Odalisque in Blue or White Slave by Henri Matisse Art Reproduction

Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 - 3 November 1954), i of the undisputed masters of 20th century art, was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is usually regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, equally one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labeled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and cartoon, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition equally a leading figure in modern fine art.

Early life and instruction

Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambresis, Nord, France. He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardy, France, where his parents endemic a flower business; he was their starting time son. In 1887 he went to Paris to written report constabulary, working as a courtroom ambassador in Le Cateau-Cambrésis afterwards gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he subsequently described information technology, and decided to become an artist, securely disappointing his father. In 1891, he returned to Paris to written report art at the Académie Julian and became a pupil of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. Initially he painted still-lifes and landscapes in a traditional mode, at which he accomplished reasonable proficiency. Matisse was influenced past the works of earlier masters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Nicolas Poussin, and Antoine Watteau, equally well as by modern artists such equally Edouard Manet, and by Japanese art. Chardin was one of Matisse'due south near admired painters; every bit an art student he fabricated copies of iv Chardin paintings in the Louvre.

With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900). Marguerite and Amélie oft served equally models for Matisse.

In 1896, Matisse, an unknown fine art pupil at the time, visited the Australian painter John Russell on the island Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to paintings of Vincent van Gogh - who had been a friend of Russell - and gave him one of Vincent van Gogh'south drawings. Matisse'due south manner inverse completely; abandoning his earth-coloured palette for brilliant colours. He later said "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me."

In 1898, on the advice of Camille Pissarro, he went to London to written report the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. Upon his return to Paris in February 1899 he worked beside Albert Marquet and met André Derain, Jean Puy, and Jules Flandrin. Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his dwelling included a plaster bust by Rodin, a painting by Gauguin, a cartoon past Van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne'southward Three Bathers. In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour Matisse found his main inspiration.

Many of Matisse's paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist technique he adopted after reading Paul Signac'south essay, "Eugene Delacroix and Néo-impressionisme". His paintings of 1902-03, a period of material hardship for the artist, are insufficiently somber and reveal a preoccupation with form. Having fabricated his first attempt at sculpture, a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye, in 1899, he devoted much of his energy to working in dirt, completing The Slave in 1903.

Fauvism

His first solo exhibition was at Ambroise Vollard'due south gallery in 1904, without much success. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionists Signac and Henri Edmond Cross. In that year he painted the most important of his works in the neo-Impressionist way, Luxe, Calme et Volupté. In 1905 he traveled southwards again to work with André Derain at Collioure. His paintings of this catamenia are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and apply pointillism in a less rigorous way than earlier.

In 1905, Matisse and a grouping of artists at present known as "Fauves" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, oft dissonant colours, without regard for the subject's natural colours. Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello amongst the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily paper, and passed into popular usage. The exhibition garnered harsh criticism "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", said the critic Camille Mauclair only also some favorable attention. When the painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse's Woman with a Hat, was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, the embattled creative person's morale improved considerably.

Matisse was recognized as a leader of the Fauves, along with André Derain; the two were friendly rivals, each with his own followers. Other members were Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck. The Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826 - 1898) was the movement'southward inspirational teacher; as a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he pushed his students to retrieve outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions.

What I dream of is an art of balance, purity, and tranquillity devoid of troubling or depressing subject affair... a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something similar a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. "
- Henri Matisse

In 1907 Apollinaire, commenting about Matisse in an article published in La Falange, said, "We are not here in the presence of an improvident or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's fine art is eminently reasonable." But Matisse's work of the time too encountered vehement criticism, and it was difficult for him to provide for his family unit. His controversial 1907 painting Nu bleu was burned in figure at the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913.

The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did cipher to touch on the rising of Matisse; many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917, when he was an active function of the peachy gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in, with his bourgeois appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. He connected to absorb new influences: later on viewing a large exhibition of Islamic fine art in Munich in 1910, he spent 2 months in Spain studying Moorish art. The effect on Matisse'southward fine art was a new boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour, equally in L'Atelier Rouge (1911).

Matisse had a long clan with the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. He created i of his major works La Danse specially for Shchukin as part of a two painting committee, the other painting beingness Music, 1910. An before version of La Danse (1909) is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Fine art in New York Metropolis.

