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Henri Matisse
Photo of Henri Matisse by Carl Van Vechten, 1933.
Birth name	Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse
Born	31 December 1869 (1869-12-31) Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord
Died	3 November 1954 (1954-11-04) (aged 84) Nice, Alpes-Maritimes
Nationality	French
Field	painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, collage
Training	Académie Julian, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau
Movement	Fauvism, Modernism
Works	Woman with a Hat (Madame Matisse), 1905 in museums: Museum of Modern Art Barnes Foundation
Patrons	Gertrude Stein, Etta Cone, Claribel Cone, Michael and Sarah Stein, Albert C. Barnes
Influenced by	John Peter Russell, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Signac
Influenced	Hans Hofmann, David Hockney, Tom Wesselmann

Henri Matisse (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) 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 regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.^[1][2][3] 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.^[4] 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.

Early life and education

Woman Reading, 1894, Museum of Modern Art, Paris

A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon, 1902, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

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 seed 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, when his mother had 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,^[5] and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.^[6][7] 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 the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters; as an art student he made copies of four Chardin paintings in the Louvre.^[8] In 1896 he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings.^[9] In 1897 and 1898, he 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 good 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."^[7]

Matisse was influenced by the works of Nicolas Poussin, Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Edouard Manet, and the post-Impressionists Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, and Signac, and also by Auguste Rodin, and Japanese art.^{[citation needed]} Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and got in debt from buying work from many of the 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 most importantly, Cézanne's Three Bathers. In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour Matisse found his main inspiration.^[10] Many of his paintings from 1899 to 1905 make use of a pointillist technique adopted from Signac. In 1898, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica.^[10]

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 often served as a model for Matisse.

Fauvism

Woman with a Hat, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

His first solo exhibition was at Vollard's gallery in 1904,^[10] without much success. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he moved southwards in 1905 to work with André Derain and spent time on the French Riviera. The paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail.

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.^[11] His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage.^[11][12] The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such as "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" from the critic Camille Mauclair, but also some favourable attention.^[11] The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein: this had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralization from the bad reception of his work.^[11]

Les toits de Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Matisse was recognized as a leader of the group, 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 was the movement's inspirational teacher, and he did much for the era; 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."^[13]

But Matisse's work of the time also encountered vehement criticism, and it was difficult for him to provide for his family.^[7] His controversial 1907 painting Nu bleu was burned in effigy at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913.^[14]

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.

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.

Gertrude Stein, Académie Matisse, and the Cone sisters

The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than he.^[7] 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, Clarabel and Etta Cone, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings. The Cone collection is now exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Art.^[15]

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.

After Paris

The Painter and His Model, oil on canvas, 1917, Museum of Modern Art, Paris

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 popular, some contemporary critics found this work shallow and decorative.

After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appear 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 where a colostomy was performed. Afterwards, he started using a wheelchair. Until his death he would be 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.

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 famous Mourlot Studios in Paris.

Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the Résistance during the war, was tortured and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.^[6]

Tombstone of Henri Matisse and his wife Noellie, cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, Cimiez, France

In 1951 he finished a four-year project of designing the interior, the glass windows and the decorations of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence. 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".^[16]

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.

Legacy

The Plum Blossoms, 1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The Back Series, bronze, left to right: The Back I, 1908-09, The Back II, 1913, The Back III 1916, The Back IV, c. 1931, all Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums (1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne.^[17] Today, a Matisse painting can fetch as much as US $17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.

The Plum Blossoms a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased on September 8, 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.^[18]

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.^[19]

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.^[20][21]

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.^[22]

Paintings

Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904, Musée National d'Art Moderne.	Le bonheur de vivre, 1905-6, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA	Open Window, Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.	Portrait of Madame Matisse (The green line), 1905, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark
Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt 1906, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark	The Young Sailor II, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City	Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), 1907, Baltimore Museum of Art	Madras Rouge, 1907, Barnes Foundation
Bathers with a Turtle, 1908, Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis	The Dance (second version), 1910 Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia	Still Life with Geraniums, 1910, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany	L'Atelier Rouge, 1911, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm., The Museum of Modern Art, New York City
The Conversation, c.1911, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia	Le Rifain assis, 1912-13, 200 x 160 cm. Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA	Zorah on the Terrace, 1912, oil on canvas, 116 x 100 cm., The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia	Window at Tangier, 1912, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
View of Notre-Dame, 1914, Museum of Modern Art	French Window at Collioure, 1914. Art Institute of Chicago	Woman on a High Stool, 1914, Museum of Modern Art, New York City	The Yellow Curtain, 1915, Museum of Modern Art New York City

