Henri Matisse

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HenriMatisse

HenriMatisse,1913,byAlvinLangdonCoburn

Born

HenrimileBenotMatisse
31December1869
LeCateauCambrsis,Nord,France

Died

3November1954(aged84)
Nice,AlpesMaritimes,France

Nationality

French

Education

AcadmieJulian,WilliamAdolphe
Bouguereau,GustaveMoreau

Knownfor

Painting,printmaking,sculpture,drawing,collage

Notablework WomanwithaHat,1905,Nubleu,1907,LaDanse,

1909

Movement

Fauvism,Modernism,PostImpressionism

Patron(s)

GertrudeStein,EttaCone,ClaribelCone,Sarah
Stein,AlbertC.Barnes

Henri-mile-Benot Matisse (French: [ i emil bnw matis]; 31 December 1869 3 November 1954)
was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was
a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.[1]
Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three
artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts throughout the opening
decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.[2][3][4]
[5]
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.[6] 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.[7]

Contents
[hide]

1Early life and education

1.1Early paintings

2Fauvism

3Selected works: Paris, 19011910

4Sculpture

5Gertrude Stein, Acadmie Matisse, and the Cone sisters

o

5.1Selected works: Paris, 19101917

6After Paris

7The war years

8The final years

o

8.1The cut-outs

8.2The Chapel and museum

9Legacy

10Recent exhibitions

11Partial list of works

12Illustrations

13Portrayal in media and literature

14Books and essays

15References and sources

16Further reading

17External links

Early life and education[edit]

Henri and Amlie Matisse, 1898

Woman Reading, 1894, Museum of Modern Art, Paris

Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrsis, in the Nord department in northern France, the oldest son of
a prosperous grain merchant.[8] He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardie, France. In 1887 he went
to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrsis 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,[9] and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.[10][11]
In 1891 he returned to Paris to study art at the Acadmie Julian and became a student of WilliamAdolphe 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-Simon Chardin, Nicolas Poussin, and Antoine Watteau, as well as by
modern artists, such as douard Manet, and by Japanese art. Chardin was one of the painters Matisse
most admired; as an art student he made copies of four of Chardin's paintings in the Louvre.[12]
In 1896 and 1897, Matisse visited the Australian painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle le 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. He later
said "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me."[11] In 1896 Matisse exhibited
five paintings in the salon of the Socit Nationale des Beaux-Arts, two of which were purchased by the
state.[13]
With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married
Amlie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and
Pierre (born 1900). Marguerite and Amlie often served as models for Matisse.[14]
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.[15] Upon his return to Paris in February 1899, he worked
beside Albert Marquet and met Andr Derain, Jean Puy,[16] and Jules Flandrin.[17] 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 Czanne's Three Bathers. In Czanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour,
Matisse found his main inspiration.[16]
Many of Matisse's paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist technique he adopted after
reading Paul Signac's essay, "D'Eugne Delacroix au No-impressionisme".[15] His paintings of 190203,
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.[18]

Early paintings[edit]

Gustave Moreau's Studio, 1894-1895

Blue Pot and Lemon (1897), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Le Mur Rose, 1898, Jewish Museum Frankfurt

Fruit and Coffeepot (1898), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Vase of Sunflowers (1898), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Study of a Nude, 1899, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo

Still Life with Compote, Apples and Oranges, 1899, The Cone Collection, Baltimore
Museum of Art

Crockery on a Table (1900), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Fauvism[edit]
Main article: Fauvism

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

Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910. The movement as such lasted only
a few years, 19041908, and had three exhibitions.[19][20] The leaders of the movement were Matisse
and Andr Derain.[19]Matisse's first solo exhibition was at Ambroise Vollard's gallery in 1904,[16] 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-Impressionists Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.
[15]
In that year he painted the most important of his works in the neo-Impressionist style, Luxe, Calme et
Volupt.[15] In 1905 he travelled southwards again to work with Andr Derainat Collioure. His paintings of
this period are characterised by flat shapes and controlled lines, using pointillism in a less rigorous way
than before.
Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves" exhibited together in a room at the Salon
d'Automne in 1905. 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 parmi les fauves!" (Donatello
among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them.[21] His
comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular
usage.[19][21] The exhibition garnered harsh criticism"A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the
public", said the critic Camille Mauclairbut also some favourable attention.[21] 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.[21]

