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Henri Matisse
b. 12-31-1869; Le Chateau, France
d. 11-3-1954

French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor Henri Matisse had begun to study law profession as a young man but was interrupted by an attack of appendicitis; fortunately for the world his long convalescence became a time to paint. Matisse later said he had discovered “a kind of paradise” and went on to study art.

He was twenty-two when he arrived in Paris in 1891 to work with Bourgereau at the Beaux-Arts, and with Gustave Moreau. Matisse's early paintings were dark, naturalistic works, but by 1896 he had taken up Neo-Impressionist techniques, working in light color and short strokes. By 1905 he was the leader of the Fauve (Fr. Wild Beasts) movement of painters who worked from nature like the Impressionists before them, using brilliant pure color straight from the tube, to express their reaction to the subject. By 1908 Matisse had embarked on the course that was to influence all further contemporary painting: the possibilities of painting as a decorative and sensuous art.

Matisse was a careful observer and consumate student (remember he started to to be a lawyer). He looked at, and was influenced, by Paul Cezanne expression of depth through color, and Gauguin and Van Gogh's use of color to express emotion. Matisse chose to simplify and distort his images, sacrificing the realistic illusions of depth (perspective) to emphasize surface pattern. Matisse expressed volume by juxtaposing intense colors, varied patterns, and a rhythmic line. The dynamic works are sometimes emotional, sometimes serene, and always more than merely decorative. Matisse was often compared to his younger contemporary Pablo Picasso, though their personalities were opposites and they chose different subject matter.

By 1918, Matisse had a worldwide reputation, and besides his paintings and line drawings he was commissioned to do book illustrations, ballet sets, and murals. His most famous mural “La Danse,” painted for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (1931-33), achieves its effect by an extreme simplification of figures in a moving pattern of graceful lines.

His last great public work was the complete decoration-stained glass, furniture, murals, and chasubles-for the Dominican Chapel in Vence, a work accomplished in tones of ochre, black, and white. The subdued coloring used in the chapel offers a sharp contrast to the brilliant combinations of color he used in the cut-paper paintings he created in the final years of his life when he could no longer handle a brush.

Matisse died in Vence, in the south of France, on 11-3-1954. Throughout his long and successful career Matisse sought to improve his work, and to find the perfect manner of expression.