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***December 2003 *** |
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Henri Matisse December 31, 1869 – November 3, 1954 |
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| Matisse was born in Le Cateau, France. He was the son of a seed merchant and expected to take over the family business, not become a painter. He studied law for two years in Paris and in 1889 took work as a lawyer’s assistant. Destiny stepped in 1890 while he was confined to his bed with appendicitis. His mother gave him a box of paints to pass the time and the passion took over and in 1891 moved to Paris to study art. He failed the examination to get into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but hard work and perseverance paid off and he was admitted to the school in 1895 as a pupil under the painter Gustave Moreau. Inspired by the Impressionist painters he quit school in 1898 and decided to paint on his own. The life of a painter was a difficult one and years of struggle led him back to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1900 where he was ordered to leave as he was above the age limit of thirty. |
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Matisse then spent the majority of his time in the museums and galleries of Paris studying and painting and was especially inspired by Cezanne. By 1905 he was exhibiting with Derain and Vlaminck and with their unrestrained use of colours and vigorous brushstrokes were dubbed the Fauves (‘wild ones’) by a Parisian art critic. His celebration of bright colors reached its peak in 1917 when he began to spend time on the French Riviera at Nice and Vence. Here he concentrated on reflecting the sensual color of his surroundings and completed some of his most exciting paintings. In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed as having duodenal cancer and was permanently confined to a wheelchair. It was in this condition that he completed the magnificent Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. |
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Matisse pursued the expressiveness of colour throughout his career using subjects that were largely domestic or figurative and along with Picasso was regarded as one of the most important French Painters of the twentieth century. He continued to paint and create throughout the rest of his life and when too weak to stand at an easel, created his papercuts, carving in colored paper, scissoring out shapes, and collaging them into sometimes vast pictures. These works, daringly brilliant, are the nearest he ever came to abstraction. Matisse, died of a heart attack on November 3, 1954. Picasso attended the funeral and spoke, “In the end…there is only Matisse.” |
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“Instinct must be thwarted just as one
prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.” |
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