Les toits de Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Matisse was recognised as a leader of the Fauves, along with Andr 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 (18261898) was the movement's inspirational
teacher. As a professor at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he pushed his students to think outside of
the lines of formality and to follow their visions.
In 1907 Guillaume Apollinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, wrote,
"We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is
eminently reasonable."[22] But Matisse's work of the time also encountered vehement criticism, and it was
difficult for him to provide for his family.[11] His painting Nu bleu (1907) was burned in effigy at the Armory
Show in Chicago in 1913.[23]
The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did not affect the career 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. He travelled to Algeria in 1906
studying African art and Primitivism. After viewing a large exhibition of Islamic art in Munich in 1910, he
spent two months in Spain studying Moorish art. He visited Morocco in 1912 and again in 1913 and
while painting in Tangiers he made several changes to his work, including his use of black as a colour.[24]
[25][26]
The effect on Matisse's art was a new boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour, as
in L'Atelier Rouge (1911).[15]
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.

Selected works: Paris, 19011910[edit]

Luxembourg Gardens, 1901, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Dishes and Fruit, 1901, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

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

Nu (Carmelita), 1904, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Luxe, Calme et Volupt, 1904, Muse d'Orsay, Paris, France

[27]

Landscape at Collioure, 1905, Museum of Modern Art

Open Window, Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Portrait of Madame Matisse (The green line), 1905, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen,
Denmark

Le bonheur de vivre, 19056, Barnes Foundation

Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt1906, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

The Young Sailor II, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Vase, Bottle and Fruit, 1906, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Blue Nude, 1907, Baltimore Museum of Art

La coiffure, 1907, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Madras Rouge, The Red Turban, 1907, Barnes Foundation. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory
Show

Le Luxe II, 190708, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Les trois baigneuses (Three Bathers), 1907, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

[28]

Bathers with a Turtle, 1908, Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis

Game of Bowls, 1908, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

The Dance (first version), 1909, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Still Life with Dance, 1909, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The Dance, 1910, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Les Capucines (Nasturtiums with The Dance II), 191012, Pushkin Museum

Music, 1910, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Sculpture[edit]
Henri Matisse, The Back Series, bronze, left to right: The Back I, 190809, The Back II, 1913, The
Back III 1916, The Back IV, c. 1931, all Museum of Modern Art, New York City[29][30][31]

Henri Matisse, 1900-1904, Le Serf (The Serf, Der Sklave), bronze

Henri Matisse, 1905, Sleep, wood, exhibition Blue Rose ( ), 1907, location
unknown

Henri Matisse, 190607, Nu couch, I (Reclining Nude, I), bronze, exhibited at

Montross Gallery, New York, 1915

Henri Matisse, 1907, Awakening, plaster, exhibition Salon of the Golden Fleece (
) 1908

Henri Matisse, 1908, Figure dcorative, bronze

Gertrude Stein, Acadmie Matisse, and the Cone sisters [edit]

Henri Matisse, Red Room (Harmony in Red) (1908)

Henri Matisse in Paris, 13 August 1913. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Around April 1906 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 11 years younger than Matisse.[11] The two became
lifelong 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 realised 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 twentieth
century, the Americans in ParisGertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael's
wife Sarahwere important collectors and supporters of Matisse's paintings. In addition Gertrude
Stein's two American friends from Baltimore, the Cone sisters Claribel and Etta, became major patrons
of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings and drawings. The Cone collection is now
exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Art.[32]

