HENRI MATISSE paintings

Goldfish	Interior with a Phonograph	Joy of Life	Odalisque in Red Culottes	Open Window	Still Life
Still Life with Magnolia	The Egyptian Curtain	The Music Lesson	Three Sisters	Vase of Irises	Violin Player at the Window

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Henri Matisse

December 31, 1869 - November 3, 1954

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Biography

Born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, he grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois. He was primarily noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draftsmanship. As a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. He first took up painting during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis, and discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it. In 1891 he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. Influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, he made color a crucial element of his paintings from the first. Many of his paintings made between 1899 and 1905 make use of a pontillist technique adopted from Signac.

His first exhibition was in 1901 and his first solo exhibition in 1904. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he moved southwards in 1905 to work with André Derain and spent time on the French Riviera. His paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail. He became known as a leader of the Fauves (wild beasts), a group of artists which also included Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice Vlaminck. The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; he had moved beyond them and many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917 when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse.

He was a friend as well as rival of his younger contemporary Picasso, to whom he is often compared. A key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists are women and still life, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Matisse lived in Cimiez on the French Riviera, now a suburb of the city of Nice, from 1917 until his death in 1954. His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach. His Blue Nudes series are good examples of this new Matisse technique. These demonstrate his ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.

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