Henri Matisse
(1869-1954)

Henri Matisse was born in a town in Northern France, called Le Cateau-Cambresis. His parents owned a general store which sold household goods and grains. The town was well known for its textile industry and also for the magnificent patterns that were produced for the silk industry. The influence of his early life in this Northern textile town was never to leave him and he was to use textiles and patterns in his art for the rest of his life.

He planned to embark on a career in the law, and in 1887 and 1888 he studied law in Paris. In 1889 he began work as a lawyer’s clerk. However, in 1890 after a stomach operation he was confined to his bed. This can be seen as a misfortune or as a sort of a blessing, because it was whilst he was convalescing that he started to paint and decided that he wanted to become an artist.

Matisse was to become one of the greatest artists of all time. His path, however, was not an easy one. He was constantly ridiculed by many in his early years. Those that ridiculed him included art experts, the general public and even his own contemporaries. He was to experience incidents such as fellow artists ignoring him in the cafes of Paris which forced him to sit alone and being booed by the public whilst he was exhibiting his paintings.

Matisse believed that the arrangement of colour was as important as the subject matter. He avoided detail, instead using bright colours and strong lines. Many in the art world were shocked by his bold forms and bright colours.

He lived through two world wars and although his works of art were revolutionary, unlike other artists of his time he never became involved in political action or debate. However, on the domestic front he lived through his own personal wars, separating and divorcing from his wife Amelie when he was seventy years old.

As a young man he admired the works of Manet and Cezanne. He was also influenced by the Neo Impressionists and was friends with Paul Signac. He was to make friends with Pablo Picasso and although in a sense they were rivals, they had in reality a great deal of respect and admiration for each other. In 1899 he bought the painting entitled the ‘Bathers’ by Cezanne. He could ill afford it in financial terms but this painting was to become his talisman and remain with him. His wife Amelie pawned her emerald ring to enable him to buy it and they held onto it despite the many hardships and financial problems of the years ahead He painted his young daughter Marguerite many times. Her mother was a one time model of his, with whom he had had an affair before meeting Amelie. Amelie however took her in and raised her as her own. The painting ‘Girl with Black Cat’ is a well known portrait of Marguerite. Matisse was also to paint his wife Amelie many times. The famous painting ‘Woman with a Hat’ is of her. His family life was extremely important to him and apart from Marguerite he had two other children Jean and Pierre. When he was away on painting trips he wrote to his wife and children everyday.

Before the First World War, when Matisse had constant financial problems one man was persistently to come to his rescue, buying and collecting his paintings. This man was Russian and called Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin. He was an extremely rich and successful textile manufacturer. Time and time again he bought paintings from Matisse and probably on many occasions saved him and his family from starvation.

It was Shchukin who bought the now famous early Matisse painting ‘Nymph and Satyr’ and he also commissioned wall decorations from him. One was for the grand staircase in his house in Moscow entitled the Trubetskay palace. The themes were dance and Music. It is because of the collections made by Shchukin that many of the great early paintings by Matisse are now in Russia.

Throughout his whole artistic career, Matisse was interested in pattern in every form, such as silk and dress patterns and even the patterns of tablecloths. Paintings such as ‘Greta Moll’ produced in 1908 and ‘Still life with Blue Tablecloth’ in 1909 reflect this interest which almost at times verged on an obsession. He also had a great interest in Islamic art.

In 1911 Matisse traveled to Moscow with Shchukin and was overwhelmed by the beauty of Russian art and particularly the traditional and religious Russian art of Icons. Whilst in Moscow Schukin commissioned more paintings from Matisse. In January 1912 Matisse travelled to Morocco to work on these commissions. Whilst painting them he was constantly inspired by the Russian icons he had seen in Moscow.

Matisse also had another Russian in his life at this time, the painter Olga Meerson. She was to fall hopelessly in love with Matisse and as well as being a student of his, she also modeled for him. However, apart from the exception in his youth with the mother of his daughter Marguerite he was not to have any more romantic liaisons with his models.

He firmly believed in dedicating himself wholly to his art and warned younger students about being distracted by the temptations of the female flesh when drawing or painting their models. Olga Meerson was to leave a small legacy however and in 1911 she painted the now well known painting of Matisse in his pyjamas lying on his bed reading, entitled very simply ‘Henri Matisse’.

Anybody who ever saw Matisse paint always commented on his extraordinary powers of concentration when painting and his complete submergence in whatever he was doing. He gave himself completely to his art and he himself on talking about concentration said,

‘There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has to forget all the roses he ever painted’.

In 1917 he moved his base from Paris to Cimiez in the South of France where he produced the now famous works such as ‘The Dance’ and ‘Pink Nude.’ In 1941 after a cancer operation he became confined to a wheelchair and as he became increasingly weaker he could no longer use his easel. It was at this time that he starting producing his paper cut outs, gliding through the paper with his scissors and creating enormous and stunning collages such as ‘Beasts of the Sea’ and ‘The Creole Dancer’.

Towards the end of his life he spent almost four years working on a design for stained glass windows for a chapel in Vence in the South of France. It was to be his last great work. He died in 1954 with his daughter Marguerite and his faithful assistant Lydia Delectorskaya by his side.

If you find a forgotten Matisse you really have hit the Jack pot!

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