Henri Matisse, The Moroccans, 1915-16, oil on canvas, 181.3 x 279.4 cm, Museum of Modern
Art[24]
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 the works of Renoir, Czanne, Matisse, and Picasso
dominated Leo and Gertrude Stein's collection, Sarah Stein's collection particularly emphasised
Matisse.[33]
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 paintingsand the Czannes:
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."[34]'
Among Pablo Picasso's acquaintances who also frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande
Olivier (Picasso's mistress), Georges Braque, Andr Derain, the poets Max Jacob and Guillaume
Apollinaire, Marie Laurencin (Apollinaire's mistress and an artist in her own right), and Henri Rousseau.
[35]

His friends organised and financed the Acadmie Matisse in Paris, a private and non-commercial school
in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1907 until 1911. The initiative for the academy
came from the Steins and the Dmiers, with the involvement of Hans Purrmann, Patrick Henry
Bruce and Sarah Stein.[36]
Matisse spent seven months in Morocco from 1912 to 1913, producing about 24 paintings and
numerous drawings. His frequent orientalist topics of later paintings, such as odalisques, can be traced
to this period.[37]

Selected works: Paris, 19101917[edit]

Still Life with Geraniums, 1910, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany

L'Atelier Rouge, 1911, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The Conversation, c.1911, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Window at Tangier, 1911-12, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

Zorah on the Terrace, 1912, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia

Le Rifain assis, 191213, 200 160 cm. Barnes Foundation

Portrait of the Artist's Wife, 1913, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

La glace sans tain (The Blue Window), 1913, Museum of Modern Art

Woman on a High Stool, 1914, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

View of Notre-Dame, 1914, Museum of Modern Art

Les poissons rouges (Interior with a Goldfish Bowl), Muse National d'Art
Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

French Window at Collioure, 1914. Muse National d'Art Moderne, Paris

The Yellow Curtain, 1915, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Auguste Pellerin II, 191617, Muse National d'Art Moderne, Paris

The Painter and His Model (Le Peintre dans son atelier), 191617, Muse National
d'Art Moderne, Paris

Three Sisters and The Rose Marble Table (Les Trois surs La Table de marbre
rose), 1917, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Portrait de famille (The Music Lesson), 1917, oil on canvas, 245.1 x

210.8 cm, Barnes Foundation

After Paris[edit]

Odalisque with Arms Raised, (of Henriette Darricarrire), 1923, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.
Self-portrait, 1918, Matisse Museum (Le Cateau)
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 as well as 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.[38]
In the late 1920s Matisse once again engaged in active collaborations with other artists. He worked with
not only Frenchmen, Dutch, Germans, and Spaniards, 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. This move toward
simplification and a foreshadowing of the cutout technique are also evident in his painting Large
Reclining Nude (1935). Matisse worked on this painting over a period of several months and
documented the progress with a series of 22 photographs which he sent to Etta Cone.[39]

The war years[edit]

Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones 1944

Matisse's wife Amlie, who suspected that he was having an affair with her young Russian emigre
companion, Lydia Delectorskaya, ended their 41-year marriage in July, 1939, dividing their possessions
equally between them. Delectorskaya attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest; remarkably,
she survived with no serious after-effects, and instead returned to the now-single Matisse and worked
with him for the rest of his life, running his household, paying the bills, typing his correspondence,
keeping meticulous records, assisting in the studio and coordinating his business affairs.[40]
Matisse was visiting Paris when the Nazis invaded France in June, 1940, but managed to make his way
back to Nice. His son, Pierre, by then a gallery owner in New York, begged him to flee while it was still
possible. Matisse was, in fact, about to embark for Brazil to escape the Occupation, but abruptly
changed his mind and remained in Nice, in Vichy France. It seemed to me as if I would be deserting,
he wrote Pierre in September, 1940. If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of
France? Although he was never a member of the resistance, it became a point of pride to the occupied
French that one of their greatest artists chose to stay, though of course, being non-Jewish, he had that
option.[41]
While the Nazis occupied France from 1940-1944, they were more lenient in their attacks on
"degenerate art" in Paris than they were in the German-speaking nations under their military
dictatorship. Matisse was allowed to exhibit along with other former Fauves and Cubists whom Hitler had
initially claimed to despise, though without any Jewish artists, all of whose works had been purged from
all French museums and galleries; any French artists exhibiting in France had to sign an oath assuring
their "Aryan" status - including Matisse.[42] He also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-andwhite illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios in
Paris.
In 1941, Matisse was diagnosed with duodenal cancer. The surgery, while successful, resulted in
serious complications from which he nearly died.[43] Being bedridden for three months resulted in his
developing a new art form using paper and scissors (see following section) [44]
That same year, a nursing student named Monique Bourgeois responded to an ad placed by Matisse for
a nurse. A platonic friendship developed between Matisse and Bourgeois. He discovered that she was
an amateur artist, and taught her about perspective. After Bourgeois left the position to join a convent in
1944, Matisse sometimes contacted her to request that she model for him. Bourgeois became
a Dominican nun in 1946, and Matisse painted a chapel in Vence, a small town he moved to in 1943, in
her honor. (See section below, "The Chapel and the Museum")
Matisse remained for the most part isolated in southern France throughout the war. Nonetheless, his
family was intimately involved with the French resistance. His son Pierre, the art dealer in New York,
helped the Jewish and anti-Nazi French artists he represented to escape occupied France and enter the
United States. In 1942, he held an exhibit in New York, "Artists in Exile," which was to become

