Henri was the master of colors. In his paintings, he always focused upon discovering “the essential character of things” and to produce an art “of balance, purity, and serenity,” as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work.
Birth, Childhood and Education
Henri Emile Benoît Matisse was born on 31 December 1869 in a tiny textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. His father was a grain merchant whose family were weavers. His mother, Anna Heloise Gerard, was a daughter of a long line of well-to-do tanners. His mother was an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time. Matisse said that he got this color sense from his mother.
In 1887, he went to Paris to study law. After completing his education, he worked as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. When Henri Matisse was 21 years old, he got an attack of appendicitis. During the phase of convalescence, his mother got him some art supplies and he began to paint. It was then that he discovered his love for art and made it his passion.
In 1891, Matisse returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He didn’t like their over perfectionist style of teaching and left. Later, he trained himself with the artist, Gustave Moreau.
Woman Reading
Work Life
Matisse began painting still-lives and landscapes in the traditional Flemish style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Most of his early works employ a dark palette and tend to be gloomy.
In 1896, Matisse was elected as an associate member of the Société Nationale, which meant that each year he could show paintings at the Salon de la Société without having to submit them for review. In the same year, he exhibited 5 paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the state bought two of his paintings. This was the first and almost only recognition he received in his native country during his lifetime.
Fauvism
In 1905, he moved southwards to work with André Derain and spent time on the French Riviera. There his fondness for bright and expressive colors became more pronounced. Same year, he exhibited paintings with a group of people called “Fauves” at the Salon d’Automne. These paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colors, without regard for the subject’s natural colors.
In 1897, he produced his first master piece, The Dinner Table. In 1952, he established a museum dedicated to his work in his birthplace. This museum contains the third-largest collection of Matisse works in France.
He also created paper cut-outs in the same vivid, strong colors and daring compositions known from his paintings.
The Open Window
Personal Life
Caroline Joblaud was Matisse’s early lover for four years during his initial struggles to affirm his artistic direction and professional career. Caroline gave Matisse his first daughter Marguerite in 1894, who after Matisse’s marriage in 1898 to Amélie Noellie Parayre was warmly accepted. Caroline posed various times for the artist’s compositions while Marguerite served many times as a model for Matisse throughout his life. Matisse and his wife had had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900).
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 1954. He is interred in the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.
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