Biography from AskART:
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Henri Matisse came from a family who were of Flemish origin and lived
near the Belgian border. At eight o'clock on the evening of
December 31, 1869, he was born in his grandparents' home in the town of
Le Cateau in the cheerless far north of France. His father was a
self-made seed merchant who was a mixture of determination and tightly
coiled tension.
Henri had no clear idea of what he wanted to do
with his life. He was a twenty-year-old law clerk convalescing
from appendicitis when he first began to paint, using a box of colors
given to him by his mother. Little more than a year later, in
1890, he had abandoned law and was studying art in Paris. The
classes consisted of drawing from plaster casts and nude models and of
copying paintings in the Louvre. He soon rebelled against the
school's conservative atmosphere; he replaced the dark tones of his
earliest works with brighter colors that reflected his awareness of
Impressionism. Matisse was also a violinist; he took an odd pride
in the notion that if his painting eye failed, he could support his
family by fiddling on the streets of Paris.
Henri found a
girlfriend while studying art, and he fathered a daughter, Marguerite,
by her in 1894. In 1898 he married another woman, Amelie
Parayre. She adopted the beloved Marguerite; they eventually had
two sons, Jean, a sculptor and Pierre who became an eminent art
dealer. Relations between Matisse and his wife were often
strained. He often dallied with other women, and they finally
separated in 1939 over a model who had been hired as a companion for
Mme. Matisse. She was Madame Lydia, and after Mme. Matisse left,
she remained with Matisse until he died.
Matisse spent the
summer of 1905 working with Andre Derain in the small Mediterranean
seaport of Collioure. They began using bright and dissonant
colors. When they and their colleagues exhibited together, they caused
a sensation. The critics and the public considered their
paintings to be so crude and so roughly crafted that the group became
known as Les Fauves (the wild beasts).
By 1907, Matisse moved
on from the concerns of Fauvism and turned his attention to studies of
the human figure. He had begun to sculpt a few years
earlier. In 1910, when he saw an exhibition of Islamic art, he
was fascinated with the multiple patterned areas and adapted the
decorative universe of the miniatures to his interiors. As a
continuation of his interest in the "exotic", Matisse made extended
trips to Morocco in 1912 and 1913.
At the end of 1917, Matisse
moved to Nice; he would spend part of each year there for the remainder
of his life. A meticulous dandy, he wore a light tweed jacket amd
a tie when he painted. He never used a palette, but instead
squeezed his colors on to plain white kitchen dishes and used them just
as they came out of the tube.
During the early 1930s Matisse was
engaged in designing murals for the Barnes Foundation near
Philadelphia. He was also commissioned to illustrate a number of
books, for which he made etchings.
Although he suffered a
serious illness and underwent surgery for intestinal cancer early in
1941, he was able to continue. His recovery left him unable to
paint comfortably at an easel. Instead of relaxing as might have
been expected, he grew younger as he grew older. He turned to
colored paper and a pair of scissors, raising color to an emotional
level and simplifying forms to a childish simplicity. While he
worked he saw almost no one except the handsome Russian Livia
Delectorskaya, who was his chief model, housekeeper, secretary and
protector.
Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources:
Master Paintings from the Phillips Collection
From the internet, Electric Library and artchive.com
Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures: Matisse
"Earthly Paradise" by Mark Stevens in Newsweek Magazine, September 19, 1977; Time magazine, April 5, 1948 and July 13, 1970
"The Most Beautiful Show in the World" by Peter Plagens in Newsweek Magazine, September 28, 1992
"Final Flowering of Henri Matisse" by John Russell in Smithsonian Magazine
M.Therese Southgate, MD in the Journal of the American Medical Association
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