Overview

Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.

Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Career

• In1896, he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts of which two were bought by the state. His work showed the influence of the post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Gogh.
  
• He made his first sculpture an imitation of French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye and in 1903, completed ‘The Slave of a standing male nude’ in clay.
  
• His first solo exhibition at Ambroise Vollard's gallery in 1904 was not that successful. He became fond of bright and expressive colors after painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionists Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.
  
• In 1906, he met Pablo Picasso at the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein and became his lifelong friend and rival and their works dominated Gertrude Stein's collection and those of Claribel and Etta Cone.
  
• Between 1906 and 1917, he made several trips to Algeria and Morocco. He absorbed some African influences and introduced the use of black as a color, which brought a new boldness in the use of intense color as in L'Atelier Rouge.
  
• Among Matisse's final works are ‘Blue Nudes’, a series of paintings executed by him in 1952 that represented female nudes either seated or standing in color blue signifying distance and volume.
  
• In 1947, he published Jazz, a limited-edition artist's book of about one hundred prints of colorful paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. These were rendered as pochoirprints by art philosopher Tériade.
  
• In 1952, he established a museum dedicated to his work, the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau, his hometown. This museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.

Legacy

The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums (1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne.

His The Plum Blossoms (1948) was purchased on 8 September 2005 for the Museum of Modern Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin. Estimated price was US$25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970.[60] In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US$9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.

Matisse's son Pierre Matisse (1900–1989) opened a modern art gallery in New York City during the 1930s. The Pierre Matisse Gallery, which was active from 1931 until 1989, represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York often for the first time. He exhibited Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, André Derain, Yves Tanguy, Le Corbusier, Paul Delvaux, Wifredo Lam, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Balthus, Leonora Carrington, Zao Wou Ki, Sam Francis, sculptors Theodore Roszak, Raymond Mason, and Reg Butler, and several other important artists, including the work of Henri Matisse.

Henri Matisse's grandson Paul Matisse is an artist and inventor living in Massachusetts. Matisse's great-granddaughter Sophie Matisse is active as an artist. Les Heritiers Matisse functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for Les Heritiers Matisse is the Artists Rights Society.

On View

• Museum of Modern Art, New York City
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
• Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
• Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris
• Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
• National Fallery of Art East Building, Washington D.C.
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
• Menil Collection, Houston
• Pushkin Museum, Moscow
• National Gallery of Denmark, Denmark
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Musee Matisse, Nice
• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
• Brooklyn Museum, New York City
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
• Saint Lois Art Museum, St. Louis
• The Phillips Collection, Washington DC
• Musee Picasso, Paris
• Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
• Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu
• Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
• Metropolitan museum of Art, New York City
• Musee d'Orsay, Paris

ArtWorks

Bathers by a River

Henri Matisse considered this painting as one of the most important of his career. He worked on it at intervals over 8 years and it passed through a variety of transformations which reflect his new interest in Cubism, an art style he had rejected. With its restricted palette and severely abstracted forms, Bathers by a River is strikingly different from most of the other works of Matisse. It is much analysed and has been a subject of intense scrutiny. That it was painted during the years of World War I adds to the interest in the painting.

Blue Nude

Matisse was working on a sculpture when it shattered accidentally and the broken pieces inspired him to create the most controversial work of his career, Blue Nude. When it was first displayed in 1907 at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, it shocked the French public. The painting later created an international sensation when its effigy was burned in 1913 at the Armory Show in Chicago. Nu bleu is now considered a pivotal work of Matisse’s career. It inspired Pablo Picasso to create one of his most renowned masterpieces, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon).

Dance

Along with Music, this painting was created as part of a two painting commission for Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. It shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, against a simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. The painting exudes “primitive” energy and has been deliberately painted in an unsophisticated and childish way. La Danse is considered a key point in the development of modern painting, remains hugely influential, and is the most famous work of Henri Matisse.

Goldfish and Palette

Goldfish appear in 9 of his paintings and this is the most famous among them. Matisse initially sketched himself, holding a rectangular palette, just as Paul Cézanne did in an 1885 self-portrait. However, all that remains of him in the final painting is his thumb on the palette. Goldfish and Palette shared a secret link with Picasso’s 1915 Harlequin, which is now interpreted as a barely perceptible self-portrait on a rectilinear canvas his Harlequin alter ego is clutching. Matisse and Picasso, who were close friends as well as arch-rivals, revered Cezanne.

Luxury Calm and Pleasure

Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. It was pioneered by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. This painting, which is probably based on the view from Signac’s house in Saint-Tropez, uses the Divisionist technique. Luxe, Calme et Volupté is the most famous painting of Matisse in the Neo-Impressionist style.

The Joy of Life

The Joy of Life was regarded as the most radical painting of its day and it was the breakthrough work of Matisse. It depicts several nude women and men in a landscape drenched with vivid color. A group of dancing figures can be seen in the background. Matisse broke conventions of western painting in this artwork by using techniques like shifting perspectives leading to the painting being out of scale..

The Open Window

This painting depicts the view out of the window of the apartment of Matisse in Collioure, on the southern coast of France. In it, he represents the interior of the room, the window itself, the balcony and the harbor view, with a distinctly different handling of the brush. The Open Window is one of Matisse’s most famous paintings in Fauvism and it is considered an iconic work of early modernism.

The Red Studio

This painting captures the workshop of Henri Matisse with paintings, sculptures and ceramics scattered around his studio. In it the artist has reduced the walls and floor to one continuous sheet of uniform red. Matisse remarked on the relevance of the color, “I find that all these things . . . only become what they are to me when I see them together with the color red”. The Red Studio is considered a pivotal work in the history of art and it was ranked number five in a 2004 poll of 500 art experts for the most influential modern art work of all time.

Woman in a Purple Coat

This is a portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya who was Matisse’s muse and companion in his later life. In the painting, the artist depicts Lydia in an exotic Moroccan costume, surrounded by a complex of abstract design and exotic color. Woman in a Purple Coat is among the most renowned works in the final groups of oil paintings in Matisse’s career, after which he quit painting in favor of creating paper cut-outs.

Woman with a Hat

This portrait of Matisse’s wife, Amélie Noellie Parayre, was at the center of the controversy. Its loose brushwork; unfinished quality; and vivid, non-naturalistic colors shocked the public and the critics. Woman with a Hat went on to become one of the most renowned masterpieces of Henri Matisse.