• Odalisque with Raised Arms, 1923, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
• Woman in a Purple Coat, 1937, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
• Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones, 1944, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (Two Girls in a Yellow and Red Interior), 1947, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA

The cutouts

• The Knife Thrower, 1947, from Jazz, print from paper collage
• Beasts of the Sea, 1950, paper collage on canvas, collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
• Black Leaf on Green Background, 1952, gouache découpée, The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
• Blue Nude II, 1952, gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
• La Négresse, 1952/1953, Lithograph after a gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
• The Sorrows of the King, 1952, Gouache on paper and canvas, Pompidou Centre, Paris
• The Snail, 1953, Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, on white paper, collection Tate Gallery

Partial list of works

Books/Essays

• Notes of a Painter,1908
• Painter's Notes on Drawing ,1930.
• Jazz, 1947
• Matisse on Art, collected by Jack D. Flam, 1973. ISBN 0-7148-1518-7

See also

• Matisse Museum (Le Cateau)
• History of painting
• Western painting

Notes

Resources

• Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1951. ISBN-10: 0870704699; ISBN-13: 978-0870704697.
• 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 Gowing. Matisse. New York, Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-19-520157-4.
• David Lewis. "Matisse and Byzantium, or, Mechanization Takes Command" in Modernism/modernity 16:1 (January 2009), 51-59.
• Pierre Schneider. Matisse. New York, Rizzoli, 1984. ISBN 0-8478-0546-8.
• Hilary Spurling. 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.
• John Russell. Matisse, Father & Son, published by Harry N. Abrams, NYC. Copyright John Russell 1999, ISBN 0 81094378 6
• 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

• The Dance II. 1932. The Barnes Foundation, Merion Station
• Musée Matisse Nice
• Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
• Matisse Gallery at Artst
• Henri Matisse at CGFA
• Current exhibitions and connection to galeries at Artfacts.Net
• Henri Matisse Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
• Artchive
• Henri Matisse at Olga's Gallery 158 pictures
• Matisse-Picasso
• Henri Matisse: A Virtual Art Gallery
• Dance (I) in the MoMA Online Collection
• Matisse on Philo
• The Morozov-Shchukin collections
• Flam, Jack. Matisse in the Cone Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2001 ISBN 0-912298-73-1
• Matisse at Statens Museum for Kunst ("The Danish National Gallery")
• Henri Matisse: Life and Work 500 hi-res images
• Artists Rights Society, Matisse's U.S. Copyright Representatives
• Hillary Spurling, Matisse's pajamas, online article
• 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.
• Matisse and Rodin

Henri Matisse Paintings (List) Woman Reading (1894)  · Le Mur Rose (Landscape, the Pink Wall) (1898)  · Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi (A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon) (1902)  · Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Luxury, Calm and Pleasure) (1904)  · La Raie Verte (The Green Line) (1905)  · The Open Window (1905)  · Woman with a Hat (1905)  · Les toits de Collioure (1905)  · Landscape at Collioure (1905)  · Le bonheur de vivre (1906)  · The Young Sailor II (1906)  · Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt (1906)  · Madras Rouge (1907)  · Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) (1907)  · The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908)  · Bathers with a Turtle (1908)  · La Danse (1910)  · Still Life with Geraniums (1910)  · L'Atelier Rouge (1911)  · The Conversation (1908–1912)  · Zorah on the Terrace (1912)  · Window at Tangier (1912)  · Le Rifain assis (1912)  · View of Notre-Dame (1914)  · Woman on a High Stool (1914) · Le rideau jaune (The Yellow Curtain) (1915)  · The Window (1916)  · The Painter and His Model (1917)  · Interior A Nice (1920)  · Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923)  · Yellow Odalisque (1926)  · The Dance II (mural) (1932)  · Robe violette et Anémones (1937)  · Woman in a Purple Coat (1937)  · La Blouse Roumaine (1940)  · Le Lanceur De Couteaux (1943)  · Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones (1944)  · L'Asie (1946)  · Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (1947)  · The Plum Blossoms (1948)  · Beasts of the Sea (1950)  · The Sorrows of the King (1952)  · Black Leaf on Green Background (1952)  · La Négresse (1952)  · Blue Nude II (1952)  · The Snail (1953)  · Le Bateau (1953) Other works Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence (Chapel of the Rosary)  • Jazz (book) Shows Salon d'Automne Movement Fauvism Teachers William-Adolphe Bouguereau  • Gustave Moreau  • John Peter Russell Collectors Sergei Shchukin  • Gertrude Stein  • Leo Stein  • Albert C. Barnes Family Pierre Matisse  • Paul Matisse Wikimedia  Matisse at Wiktionary  •  Matisse at Wikibooks  •  Matisse at Wikiquote  •  Matisse at Wikisource  •  Matisse at Commons  •  Matisse at Wikinews

From Wikiquote

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a major French artist of the 20th century. Particularly noted for his striking use of colour, Matisse is one of the very few indisputable giants of modern art, alongside Pablo Picasso and Kandinsky.

