Woman with a Hat (1905)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Portrait of his wife Amélie that scandalised the 1905 Salon d'Automne and launched Fauvism
Image: Henri Matisse · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Henri Matisse
1869–1954 · French
Fauvism
Henri Matisse was the leader of the Fauves ("wild beasts") and, with Picasso, one of the two giants of 20th-century modern art. He used pure, expressive colour and simplified drawing to create joyous, decorative images, and in old age invented a new art form with his painted paper cut-outs.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat areas of bold, non-naturalistic colour (green shadows on faces, all-red rooms) and simplified outlines
- ▸Decorative patterns: wallpapers, textiles, odalisques and interiors that merge with the figures
- ▸Rhythmic dancing nudes in a ring against blue and green grounds
- ▸Late work: vivid cut-paper shapes (gouaches découpées) such as blue nudes, leaf and seaweed forms and spirals
Key works
Le Bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) (1905–1906)
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
Arcadian landscape of nudes; includes the ring of dancers later expanded in Dance
Image: Henri Matisse · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908)
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Painted first in blue then repainted red; wallpaper and tablecloth merge into one pattern
Image: Henri Matisse · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Dance (1909–1910)
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (1910 version); MoMA, New York (1909 first version)
Five red nudes dancing in a ring; commissioned by Russian collector Sergei Shchukin with its pair, Music
Image: Henri Matisse · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Red Studio (1911)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
His studio flooded in Venetian red, with his own artworks shown inside it
Image: Henri Matisse · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Snail (1953)
Tate Modern, London
Huge late paper cut-out of coloured shapes spiralling like a snail's shell
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
Quick-fire facts
- •The critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the name "Les Fauves" (wild beasts) at the 1905 Salon d'Automne
- •Matisse trained as a lawyer and took up painting while recovering from appendicitis around 1890, when his mother gave him paints
- •He was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France, now home to a Musée Matisse
- •In his last years, often confined to a wheelchair, he made art by "drawing with scissors" in paper cut-outs
- •He designed the Chapelle du Rosaire (Rosary Chapel) at Vence, consecrated in 1951
- •His artist's book Jazz (1947) reproduced cut-out images including Icarus
- •Blue Nude II (1952), from the cut-out Blue Nudes series, is in the Centre Pompidou, Paris
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Sources
- Museum of Modern Art — Henri Matisse. The Snail. 1953
- Tate Etc. — His brilliant final chapter: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Henri Matisse