Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern
France on December 31, 1869. The son of a middle-class family,
he studied and began to practice law. In 1890, however, while
recovering slowly from an attack of appendicitis, he became intrigued
by the practice of painting. In 1892, having given up his law
career, he went to Paris to study art formally. He joined Gustave
Moreau's studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met Camoin,
Manguin, Marquet and Jean Puy
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Woman Reading, 1894
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris |
His first teachers were academically trained
and relatively conservative; Matisse's own early style was a conventional
form of naturalism, and he made many copies after the old masters.
He also studied more contemporary art, especially that of the
impressionists, and he began to experiment, earning a reputation
as a rebellious member of his studio classes.
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Luxe, Calme, et Volupté, 1904-05
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris |
Matisse's true artistic liberation, in terms
of the use of color to render forms and organize spatial planes,
came about first through the influence of the French painters
Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and the Dutch artist Vincent
van Gogh, whose work he studied closely beginning about 1899.
Then, in 1903 and 1904, Matisse encountered the pointillist painting
of Henri Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. Cross and Signac were experimenting
with juxtaposing small strokes (often dots or "points")
of pure pigment to create the strongest visual vibration of intense
color. Matisse adopted their technique and modified it repeatedly,
using broader strokes.
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Green Stripe, 1905
Copenhagen |
By 1905 he had produced some of the boldest color
images ever created, including a striking picture of his wife,
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) (1905, Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen). The title refers to a broad stroke of brilliant green
that defines Madame Matisse's brow and nose. In the same year
Matisse exhibited this and similar paintings along with works
by his artist companions, including Andre Derain and Maurice
de Vlaminck. Together, the group was dubbed les fauves (literally,
"the wild beasts") because of the extremes of emotionalism
in which they seemed to have indulged, their use of vivid colors,
and their distortion of shapes.
While he was regarded as a leader of radicalism
in the arts, Matisse was beginning to gain the approval of a number
of influential critics and collectors, including the American
expatriate writer Gertrude Stein and her family. Among the many
important commissions he received was that of a Russian collector
who requested mural panels illustrating dance and music (both
completed in 1911; now in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).
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Music, 1910
The Hermitage at St. Petersburg |
Such broadly conceived themes ideally suited
Matisse; they allowed him freedom of invention and play of form
and expression. His images of dancers, and of human figures in
general, convey expressive form first and the particular details
of anatomy only secondarily. Matisse extended this principle into
other fields; his bronze sculptures, like his drawings and works
in several graphic media, reveal the same expressive contours
seen in his paintings.
Although intellectually sophisticated, Matisse
always emphasized the importance of instinct and intuition in
the production of a work of art. He argued that an artist did
not have complete control over color and form; instead, colors,
shapes, and lines would come to dictate to the sensitive artist
how they might be employed in relation to one another. He often
emphasized his joy in abandoning himself to the play of the forces
of color and design, and he explained the rhythmic, but distorted,
forms of many of his figures in terms of the working out of a
total pictorial harmony.
From
the 1920s until his death, Matisse spent much time in the south
of France, particularly Nice, painting local scenes with a thin,
fluid application of bright color. In his old age, he was commissioned
to design the decoration of the small Chapel of Saint-Marie du
Rosaire at Vence (near Cannes), which he completed between 1947
and 1951. Often bedridden during his last years, he occupied himself
with decoupage, creating works of brilliantly colored paper cutouts
arranged casually, but with an unfailing eye for design, on a
canvas surface.
Matisse died in Nice on November 3, 1954. Unlike
many artists, he was internationally popular during his lifetime,
enjoying the favor of collectors, art critics, and the younger
generation of artists.
Microsoft® Encarta®
Online Encyclopedia 2000
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