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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRI MATISSE

Henri Matisse was one of the most innovative artists of this century, equaled only by Picasso. His dazzling experiments with color marked a turning point in the history of art, and formed the basis for most subsequent artistic developments. Matisse took to painting relatively late in life, while recovering from a brief illness. He immediately found in it both an ideal means of expression and a refuge from everyday existence. 
After a short period as leader of the Fauvist movement, Matisse forged his own unique style, combining the simplicity of Cezanne with a brilliantly expressive use of color. His radiant compositions came increasingly to reflect his own aspirations for a life free from trouble and nervous excitement. In reality, his life was largely uneventful, particularly his last years, spent peacefully in the South of France.

Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was born on 31 December 1869 in the northern French town of Le Cateau, at his maternal grandmother's. Both his parents came from Le Cateau, but had met in Paris where his mother, Anna, had worked as a milliner and Emile, his father, had been a draper's assistant. Shortly after the birth, the family moved to the nearby village of Bohain-en-Vermandois, where Emile set up shop as a druggist and grain merchant. This commercial heritage was to prove useful as, throughout his life, Matisse displayed a keen business acumen.
DISCOVERING ART
At first, Matisse gave little indication of his future brilliance and individuality as an artist. At the age of ten, he attended the lycee in the neighboring town of St Quentin, studying Latin and Greek, and in 1887, he was sent to Paris to study law. But it was not until he was nearly 19, that he began to take a serious interest in art. Working as a lawyer's clerk in St Quentin, he attended early morning drawing classes at the Ecole Quentin de la Tour, working assiduously from plaster casts between 6:30 and 7:30 am each day. But it was when he was convalescing from appendicitis the following year that he took up painting, and it came as a revelation to him. He recalled later, "When I started to paint, I felt transported into a kind of paradise....In everyday life, I was usually bored and vexed by the things that people were always telling me I must do. Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet and alone."
With his father's permission, Matisse gave up law and set off for Paris again - this time, to study with the fashionable and most successful academic painter of his day, Adolphe Bouguereau. But Matisse was soon to become disillusioned with Bouguereau's facile and repetitive productions. In 1892, he became an unofficial student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the aegis of Gustave Moreau. Moreau was a liberal and open-minded teacher, who encouraged his students to follow their own paths and to paint right from the start of the course to develop their gifts as colorists. He not only urged Matisse to copy Old Masters in the Louvre, but also to go into the streets and draw, taking his subject-matter from everyday life. Matisse made close friends in Moreau's studio, among them, Albert Marquet, who joined Matisse in "creating" Fauvism some five years later.
Life for Matisse in Paris of the belle epoque was a struggle. By 1894, he already had a daughter, Marguerite, to support (like much of Matisse's personal life, her origins can only be the subject of conjecture). But gradually, Matisse's relatively unadventurous early works, consisting largely of still-lifes and interiors in subdued colors, began to win him success within the Parisian artistic establishment. Four were exhibited at the 1896 Salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts and at the end of the exhibition, Matisse was elected an Associate Member of the Societe. He looked set on the road to a successful, if unexciting, professional artistic career.
However, Matisse was never one to bow to the dictates of fashion, or the demands of the academic establishment. During the following year, he presented to the Salon an ambitious still-life The Dinning Table (orLa Desserte) in an Impressionistic style. Although Impressionism was over twenty years old, it was still an anathema to the establishment. The Societe were bitterly disappointed by Matisse's entry, and after 1899, he did not exhibit with them.
The next ten years were years of poverty and hardship for Matisse, lightened only by his marriage in January 1898 to Amelie Parayre, whom he had met a few months before at a wedding. She was to prove a devoted wife and mother - Jean was born in 1899, Pierre, in 1900 - and like Matisse's mother, set herself up as a milliner to support her husband's talent; she also modeled for him for several years. Her love of Oriental patterned fabrics is depicted in her husband's portraits of her in a Japanese kimono. For their honeymoon, they went to London, where Matisse studied the Turners, as advised by Pisarro. On their return to France, they made an extended trip to Corsica - Matisse's first experience of the Mediterranean light and color, which were to play such an important part in his art.
On their return to Paris, the Matisses set up home in an apartment on the Quai St Michel, near Matisse's friend, Marquet. Here, Matisse devoted himself to painting and sculpture, and, to alleviate financial difficulties, took a job with a theatrical scene-painter, meticulously painting miles of laurel leaves to decorate the hall then under construction for the 1900 Exposition Universelle.
The first major turning point in Matisse's life came when he and his family spent a summer holiday at St Tropez, near the villas of Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, two major Neo-Impressionist painters. Under their influence, Matisse began to paint in bright, vivid colors applied in a divisionist technique, which was to culminate in Luxe, Calme et Volupte. (left)
