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His determined quest to infuse his paintings with vibrant and sun-drenched colours and to explore new ways of interpreting shapes, images and mediums, garnered Henri Matisse the distinction of becoming one of the most influential artists of his time. He and a small group of fellow artists that included Maurice de Vlaminck and Andre Derain shocked the austere Paris art world with their radical ideas and what most art aficionados considered was their total lack of discipline. But Matisse persisted. In turn Paris art critics christened his small group “the fauves”, or the “wild beasts” of the early 20th century art movement. Fauvism, though short-lived, opened the floodgates for modernist artists to express their own visions and paved the way for other forms of modern expressionism like “cubism”.
Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was born in 1869 in the northern French region of Picardy. The eldest of 3 sons, he was a sickly child and suffered from what doctors diagnosed as chronic appendicitis. Anna Heloise Gerard, descendant of a long line of well-to-do tanners, doted on and over-protected her son. She also showed an artistic bent and it was from her that Henri acquired his love of shapes, textures and vibrant colours. She was the first to advise her son not to adhere to the “rules” of art, but rather listen to his emotions.
Once Henri Matisse finished school, his father Emile, a grain merchant and a much more practical man, arranged for his son to obtain a clerking position at a law office. Young Matisse considered law as tedious, however he passed the bar in 1888 with distinction. By 1890 he was felled by illness and forced into a long recuperation at home. His mother, hoping to relieve his boredom, suggested Henri paint. By 1891 he decided to strike out for Paris to study art. Disgusted with his son’s choice, the elder Matisse warned Henri that he could never make a decent living as a painter, that artists starved more often than not.
Matisse attended various art schools like the Academie Julian and Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied the art and the techniques of past masters like Manet, Raphael, and Poussin. When he and a few of his contemporaries began adapting the old with new styles of their own they were either derided as talentless or dubbed radicals by their instructors. Matisse experimented with bright, unmixed colours, applying them to the canvas using a technique called “Pointillism”, the creation of a picture using tiny dots or paint strokes. He was equally fascinated with distorted, yet simple shapes and patterns and used them to capture ideas. During his first formative years in Paris he also carried on a relationship with Caroline Joblaud that produced a daughter, Marguerite.
In January of 1898 Henri Matisse married Amelie Noemie Alexandrine Parayre, whom he used as a model for many of his most memorable portraits. Mrs. Matisse was very devoted to her husband and urged him to pursue his work - work that she recognised was a true passion for him. During the lean years she hired out as a hatmaker to help make ends meet. His marriage to Amelie also gave Matisse the opportunity to spend winters along the Mediterranean where he described everything around him as “colour and light”.
By the beginning of 1900 Matisse’s work graduated into a wider range that included sculpting, one of his early works, “The Serf” resembling a style reminiscent of Rodin. Yet thus far in his varied career Matisse had found no financial security - no one seemed to like his work let alone offered to buy it. Despite growing despair that his father was right, that most artists starved, Matisse refused to give in or change his style to suit the public tastes of the day. It was hard to make ends meet with a wife and 3 children to support so Amelie’s next step was to open a hat shop. She also continued posing for her husband as often as time allowed. Unfortunately after a series of illnesses suffered by Amelie and then by Matisse himself, the family was forced to move in with his parents. Over the next few years Matisse’s luck did not change. Against mounting misfortune and continuous derision from critics and his father, Henri Matisse came close to abandoning painting for good, but he weathered each storm and kept creating new works, all of which he chose to paint with his distinct modernistic approach.
Matisse would again spend time along the Mediterranean with friend and fellow painter, Andre Derain. It was here in the summer of 1905 that Matisse would invent what critics came to call “Fauvism”. In the fall of that same year, after finishing a portrait called “Woman With the Hat”, a painting for which his wife once again posed wearing a huge, gaudily-decorated hat and a holding a fan, Matisse shipped it and 8 other works to the Salon d’Automme in Paris. Critics were shocked by his undisciplined and bold style, particularly his rendering of “The Woman With the Hat”. Some accused him of desecrating the fairer sex. Derisive reviewers labelled Matisse’s avant-garde style as “Fauve” and dubbed his work as the wildest - he was indeed the King of Fauves. And so the Fauvist movement was born.
Matisse was disappointed by these harsh and negative reviews, yet surprised when “The Woman With the Hat” was sold to one Leo Stein, brother to another avant-garde artist, writer Gertrude Stein. The entire Stein family would become supportive friends and collectors of Matisse’s work as well as introducing him to other influential art patrons.
Fauvism had guaranteed Matisse’s acceptance and modest success, yet he longed to create works that were more permanent. He continued to pursue this goal yet was never able to modify his modernistic style of abstract lines and bright undiluted colours. By 1906 his reputation had spread and his art was well known all over Paris. That same year some of his works were on display in Brussels. The Steins introduced Matisse’s paintings to an even wider circle of art patrons, all of them eager to obtain his pieces. A Russian collector named Sergei Shchukin also commissioned numerous murals that allowed Matisse even freer experimentation. 1908 saw his first one man show in New York where critics reaction was again negative - they were disgusted by his style, especially by what they called his “distortion” of the female form.
Over the next 3 decades Matisse managed to gain critical and public acceptance and achieve financial security and creative freedom. He continued producing distinctive works like “Harmony in Red”, “The Music Lesson”, “The Dance”, “The Red Studio”, “The Green Stripe”, to name just a few. He seemed to find inspiration everywhere and never lacked for ideas or new inventive ways to express his artistic vision. He re-located to Nice permanently and eventually moved into a large, bright loft above an old hotel where he was always immersed in his work. He did find time to travel the world, sit on artistic panels, teach, complete numerous commissions, and even paint a mural of Saint Dominic in the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. His liaison with a studio helper, Lydia Delectorskya, put a rift in his marriage and he and Amelie went through a bitter serration, yet never divorced. Matisse continued to suffer ill health and in 1941 had surgery for intestinal problems, the operation leaving him an invalid. In 1944 he weathered more family trials when his wife, and then his daughter, Marguerite, were arrested by the Gestapo for their involvement in the French Resistance. Both survived their imprisonment.
Through it all Matisse continued to create new works and during the last decade of his life began experimenting with bright paper cutouts and collages, a medium in which he found great delight and even more artistic freedom. The “old master” had once against tipped the collective art community on its ear. Until the day of his death on November 3, 1954, Henri Matisse never stopped pursuing art with a keen and fresh eye. He was also one of the select few artists in history who achieved acclaim and fortune during his lifetime, not posthumously.
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