Henri Matisse was a renowned and infamous artist widely recognized for leading the Fauvist movement in the 1900s. Born in France on December 31, 1869, Matisse is distinguished for being one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century. His varied inspirations were derived from landscapes, interiors, and still life, but he remained particularly fixated on the female figure. Henri Matisse’s remarkable career revolutionized artists in the 20th century and fundamentally altered the perception of modern art through fauvism, abstraction, and other stylistic innovations.
Throughout his early life, Matisse did not express much interest in painting as his parents were in the grain business. Despite his family’s economic status, he grew up well educated and eventually became a practicing lawyer. However, his life was changed in 1890 after a sudden attack of appendicitis where he expressed profound interest in the arts during his rehabilitation. Subsequently following his recovery, Matisse quit practicing law in 1891 and instead moved to Paris to pursue his artistic passions. Initially, he enrolled at the Académie Julian and was mentored under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who was a more traditional and conservative instructor. Soon, he left Académie Julian in order to learn from Gustave Moreau at École des Beaux-Arts. Moreau was a famous symbolist and progressive teacher/painter, which led to Matisse developing his own unique language with his artwork. However, he would soon find himself in a great deal of turmoil when he was asked to leave the the elite art school by Fernand Cormon, the strict new professor following Moreau’s death in 1899.
Leading into the next period of his life, Henri Matisse was not an immediate representative of the avant garde. After much schooling and many years of inspirational instruction, Matisse exhibited four paintings at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. It was here that Matisse found himself successful in two major ways. He was elected as an associate member of the Salon society, and his painting Woman Reading (1894) was considered his first main breakthrough to critics and the public.
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In the following years, Matisse spent much time traveling and studying all over the world and became increasingly confident and audacious in relation to his art. Matisse is globally identified as the father of the fauvist movement in the 20th century. Fauvism is a style of painting that is categorized as expressive abstraction utilizing non naturalistic colors. Followers of this era redefined and repurposed the use of intense color from describing light and space to portraying the emotional state of an artist. Fauves painted precisely from naturalistic scenes, similar to Impressionists, but used color to evoke a strong and explosive reaction to the subjects. Matisse’s studies eventually led him to reject traditional depictions of three-dimensional space. Rather, he sought to discover alternative representations defined by color and emotion through his works. This stylistic influence, although considered short lived due to the undisciplined nature, proved to be an important precursor to expressionism, cubism, and future abstraction techniques.
Henri Matisse was not confined to strictly paintings as he had developed interests in etching, drypoint, lithography, and allied printmaking. In 1932, the later stages of his life, he published 29 etchings for an edition of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poésies, which is a series of poems. In addition, Matisse was not afraid to take a political stance as he became involved as a graphic artist after the outbreak of WWII. His notable features include his illustrations for Henry de Montherlant Pasiphaé in 1944 and Pierre Reverdy Visages in 1946 along with several other prestigious authors.
Matisse also published his own book, Jazz (1947), that comprised his personal reflections and experiences with life and art. He illustrated this book with the technique he deemed, “drawing with scissors” where motifs were cut out of colored paper and pasted together. However, many consider the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence his defining achievement. In this enormous undertaking from 1948-51, Matisse was commissioned to create all the wall decorations, furniture, Stations of the Cross, stained-glass windows, and the vestments and altar cloths for the Chapel, which is still located in Vence on the French Riviera.
In conclusion, Henri Matisse left an irrefutable mark on the artistic world and his works and legacy remain extremely prominent and influential. His accomplishments did not know prejudice as he was a respected lawyer, distinguished artist, and published author. His unique stylistic movement cultivated some of the world’s greatest visionaries. Matisse was inspired by painters like Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh, but he did not know that one day he would become the inspiration for millions of artists all over the world.