The following year, during a summer holiday at Collioure, Matisse produced his first works in the Fauvist style. On his return to Paris, he exhibited several of these paintings, including The Open Window (below), and a portrait of Madame Matisse (look in Matisse Gallery, bottom of page), at the notorious 1905 Salon d'Automne, along with works by Marquet, Vlaminck and Derain.
The paintings caused a furor. They were described as "pictorial aberrations" and "unspeakable fantasies", and the painters themselves were labeled, "fauves" or "wild beasts", because of the "savage" use of color.
The next major landmark in Matisse's life, was his introduction to the Stein family. Leo, Michael and their more famous authoress sister, Gertude, were among the most adventurous collectors of the day - and during the next few years they bought many of Matisse's most controversial works. The Steins also introduced him to a circle of enlightened critics, dealers and connoisseurs. Matisse's fortunes improved dramatically - he had acquired discerning patrons at last. He also acquired a regular contract with a prestigious Parisian dealer and moved into a large house with grounds - "our little Luxembourg" - in the suburbs of Issy-les-Moulineaux. He could travel frequently and made trips to North Africa and Germany where he saw the grand Islamic Exhibition in 1910.
Matisse also attracted the patronage of a rich, cultivated Russian merchant, Sergei Shchukin. Looking more like a Tatar nomad of the Steppes, Shchukin was the ideal patron: not only incredibly wealthy, but unprejudiced and with vision. In 1909, he commissioned two large mural decorations for his baroque palace of a home in Moscow, including Dance. (below)
Thus the first decade of the new century was spent in the flush of prosperity, with travels further afield to Russia, Morocco and Spain. However, in 1914 the war temporarily interrupted Matisse's travels. Too old to enlist, it shattered his peace of mind, for he was continually anxious about the fate of his friends. He painted little during the next two years and concentrated instead on etching and devoted himself to the study of the violin. He would joke in later life that it was insurance - if his eye sight failed him, he could always busk.
MEDITERRANEAN SEDUCTION
From 1916, Matisse began to spend the winter months at Nice on the Riviera. Apart from the availability of many attractive Mediterranean models, the dazzling light - its play on the white stucco buildings and clear sea - was irresistible to an artist for whom colors and light where to become a preoccupation for the next ten years. For the rest of his life, Matisse spent most of his winters in Nice - as if on sabbatical from domesticity - moving from one hotel to another, painting, rowing and playing the violin.
The peace in Matisse's life during these years is reflected in a series of quiet, contemplative interiors, such as the Woman and Goldfish and in his languorous odalisques. These works were more acceptable to the establishment than those of his Fauvist years and from 1921, Matisse began to gain official recognition. That year, The French government purchased one of his paintings, and examples of his work began to enter major public collections all over the world. In 1925, he was created a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. For many years, Matisse had suffered from the backlash of the Fauvist episode, which saw him branded as "loathsome", "abnormal" and "degenerate". This characterization of Matisse was entirely at odds with his true nature. He was not a passive or tranquil man and suffered continual anxiety about his art. But in his outward behavior, he was quiet, amiable and modest. Fernande Olivier, Picasso's mistress, described him as a "sympathetic character"....of an astonishing lucidity of spirit, precise, concise, intelligent". After a particularly naive response by an American interviewer, Matisse is said to have pleaded, "Oh, do tell the American people that I am a normal man....."
The 1930s were years of experiment. Matisse made a trip to Tahiti via America in 1930. He denied that the trip was a flight from Western civilization and was left strangely dissatisfied by the experience. Also in 1930, Matisse undertook to provide the illustrations for a book of poems by the Symbolist poet, Mallarme, and in 1931, he accepted the commission to provide a large-scale mural decoration for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Although the project posed monumental problems, Matisse re-worked the entire design when he learned that he had been given incorrect measurements. Exhausted, he retreated to Italy, and revisited Giotto's murals.
In 1937, he designed the scenery and costumes for a production of Shostakovich's Le Rouge et le Noir by the Ballets Russes of Monte Carlo, and the following year, he began working extensively in cut paper or gouache decoupee, a project which culminated in the publication of jazz.
A SECOND LIFE
By 1939, Matisse was becoming increasingly anxious about the uncertain climate as war was about to break out. His separation from his wife, though never legalized, was pretty much on the cards. (She and Marguerite went on to work for the French Resistance and were captured by the Gestapo, though later rescued.) Matisse was seriously ill with duodenal cancer and had two major operations in 1941: surprised to find he had survived them, he felt he had been granted another life. By now, he was looked after by Lydia Delektorskaya, the young Russian model he had painted in the 1930s, who had become his muse, confidante and companion. Matisse had acquired a suite in the palatial Hotel Regina ai Nice, where he returned to convalesce - but continued working, even from his bed: he fixed charcoal onto long poles and drew on the walls and ceiling.
As the Italians advanced on Nice, Matisse moved to the nearby hill town of Vence. It was here that he was persuaded by one of his ex-models, now a nun, to undertake the most important project of his last years - the decoration of the Chapel of the Rosary. By the time the chapel was consecrated in 1951, Matisse was too frail to attend the ceremony. Three years later, he died peacefully at Nice, on 3 November 1954, aged 84.

MATISSE GALLERY

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