Henri Matisse
Biography And Paintings Of Henri Matisse, French Post-Impressionist Painter and Leader Of the Fauvist Art Movement

La Femme au Chapeau
(Woman With the Hat) (1905)

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

The principal artist of the Fauves group, Henri Matisse was a French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artist, noted for his use of colour as a means of expression rather than description. Indeed, colour played a central role throughout his painting career, as can be seen in his Portrait of Madame Matisse, The Dessert - Harmony in Red, his Nu Bleu series of blue nudes and the vibrant paper collages he produced in his later years. Matisse was also noted for his creative flouting of the conventional rules of drawing and perspective, as well as his fluid and innovative draughtsmanship. Even after the demise of Fauvism, Matisse continued to rely on color to communicate his joyful vision of bold pattern and striking ornament, (eg. in The Moorish Screen, and Lady in Blue).

He experimented with differing types of expressive abstraction, as in The Blue Nude, Mademoiselle Landsberg, and The Piano Lesson, while rejecting the more analytical cubism in order to develop his own artistic ideas. His desire was to paint a visual representation of his emotional reaction to a subject rather than simply depict its realistic 'natural' appearance.

By 1909 Matisse had achieved worldwide fame. His avant-garde methods aroused considerable controversy, but - supported by his patrons among the Stein family, as well as the Russians Shchukin and Morosov - Matisse maintained his position as a prominent member of the French Impressionist movement and is now regarded as one of the best painters of the twentieth century. This despite the advent of Picasso and Cubism in the early 1900s, which became the cutting edge of modern art at the time.

Luxe, Calme Et Volupté (1904-5)

Matisse the Painter

Henri Matisse started fine art painting during an illness in 1890. In his early works, he explored both impressionism and neo-impressionism and (to master both composition and colour) he created variations on the works of the Old Masters in the Louvre, a practice he maintained for many years (eg. Variation on a Still-life by de Heem).

In his colours and technique, Matisse's early work was influenced by an older generation of his fellow-artists, like Édouard Manet (1832–1883) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). In the summer of 1904, while visiting Provence, Matisse discovered the bright light of southern France, and began using a much brighter palette. Also, he became familiar, via Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, with the Pointillist technique of small color dots (points), perfected in the 1880s by Georges Seurat (1859–1891).

As a result, Matisse produced his Neo-Impressionist masterpiece Luxe, Calme et Volupté (1904-5), and exhibited, along with other 'colourists' at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris (spring 1905) to great acclaim. However, not all critics admired his art style. After viewing Matisse's vividly coloured paintings, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles insultingly described the paintings as being the work of wild beasts (fauves), and the name stuck.

During his brief Fauvist period, Matisse produced a significant number of remarkable canvases, such as the Portrait of Madame Matisse, (also known as The Green Line), and The Dessert: Harmony in Red (1908). The latter went through three successive stages. To begin with it was green, then blue, and then finally scarlett. It perfectly illustrates the Matisse's famous comment: "Seek the strongest color effect possible.. the content is of no importance."

Matisse continued experimenting with colour for the rest of his life. In the early 1950s he created a series of gouaches decoupees, including Blue Nude I, 1952; Blue Nude II, 1952; Blue Nude III, 1952; Blue Nude IV, 1952; Blue Nude Jumping Rope, 1952; Blue Nude with Green Stockings, 1952; Standing Nude, 1952. Art critics consider them to represent the ultimate type of abstract figure painting, and they are among the most popular and most often copied pictures in the history of art of the 20th century.

TOP ART PRICES
For a list of the highest prices paid for works of art by famous painters:
Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings and Top 20 Most Expensive Paintings.

TOP IRISH ART PRICES
For details of auction records set by artists in Ireland, see: Most Expensive Irish Paintings.

• For more biographies of great painters, see Old Masters and Famous Artists.
• For information about famous sculptors and painters in Ireland, see: Irish Visual Art

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