legendary. Matisse's estranged wife, Amelie, was a typist for the French Underground and jailed for six
months. And Matisse was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in
the Rsistance during the war, was tortured (almost to death) by the Gestapo in a Rennes prison and
sentenced to the Ravensbrck concentration camp in Germany.[10] Marguerite managed to escape from
the Ravensbrck-bound train, which was halted during an Allied air strike; she survived in the woods in
the chaos of the closing days of the war, until rescued by fellow resisters.[45]
Matisse's student Rudolf Levy was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.[46][47]

Henri Matisse, The Snail, 1953, Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, on white paper, collection Tate
Modern

The final years[edit]

Cover of Jazz by Henri Matisse

The cut-outs[edit]
See also: Jazz (Henri Matisse)
Diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1941, Matisse underwent surgery that left him chair and bed
bound. Painting and sculpture had become physical challenges, so he turned to a new type of medium.
With the help of his assistants, he began creating cut paper collages, or decoupage. He would cut
sheets of paper, pre-painted with gouache by his assistants, into shapes of varying colours and sizes,
and arrange them to form lively compositions. Initially, these pieces were modest in size, but eventually
transformed into murals or room-sized works. The result was a distinct and dimensional complexityan
art form that was not quite painting, but not quite sculpture.[48][49]

Although the paper cut-out was Matisses major medium in the final decade of his life, his first recorded
use of the technique was in 1919 during the design of decor for the Le chant du rossignol, an opera
made by Igor Stravinsky.[49] Albert C. Barnes arranged for cardboard templates to be made of the
unusual dimensions of the walls onto which Matisse, in his studio in Nice, fixed the composition of
painted paper shapes. Another group of cut-outs were made between 1937 and 1938, while Matisse
was working on the stage sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. However, it was only
after his operation that, bedridden, Matisse began to develop the cut-out technique as its own form,
rather than its prior utilitarian origin.[50][51]
He moved to the hilltop of Vence in 1943, where he produced his first major cut-out project for his artist's
book titled Jazz. However, these cut-outs were conceived as designs for stencil prints to be looked at in
the book, rather than as independent pictorial works. At this point, Matisse still thought of the cut-outs as
separate from his principal art form. His new understanding of this medium unfolds with the 1946
introduction for Jazz. After summarizing his career, Matisse refers to the possibilities the cut-out
technique offers, insisting "An artist must never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a
reputation, prisoner of success"[50]
The number of independently conceived cut-outs steadily increased following Jazz, and eventually led to
the creation of mural-size works, such as Oceania the Sky and Oceania the Sea of 1946. Under
Matisses direction, Lydia Delectorskaya, his studio assistant, loosely pinned the silhouettes of birds,
fish, and marine vegetation directly onto the walls of the room. His first cut-outs of this scale, the two
Oceania pieces evoked a trip to Tahiti he made years before.[52]

