Henri Matisse {mah-tees'}, b. Dec. 31,
1869, d. Nov. 3, 1954, ranks among the greatest painters of the 20th century. He worked
as a law clerk until 1891, when he began to study under the conservative painter Adolphe
William Bouguereau at the Académie Julian. In 1892, Matisse entered the atelier
of Gustave Moreau, whose highly finished Salon paintings were preceded by adventurous
experiments with color and symbolism that were important to Matisse's later development.
"Tristesse du Roi"
by Henri Matisse
Musée National d'Art Moderne
During the late 1890s, Matisse became familiar with the work of the postimpressionists, especially that
of Paul Cézanne, which exerted a strong influence on his style. During those years Matisse met
Charles Camoin, Georges Rouault, and Albert Marquet, painters of his age who, with Maurice Vlaminck,
André Derain, and Georges Braque, were to join with him in forming the Fauve group (see Fauvism).
"Les Fauves," or "Wild Beasts," was a derogatory label
applied to these artists when they exhibited together in Paris in 1905. Their imagery -- composed of
strokes of bright, often clashing, color -- defied all traditional canons of competent painting and
shocked the general public. Recognizable subjects appear in the paintings of the Fauves -- portraits,
still lifes, and interiors are especially prevalent. However, these motifs are used as pretexts for
pictorial innovation, sometimes tending toward pure abstraction. Typical of Matisse's painting during
this period is Woman with a Hat: Madame Matisse (1905; private collection, California), in which
the sitter's dress, skin, and feathered hat are rendered in an unnaturalistic pattern of energetically
brushed greens, pinks, and lavenders. The masterpieces of his early work are a series of large canvases
titled The Dance (1910; Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).
Under the influence of cubism, Matisse's palette became
more somber and his shapes took on a geometrical severity for a time -- as in The Moroccans (1916;
Museum of Modern Art, New York City) and The Piano Lesson (c.1917; Museum of Modern Art). During
the 1920s, Matisse's color brightened again and his patterns became more complex, especially in his
Odalisques, female nudes against arabesques of North African fabrics. He also adopted decorative
motifs from ancient Persian art.
Matisse carried the expressive freedom of his Fauve
manner into sculpture, which first achieved distinctive individuality in the flowing, semiabstract forms
of La Serpentine (1909; Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md.) and The Back (1909-30; Museum of
Modern Art), a series of monumental figure studies. In 1931-33 he returned to an earlier theme in The
Dance, a pair of large mural paintings, one of which is at the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa.
Throughout his career Matisse employed his serene and
joyous imagery in mediums outside the fine arts -- book illustration, tapestry and rug design, and
architectural decoration. From 1944 to the end of his life, he produced decoupes, in which he cut shapes
from colored paper and pasted them onto fields of white. These works, which achieve an ultimate blending
of Matisse's vibrant color with the energetic flow of his line, are considered by many to be his best.
Matisse's supreme accomplishment, which may be seen in all his work, was to liberate color from its
traditionally realistic function and to make it the foundation of a decorative art of the highest order.
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Matisse Quotations:
"In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of
nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you
start walking of a tightrope."
(1)
"In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what
one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy
that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and
compressed."
(2)
"I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things."
(3)
"Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating
the fog that surrounds us."
(4)
"I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a
light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors
it has cost me."
(5)
"Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating
the fog that surrounds us."
(6)
Sources of Quotations:
(1) "Artists in Quotation," by Donna Ward La Cour, 1989.
(2-4) "Webster's Electronic Quotebase," ed. Keith Mohler, 1994.
(5) Quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in review of "The Drawings of Henri Matisse" exhibit
at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art; in "Christian Science Monitor," 25 Mar 1985.
(6) QuoteWorld.org.
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