I keep getting FB posts with Matisse art. I thought I would dig deeper:
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau-Cambresis in northern France, near the Belgium border. His parents owned a general store where they sold household goods and seed. She too had been a painter and worked in the house paint section of Henri’s father’s store. Henri’s mother encouraged him not to follow the conventional rules of art and to “listen to his emotions”
As a young man, Henri traveled to Paris to study law. When he was 20-years old, he returned home to work in a law office as a clerk. It was around this time that he had an attack of appendicitis which required surgery. To make the long recovery more enjoyable, his mother gave him a paint box. Matisse discovered painting!
A year later, Matisse traveled to Paris to study art. In the beginning he painted still-life and landscapes. Despite the fact that his first teacher told him he would never learn to draw, five years later he exhibited 5 of his paintings in the salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The state purchased 2 of them.
When 28, Matisse was introduced to Impressionism and to the work of Vincent van Gogh. Matisse was fascinated by this new and interesting way of painting. His style changed completely. His excitement for the art and artists of his time grew. In fact, he bought so many paintings by the artists that he admired, he was financially unstable. His wife opened a dress shop in the hope of helping to make ends meet.
In 1905, Matisse along with a group of artists which became known as “Fauves” (The Wild Beasts) exhibited together at the Salon d’Automne. The paintings shown were expressive, often without regard for the natural colors of the subject. Matisse’s works in particular contained aggressive brush strokes and bold primary colors. The show brought sudden fame to Matisse with his “Woman with the Hat” being purchased by American writer and modern art collector Gertrude Stein.
In 1906, Matisse met Picasso, 11 years his senior. The two became lifelong friends and are often compared. One key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was more inclined to work from imagination.
Matisse wintered on the French Riviera and by the early 1920s he was a resident. Matisse was visiting Paris in June 1940 when the Nazis invaded France but he managed to make his way back to Nice. His son, a gallery owner in New York, begged him to flee. Matisse was about to depart but changed his mind: “It seemed to me as if I would be deserting.”
“If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?”
Matisse remained, for the most part, isolated in southern France throughout the war. His family was intimately involved with the French resistance. His son helped the Jewish and anti-Nazi French artists escape occupied France. Matisse’s estranged wife, Amélie, was a typist for the French Underground and jailed for six months. Matisse’s daughter had been active in the Résistance and was tortured by the Gestapo and sentenced to Ravensbrück in Germany. She managed to escape from the train, halted during an Allied air raid and survived in the woods until rescued.
Nice, 1928
Diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1941, Matisse underwent surgery that left him reliant on a wheelchair and often bedbound. 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. He called this new technique “painting with scissors.” His cut paper collages demonstrated his eye for color and geometry in a simple, yet powerful way.
After 1950 he suffered from asthma and heart trouble. Cared for by a faithful Russian woman who had been one of his models, he lived in a large studio overlooking Nice. Often he was obliged to work on his mural-sized projects from a studio bed with the aid of a crayon attached to a long pole.
During the last years of his life, he was a rather solitary man. In 1954, aged 84, Matisse died in Nice. Spoke Jean Cassou, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, “Henri Matisse is one of the last representatives of French genius,” he said. “If the title of master suits any artist it certainly suited him. All men deserving of this name, all men who think, can consider themselves as his disciples. His thinking has illuminated our era.”
Stated Andre Berthoin, Minister of National Education, “His was the most French of palettes. The world will mourn with France.” Two years before his death, a museum was opened in his honor. It is now the 3rd largest Matisse art collection in France.
