Being bedridden isn’t an uncommon rite of passage for artists - before Warhol and his Sydenham’s chorea and Basquiat and his spleen removal, there was Henri Matisse and his appendicitis. It forced him to stay in bed for several weeks when he was only 20, but at the encouragement of his mother and a neighbor who were both amateur artists, he began painting to pass the time. Once he recovered, he enrolled in a class at the Ecole Quentin-de-La-Tour while returning to his job as a legal clerk.
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It was in Paris that Matisse finished off his artistic education, first at the École de Arts Décoratifs in 1892, then at the École des Beaux-arts in 1895. There he worked under Gustave Moreau, who influenced his way of thinking about painting and encouraged the tendencies towards simplification that he pursued his entire life. The first time he showed works, mainly classically produced still lifes, was at the Salon des Cent in 1896. Soon after he showed works at the Salon held by the Société des Beaux-Arts, where he was co-opted as a member. He met the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the Impressionist painter John Russell while in Belle-Île-en-Mer, and through the latter became interested in Impressionism.
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Matisse was still relatively unknown, and more or less earned a living through decorative painting, mainly for theaters. In 1894 he had a daughter, Marguerite, with one of his models, and in 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre. During their honeymoon in London, Matisse discovered the work of William Turner, which informed several of his later paintings. The couple moved to Toulouse to raise Marguerite and had two more children together by the end of the century.
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Sculpture also piqued Matisse’s interest, and under the supervision of Antoine Bourdelle he began to study modeling at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He also frequented the studio of Eugène Carrière, where he met André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. The future Fauvists (from fauve, the French for ‘wild beast’) had met and would now begin to roar.
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At the Salon d’Automne in 1905, Matisse and his comrades caused tongues to wag with their avant-garde style. The paintings expressed emotions through bright, often clashing colors, with no regard for the natural tones of the subject. One critic described that year’s Salon as a ‘cage of fauves’, and the name stuck. Matisse became the leader of the short-lived movement (1905-10) that revolutionized painting all over the world for its innovative use of color. Shortly after the Salon, Matisse met the collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein, who purchased the portrait Woman with a Hat (1905) which they had seen at the exhibit. They introduced Matisse to Pablo Picasso, with whom he would maintain a friendship that was nevertheless competitive.
Matisse’s fame grew, and his works were exhibited in Moscow, Berlin, Munich and London. In New York in 1913, his pieces were exhibited alongside works by Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia at the Armory Show exemplifying the most modern development in creations of art. Matisse traveled frequently during this period, particularly to Andalusia and the Maghreb. These regions inspired his subsequent works with a new approach to color and the development of arabesques.
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After World War I, he moved to Nice and Côte d’Azur where he produced most of his work, now an established and recognized painter. He worked on ballet costumes and sets commissioned by Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev, and from 1924 onwards turned towards sculpture, namely producing a series of large-scale nudes.
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In 1925, Matisse was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits. Two years later, he won the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburgh. He regularly visited the United States where many of his collectors resided, specifically New York where his son Pierre had opened a gallery. He separated from Amélie, who, along with Marguerite, was active in the Resistance against the Nazis during World War II. In 1941 Matisse was operated on for colon cancer and was given just six months to live. Bedridden again, he turned to decoupage as a new medium when painting and sculpture became too difficult.
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Matisse outlived his prognosis by nearly 13 years, passing away on November 3, 1954 at the age of 84. He was active even in his last years, representing France at the 25th Venice Biennale at the age of 81 and designing a Dominican chapel in Vence. In 1952 he established a museum dedicated to his work in Le Cateau. Another Musée Matisse opened in Nice in 1963, and visitors can still collections of Matisse’s works at both locations today. His works sell at auction for tens of millions, with his auction record set in 2018 when Odalisque couchée aux magnolias sold for $80.7 million at Christie's.
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This is an updated version of the article originally published on December 10, 2019
