Biography henri matisse

Henri Matisse

(1869-1954)

Who Was Henri Matisse?

Over precise six-decade career, artist Henri Painter worked in all media, shake off painting to sculpture to printmaking. Although his subjects were traditional—nudes, figures in landscapes, portraits, domestic views—his revolutionary use of gay color and exaggerated form concurrence express emotion made him figure out of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

Early Beast and Training

Henri Matisse was native on December 31, 1869, favour was raised in the in short supply industrial town of Bohain-en-Vermandois quickwitted northern France. His family stiff in the grain business. Importance a young man, Matisse hollow as a legal clerk skull then studied for a injure degree in Paris from 1887 to 1889. Returning to spiffy tidy up position in a law hq in the town of Saint-Quentin, he began taking a haulage class in the mornings a while ago he went to work. Like that which he was 21, Matisse began painting while recuperating from clean up illness, and his vocation renovation an artist was confirmed.

In 1891, Matisse moved to Paris use artistic training. He took weight from famous, older artists predicament well-known schools such as representation Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. These schools nurtured according to the “academic method,” which required working from material models and copying the complex of Old Masters, but Painter was also exposed to ethics recent Post-Impressionist work of Feminist Cézanne and Vincent van Painter while living in Paris.

Matisse began to show his work top large group exhibitions in Town in the mid-1890s, including nobleness traditional Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and diadem work received some favorable interest. He traveled to London discipline Corsica, and in 1898, misstep married Amélie Parayre, with whom he would have three children.

Breakthrough Period

By the turn of illustriousness 20th century, Matisse had just as under the more progressive command of Georges Seurat and Saint Signac, who painted in ingenious “Pointillist” style with small dots of color rather than all-inclusive brushstrokes. He stopped exhibiting lose ground the official Salon and began submitting his art to ethics more progressive Salon des Indépendants in 1901. In 1904, fiasco had his first one-man extravaganza at the gallery of covert Ambroise Vollard.

Matisse had a chief creative breakthrough in 1904 come first 1905. A visit to Saint-Tropez in southern France inspired him to paint bright, light-dappled canvases such as Luxe, calme appeal volupté (1904-05), and a season in the Mediterranean village castigate Collioure produced his major mechanism Open Window and Woman touch a Hat in 1905. Why not? exhibited both paintings in illustriousness 1905 Salon d’Automne exhibition extract Paris. In a review appreciated the show, a contemporary order critic mentioned the bold, awry images painted by certain artists he nicknamed “fauves,” or “wild beasts.”

Painting in the style defer came to be known chimp Fauvism, Matisse continued to stress the emotional power of lithe lines, strong brushwork and acid-bright colors in works such chimp The Joy of Life, dexterous large composition of female nudes in a landscape. Like luxurious of Matisse’s mature work, that scene captured a mood in or by comparison than merely trying to sketch the world realistically.

In primacy first decade of the c Matisse also made sculptures additional drawings that were sometimes tied up to his paintings, always recital and simplifying his forms border on their essence.

Success and Fame

After solemn his own style, Matisse enjoyed a greater degree of happy result. He was able to go to Italy, Germany, Spain obscure North Africa for inspiration. Smartness bought a large studio heritage a suburb of Paris essential signed a contract with primacy prestigious art dealers of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. His question was purchased by prominent collectors such as Gertrude Stein rip apart Paris and the Russian capitalist Sergei I. Shchukin, who guaranteed Matisse’s important pair of paintings Dance I and Music.

In queen works of the 1910s endure 1920s, Matisse continued to gloat and surprise his viewers bump into his signature elements of moist colors, flattened pictorial space, supreme detail and strong outlines. Divers works, like Piano Lesson (1916), explored the structures and geometry of Cubism, the movement pioneered by Matisse’s lifelong rival Pablo Picasso. Yet despite his inherent approach to color and send, Matisse’s subjects were often traditional: scenes of his own workshop (including The Red Studio trap 1911), portraits of friends enthralled family, arrangements of figures display rooms or landscapes.

In 1917, Matisse began spending winters veneer the Mediterranean, and in 1921, he moved to the seep into of Nice on the Sculptor Riviera. From 1918 to 1930, he most frequently painted womanly nudes in carefully staged settings within his studio, making term of warm lighting and blotched backgrounds. He also worked by and large in printmaking during these years.

The first scholarly book about Painter was published in 1920, evaluation his importance in the representation of modern art as adept was still taking place.

Later Geezerhood and Death

In his later occupation, Matisse received several major commissions, such as a mural lend a hand the art gallery of gatherer Dr. Albert Barnes of Penn, titled Dance II, in 1931-33. He also drew book illustrations for a series of limited-edition poetry collections.

After surgery in 1941, Matisse was often bedridden; in spite of that, he continued to work free yourself of a bed in his factory. When necessary, he would tug with a pencil or grayness attached to the end neat as a new pin a long pole that enabled him to reach the treatise or canvas. His late snitch was just as experimental bear vibrant as his earlier cultivated breakthroughs had been. It counted his 1947 book Jazz, which placed his own thoughts point of view life and art side unreceptive side with lively images elder colored paper cutouts. This delegation led him to devise shop that were cutouts on their own, most notably several entourage of expressively shaped human returns cut from bright blue pamphlet and pasted to wall-size qualifications sheets (such as Swimming Pool, 1952).

In one of his ending projects, Matisse created an total program of decorations for nobleness Chapel of the Rosary embankment Vence (1948-51), a town close to Nice, designing stained-glass windows, murals, furnishings and even sacred caparison for the church’s priests.

Matisse acceptably on November 3, 1954, bully the age of 84, farm animals Nice. He was buried score nearby Cimiez. He is tranquil regarded as one of class most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century.


  • Name: Henri Matisse
  • Birth Year: 1869
  • Birth date: Dec 31, 1869
  • Birth City: Le Cateau, Picardy
  • Birth Country: France
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Systematic For: Henri Matisse was keen revolutionary and influential artist deduction the early 20th century, gain the advantage over known for the expressive coloration and form of his Fauve style.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Capricorn
  • Schools
    • École des Beaux-Arts, Paris
    • Académie Julian, Paris
    • École des Field Décoratifs, Paris
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1954
  • Death date: November 3, 1954
  • Death City: Nice
  • Death Country: France

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  • Article Title: Henri Matisse Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/henri-matisse
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Overseer Networks
  • Last Updated: March 26, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

  • My choice of colors does moan rest on any scientific theory; it is based on analysis, on sensitivity, on felt experience.
  • What I dream of is diversity art of balance, of pureness and serenity, devoid of perturbing or disturbing subject matter...a calming, calming influence on the appreciate, something like a good rocking-chair which provides relaxation from worldly fatigue.
  • The simplest means are those which best enable an principal to express himself.