The Chapel and museum[edit]

In 1948, Matisse began to prepare designs for the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, which allowed him to
expand this technique within a truly decorative context. The experience of designing the chapel
windows, chasubles, and tabernacle doorall planned using the cut-out methodhad the effect of
consolidating the medium as his primary focus. Finishing his last painting in 1951 (and final sculpture
the year before), Matisse utilized the paper cut-out as his sole medium for expression up until his death.
[53]

This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Bourgeois, now Sister JacquesMarie, despite his being an atheist.[54][55] They had 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".[56]
In 1952 he established a museum dedicated to his work, the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau, and this
museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.
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.[57]
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 on 3 November 1954. He is interred in the cemetery of
the Monastre Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.[58]

Legacy[edit]

The Plum Blossoms, 1948, Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Tombstone of Henri Matisse and his wife Noellie, cemetery of the Monastre Notre Dame de
Cimiez, Cimiez, France
The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums (1910),
exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne.[59]
His The Plum Blossoms (1948) was purchased on 8 September 2005 for the Museum of Modern
Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Jose Drouin. Estimated price was
US$25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970.[60] 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 catalogue of her father's work.[61]
Matisse's son, Pierre Matisse (19001989), opened a 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 Mir, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Andr 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.[62][63]
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. Les Heritiers Matisse functions as his official
Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for Les Heritiers Matisse is the Artists Rights Society.[64]

Recent exhibitions[edit]

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs was exhibited at Londons Tate Modern, from April to September 2014.
[65]
The show was the largest and most extensive of the cut-outs ever mounted, including approximately
100 paper maquettesborrowed from international public and private collectionsas well as a selection
of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles.[66] In total, the retrospective
featured 130 works encompassing his practice from 1937 to 1954. The Tate Modern show was the first
in its history to attract more than half a million people.[67]
The show then traveled to New Yorks Museum of Modern Art, where it was on display through 10
February 2015. The newly conserved cut-out, The Swimming Pool, which had been off view for more
than 20 years prior, returned to the galleries as the centerpiece of the exhibition.[68]

Partial list of works[edit]

Main article: List of works by Henri Matisse

Woman Reading (1894), Muse National d'Art Moderne Paris

Le Mur Rose (1898), Muse National d'Art Moderne

"Canal du Midi" (1898), Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Notre-Dame, une fin d'aprs-midi (1902), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

"Luxe, Calme, et Volupt" (1904), Muse National d'Art Moderne

Green Stripe (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 (1907), Baltimore Museum of Art

The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908)

Bathers with a Turtle (1908), Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri

La Danse (1909)

Still Life with Geraniums (1910)

L'Atelier Rouge (1911)

The Conversation (19081912)

Zorah on the Terrace (1912)

Le Rifain assis (1912)

Window at Tangier (1912)

Le rideau jaune (the yellow curtain) (1915)

The Window (1916), Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

The Painter and His Model (191617)

The Windshield, On the Road to Villacoublay (1917), Cleveland Museum of Art

La leon de musique (1917)

Interior A Nice (1920)

Festival of Flowers, Nice (1923), Cleveland Museum of Art

Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Yellow Odalisque (1926)

The Dance II (1932), triptych mural (45 ft by 15 ft) in the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia

Robe violette et Anmones (1937)

Woman in a Purple Coat (1937)

Le Rve de 1940 (the dream of 1940) (1940)

La Blouse Roumaine (1940)

Interior with an Etruscan Vase (1940), Cleveland Museum of Art

Le Lanceur De Couteaux (1943)

Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones (1944), Honolulu Museum of Art

L'Asie (1946)

Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (1947)

Jazz (1947)

The Plum Blossoms (1948)

Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire (19481951)

Beasts of the Sea (1950)

Facial-maschera (1951)

The Sorrows of the King (1952)

Black Leaf on Green Background (1952)

La Ngresse (1952)

Blue Nude II (1952)

The Snail (1953)

Le Bateau (1954) This gouache created a minor stir when the MoMA mistakenly displayed it
upside-down for 47 days in 1961.[69]