Gertrude Stein, Académie Matisse, and the Cone sisters

Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than Matisse. The 2 became life-long friends as well as rivals and are ofttimes compared; one primal difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted nigh frequently past both artists were women and withal life, with Matisse more probable to place his figures in fully realized interiors. Matisse and Picasso were commencement brought together at the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas. During the first decade of the 20th century, Americans in Paris, Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo Stein, Michael Stein and Michael'due south wife Sarah were of import collectors and supporters of Matisse's paintings. In addition Gertrude Stein's two American friends from Baltimore, the Cone sisters Clarabel and Etta, became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso, collecting hundreds of their paintings. The Cone collection is now exhibited in the Baltimore Museum of Fine art.

While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among the paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso's works dominated Leo and Gertrude Stein's collection, Sarah Stein's drove emphasized Matisse.

Among Pablo Picasso's acquaintances who also frequented the Sat evenings were: Fernande Olivier (Picasso'due south mistress), Georges Braque, André Derain, the poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire, Marie Laurencin (Apollinaire'southward mistress and an creative person in her ain right), and Henri Rousseau.

His friends organized and financed the Académie Matisse in Paris, a individual and non-commercial school in which Matisse instructed young artists. It operated from 1907 until 1911. Hans Purrmann and Sarah Stein were amongst several of his most loyal students.

There are always flowers for those who desire to run across them. " - Henri Matisse

After Paris

In 1917 Matisse relocated to Cimiez on the French Riviera, a suburb of the city of Nice. His work of the decade or so post-obit this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach. This "render to order" is feature of much art of the mail-Globe War I menses, and can be compared with the neoclassicism of Picasso and Stravinsky, and the render to traditionalism of Derain. His orientalist odalisque paintings are characteristic of the period; while popular, some contemporary critics found this work shallow and decorative.

In the late 1920s Matisse notably once once again engaged in agile collaborations with other artists. He worked with not but Frenchmen, Dutch, Germans, and Spanish, just also a few Americans and recent American immigrants.

After 1930 a new vigor and bolder simplification appeared in his work. American fine art collector Albert C. Barnes convinced him to produce a large mural for the Barnes Foundation, The Dance 2, which was completed in 1932. The Foundation owns several dozen other Matisse paintings.

He and his married woman of 41 years separated in 1939. In 1941, he underwent surgery in which a colostomy was performed. Afterwards he started using a wheelchair, and until his expiry he was cared for past a Russian adult female, Lydia Delektorskaya, formerly one of his models. With the help of administration he set about creating cut newspaper collages, often on a large scale, chosen gouaches découpés. His Bluish Nudes series characteristic prime examples of this technique he chosen "painting with scissors"; they demonstrate the ability to bring his eye for color and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, just with playful and delightful power.

In 1947 he published Jazz, a express-edition book containing prints of colorful paper cutting collages, accompanied by his written thoughts. In the 1940s he also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the Mourlot Studios in Paris.

Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been agile in the Résistance during the war, was tortured (almost to death) in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration campsite.

According to David Rockefeller, Matisse's final piece of work was the design for a stained-drinking glass window installed at the Matrimony Church of Pocantico Hills near the Rockefeller estate n of New York City. "It was his final artistic creation; the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom when he died in Nov of 1954", Rockefeller writes. Installation was completed in 1956.

If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, information technology would amaze anybody. "
- Henri Matisse

Legacy

In 1951 Matisse finished a 4-twelvemonth project of designing the interior, the glass windows and the decorations of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, oftentimes referred to every bit the Matisse Chapel. This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie. He had hired her every bit a nurse and model in 1941 before she became a Dominican nun and they met again in Vence and started the collaboration, a story related in her 1992 volume Henri Matisse: La Chapelle de Vence and in the 2003 documentary "A Model for Matisse".

He established a museum dedicated to his work in 1952, in his birthplace city, and this museum is now the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.

Matisse died of a middle set on at the age of 84 in 1954. He is interred in the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, about Nice. Just like William Shakespeare on literature, and Sigmund Freud on psychology, Henri Matisse's touch on on Fauvism move is tremendous. Thanks to the influence he had on painting following the 2d World War, Henri Matisse's reputation is higher than it has ever been earlier. Following the principle discussed by Hans Hofmann, that color was responsible for structural configurations behind the pic, was showcased in American abstruse fine art. Works of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and other color field painters, showcased this mode in their pieces. Following this concept, Matisse is an influential effigy of the 20th century, and a decisive figure of the time. By defining a clearly pictorial linguistic communication, of colors and arabesque lines, rather than looking at painting equally a ways to an end, Matisse had a great impact on future movements, and works, produced by artists in the 20th century.

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Source: https://www.henrimatisse.org/

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