Sourced

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.

• Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.
  • "Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (1925-09-15), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)

• I will repeat what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire: "For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself."
  • Je vous répéterai ce que je disais naguère à Guillaume Apollinaire : "Je n'ai, pour ma part, jamais évité l'influence des autres, j'aurais considéré cela comme une lâcheté et un manque de sincérité vis-à-vis de moi-même."
  • "Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (1925-09-15)

• 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, 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)

For a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

• 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

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me...

• 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)

• I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me...
  • As quoted by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (1985-03-25)

• I have been no more than a medium, as it were.
  • As quoted in Smithsonian (November 1986)

• The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.
  • As quoted in Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present (1998), p. 62

Notes of a Painter (1908)

"Notes d'un Peintre" in La Grande Revue (Paris, 1908-12-25); as translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)

A work of art must carry within itself its complete significance and impose that upon the beholder before he recognises the subject matter.

• What I am after, above all, is expression.

• The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself.His means of expression must derive almost all of neccessity from his temperament.

• Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.

• Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human.

• There must result a living harmony of colours, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.

• Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings.

• My choice of colours does not rest on any scientific theory:it is based on observation,on sensitivity,on felt experience.

• I simply put down colours which render my sensation.

• For me all is in the conception. I must therefore have a clear vision of the whole from the beginning.

• There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of a composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely.

• A work of art must carry within itself its complete significance and impose that upon the beholder before he recognises the subject matter.

• What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman was 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.

• Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine.

Jazz (1947)

Matisse had written these notes to accompany his prints, based on paper cutouts, in Jazz (1947); as translated by Sophie Hawkes in the 1992 George Braziller edition ISBN 0-8076-1291-X

Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.

• Drawing with scissors: To cut to the quick in color reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors.
  • Dessiner avec les ciseaux: découper à vif dans la couleur me rappelle la taille directe des sculpteurs.

• The vertical is in my spirit. It helps me to define precisely the direction of lines, and in quick sketches I never indicate a curve, that of a branch in landscape for example, without being aware of its relationship to the vertical.
  My curves are not mad.
  • La verticale est dans mon esprit. Elle m'aide à préciser la direction des lignes, et dans mes dessins rapides je n'indique pas une courbe, par exemple, celle d'une branche dans un paysage, sans avoir conscience de son rapport avec la verticale.
    Mes courbes ne sont pas folles.

• A musician once said: 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. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.
  • Un musicien a dit: en art la vérité, le réel commence quand on ne comprend plus rien à ce qu'on fait, à ce q'uon sait, et qu'il reste en vous une énergie d'autant plus forte qu'elle est contrariée, compressée, comprimée. Il faut alors se présenter avec la plus grande humilité, tout-blanc, tout pur, candide, le cerveau semblant-vide, dans un état d'esprit analogue à celui du communiant approchant la Sainte Table. Il faut évidemment avoir tout son acquis derrière soi et avoir su garder la fraîcheur de l'Instinct.

• Do I believe in God? Yes, when I am working. When I am submissive and modest, I feel myself to be greatly helped by someone who causes me to do things that exceed my capabilities. However, I cannot acknowledge him because it is as if I were to find myself before a conjuror whose sleight of hand eludes me.
  • Si je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidé par quelqu'un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent. Pourtant je ne me sens envers lui aucune reconnaissance car c'est comme si je me trouvais devant un prestidigitateur dont je ne puis percer les tours.

Quotes about Matisse

• My verse forms are relatively traditional (traditions alter). In general they have moved away from strict classical patterns in the direction of greater freedom — as is usual with most artists learning a trade. It takes courage, however, to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space. I still await that confidence.
  • Fleur Adcock, New Zealand poet, as quoted in Contemporary Poets 3rd edition (1980) by James Vinson.

• We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable.
  • Guillaume Apollinaire in an article published in La Falange (1907)

• Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.
  • Cyril Connolly British critic, in The Unquiet Grave Pt. 2 (1944, revised 1951).

• 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.
  • Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Picasso and Company (1964, trans. 1966) by Gyula Brassaï

• Though produced by a very old man who was mortally ill, they seem to come from the springtime of the world.
  • John Russell, on Matisse's paper cutouts, in The New York Times (25 November 1984)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Henri Matisse

• Musée Matisse Nice
• Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
• Matisse Gallery at Artst
• Henri Matisse at CGFA
• Artchive
• Henri Matisse at Olga's Gallery 158 pictures
• Matisse-Picasso
• Henri Matisse: A Virtual Art Gallery
• Matisse quotes