Illustrations[edit]

Jean Cocteau, Bertrand Gugan (1892-1943); L'almanach de Cocagne pour l'an 1920-1922,
Ddi aux vrais Gourmands Et aux Francs Buveurs[70]

Portrayal in media and literature[edit]

Film dramatisations

A film called Masterpiece, about the artist and his relationship with Monique Bourgeois,[71] was
proposed in 2011. Deepa Mehta intended to direct with Al Pacino to play Henri Matisse.
Matisse was played by Yves-Antoine Spoto in the 2011 film Midnight in Paris.

Exhibition on screen

The Museum of Modern Arts Matisse retrospective was part of the film series "Exhibition on
Screen", which broadcasts productions to movie theaters.

Although none of it is live, the film, "Matisse From MoMA and Tate Modern", combines highdefinition footage of the galleries with commentary from curators, museum administrators and,
through narration of words from the past, Matisse himself.

"We want to show the exhibition as well as we possibly can to the audience who cant get
there", said director Phil Grabsky. Inspired by a similar "event cinema" produced by the Met, Mr.
Grabsky started his series to simulate the experience of strolling through an art exhibit.[72]

Literature

The Ray Bradbury short story "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" contains an allusion to
the artist painting an eye on a poker chip for an American man to use as a monocle.

In Michael Ondaatje's "Running in the Family", there is a section called 'Don't talk to me about
Matisse'

Books and essays[edit]

"Notes of a Painter" ("Note d'un peintre"), 1908

"Painter's Notes on Drawing" ("Notes d'un peintre sur son dessin"), July 1939

Jazz, 1947

Matisse on Art, collected by Jack D. Flam, 1973, ISBN 0-7148-1518-7

Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Getty Publications, 2013, ISBN 978-160606-128-2

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Sources

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.

Olivier Berggruen and Max Hollein, Editors. Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors:
Masterpieces from the Late Years. Prestel Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-3791334738.

F. Celdran, R.R. Vidal y Plana. Triangle : Henri Matisse Georgette Agutte Marcel
Sembat Paris, Yvelinedition, 2007. ISBN 978-2-84668-131-5.

Jack Cowart and Dominique Fourcade. Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice 19161930.
Henry N. Abrams, Inc., 1986. ISBN 978-0810914421.

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.

Hanne Finsen, Catherine Coquio, et al. Matisse: A Second Life. Hazan, 2005. ISBN 9782754100434.

David Lewis. "Matisse and Byzantium, or, Mechanization Takes Command"

in Modernism/modernity 16:1 (January 2009), 5159.

John Russell. Matisse, Father & Son, published by Harry N. Abrams, NYC. Copyright John
Russell 1999, ISBN 0-8109-4378-6

Pierre Schneider. Matisse. New York, Rizzoli, 1984. ISBN 0-8478-0546-8.

Hilary Spurling. The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 1, 18691908. 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 19091954. 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[edit]

Berggruen, Olivier and Max Hollein, eds., Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors: Masterpieces
from the Late Years, Prestel, 2006. ISBN 3791334735.

Bois, Yve-Alain. Matisse in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia: The Barnes Foundation; New
York and London: Thames & Hudson, 2016.[2]

Kampis, Antal, Matisse, Budapest, 1959.

Nancy Marmer, "Matisse and the Strategy of Decoration," Artforum, March 1966, pp. 2833.

External links[edit]
Wikiquotehasquotations
relatedto:HenriMatisse
WikimediaCommonshas
mediarelatedtoHenri
Matisse.

Matisse and his Cats

Footage of Henri Matisse in Vence, France working on the New Chapel of Vence

Henri Matisse: Life and Work 500 hi-res images

Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art

Muse Matisse Nice

The nude in Matisse

Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California

Gelett Burgess, The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves, 1910

Documenting the Gilded Age: New York City Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century A New
York Art Resources Consortium project. Matisse exhibition catalog, and photoarchive file of Young
Sailor II.

Henri Matisse in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website

Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia