cut paper, along with his written thoughts.
In 1952, Henri Matisse founded The Matisse Museum in his native Le Cateau-Cambrésis. The design for the stained-glass window at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills not far from New York City became the last project of the artist. It was completed and installed two years after his death.
Matisse was baptized as a Catholic, but some sources state, that he wasn't that devoted to religion.
Politics
Matisse was never involved in politics and due to his deteriorating health, he couldn't even help the French Resistance during World War II. However, members of his family were helping the Resistance, including his daughter Marguerite, who was tortured by the Nazis.
Views
Henri Matisse put the human figure on the first place in his paintings as in his sculpture pieces. At times, he revealed the mood and personality of the figures themselves, but more frequently he turned them into the allegorical modes of expressing his personal feelings.
Matisse widely incorporated the elements of other cultures in his works, like some decorative qualities of Islamic art, the angularity of African sculpture and the flatness of Japanese prints.
Quotations:
"An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm by efforts, that will prepare the mastery, which will later enable him to express himself in his own language."
"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject-matter, an art, which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman, as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair, which provides relaxation from physical fatigue."
"Exactitude is not truth."
"Do you find perfect correspondence between the nature of the drawing and the nature of the painting? In my opinion, they seem totally different from each other, absolutely contradictory. One, the drawing, depends on linear or sculptural plasticity, and the other, the painting, depends on colored plasticity."
"What interests me most is neither still life or landscape, but the human figure. It is that, which best permits me to express my so-to-speak religious awe towards life."
Membership
Henri Matisse was a member of Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts).
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
,
France
Personality
Matisse was described by some of his contemporaries as a pleasant man, for whom you wouldn't think, that he was an artist. Matisse was an amiable man and looked more like a shy government official, than an artist. He had a great passion for traveling and often went on trips throughout Europe and to Africa. He never accepted any fees for his tuition so that he might remain free to take his leave at any time, should this commitment interfere with his creative activity.
Physical Characteristics:
Matisse suffered from abdominal cancer.
Quotes from others about the person
Pablo Picasso, an artist: "Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced, that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better, than the first attempt."
Guillaume Apollinaire, a poet, writer and art critic: "We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable."
Robert Rauschenberg, an artist: "Matisse said, you have to read between the lines. When he would stop a line, say, at the ear, and beginning it again at the neck, he was really exercising the viewer's mind to fill in the blanks."
John Elderfield, a scholar and art curator: "Picasso is taking Cézanne's elements - the cone, cylinder and sphere - into Cubism. Matisse is taking Cézanne's interest in the wholeness and the clarity of figures. They're taking almost opposite interpretations of what they see in Cézanne: Picasso is understanding it as decomposition, and Matisse is understanding it as composition."
Jack Flam, a writer: "The more Matisse's body failed, the more he responded by inventing a mythic youthfulness, that he could inhabit in his art. For Matisse, the first rule was to keep his art separated from the literal representation of the feelings behind it, to channel and redirect his emotions into imagery, that transcended the raw stuff of life."
Interests
doves, cats
Philosophers & Thinkers
Henri Bergson
Writers
André Rouveyre
Artists
Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gaugain, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Music & Bands
jazz
Connections
Henri Matisse married Amélie Noellie Parayre in 1898. They had two sons together, Jean and Pierre, and also raised Marguerite, Matisse's daughter with the model Caroline Joblau. Marguerite and Amélie were frequent subjects of Matisse's canvases.
The marriage of Amélie and Matisse ended in July 1939 on the wife's initiative as she suspected her husband to have romantic relationships with a young Russian emigre, Lydia Delectorskaya, who had been modeling for him since 1934. Delectorskaya survived after an attempted suicide and continued to work with Matisse for the remainder of his life, running his household and arranging his business affairs.
Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954
The second half of the biography, that begins with the acclaimed The Unknown Matisse, shows the readers the painter as he saw himself. With unprecedented and unrestricted access to his voluminous family correspondence and other new material in private archives, the author documents a lifetime of desperation and self-doubt, exacerbated by Matisse's attempts to counteract the violence and disruption of the twentieth century in paintings.
2005
Henri Matisse: The Oasis of Matisse
Published to accompany an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the book leads readers through the museum's Matisse works - an array of Eastern nudes, colorful fabrics, carpets, potted plants and idyllic landscapes - plus a selection of his additional paintings, sculptures and works on paper.
2015
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the artist's paper cut-outs, made from the early 1940's until his death in 1954, this publication presents approximately 150 works in a groundbreaking reassessment of Matisse's colorful and innovative final chapter.
2014
Matisse: In 50 Works
Taking fifty of Matisse's most iconic works of art, expert John Cauman presents an accessible narrative about the man and his work, deciphering the themes, methods and intentions of this truly great artist.
2019
Matisse
Revised in close collaboration with the Matisse estate and containing preparatory studies, full-page reproductions and enlarged details, the book discovers the artist's adventurous path, from the chromatic brilliance of his Fauve period, right through to his invention of gouache cut-outs at the ripe age of 80.