Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi emil bənwɑ matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (wild beasts). Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern. In 1917 he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.
Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi ("A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon") is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1902. Its somber coloration is typical of Matisse's works executed between the end of 1901 and the end of 1903, a period of personal difficulties for the artist. This episode has been called Matisse's Dark Period.
The Matisse Museum (Musée Départemental Henri Matisse) is a museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France that primarily displays paintings by Henri Matisse. The museum was established by Matisse himself on 8 November 1952; he also defined the way his works should be arranged. At that time the museum was located in the wedding room of the Le Cateau City Hall.
In 1956, after the death of Matisse, the collection of the museum was enlarged by the gift of 65 paintings by Auguste Herbin. Read more...
Facial-Maschera is a fauvism painting by Henri Matisse. It was created in the year 1951 and is one of Matisse's best examples of his use of color and form. It is currently located in a private collection belonging to a distant relative of the artist. Read more...
The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence (Chapel of the Rosary), often referred to as the Matisse Chapel or the Vence Chapel, is a small Catholicchapel located in the town of Vence on the French Riviera. It was dedicated to the Dominican Order. The church was built and decorated between 1949 and 1951 under a plan devised by Henri Matisse. It houses a number of Matisse originals and was regarded by Matisse himself as his "masterpiece". While the simple white exterior has drawn mixed reviews from casual observers, some regard it as one of the great religious structures of the 20th century. Read more...
Dance (La Danse) is a painting made by Henri Matisse in 1910, at the request of Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, who bequeathed the large decorative panel to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The composition of dancing figures is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting".. A preliminary version of the work, sketched by Matisse in 1909 as a study for the work, resides at MoMA in New York City, where it’s been labeled Dance (I). Read more...
The Musée Matisse in Nice is a municipal museum devoted to the work of French painter Henri Matisse. It gathers one of the world's largest collections of his works, tracing his artistic beginnings and his evolution through his last works. The museum, which opened in 1963, is located in the Villa des Arènes, a seventeenth-century villa in the neighborhood of Cimiez. Read more...
Odalisque With Raised Arms is a painting by Henri Matisse, completed in 1923. The oil on canvas measuring 23 by 26 inches is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Matisse's style changed and evolved drastically throughout his career, including a wide and varying collection of paintings depicting the female nude. His Odalisque paintings were inspired by his trip to Morocco. Many of the female subjects in the Odalisque paintings were modeled after Matisse's main model at the time, Henriette Darricarrère. Read more...
The Back Series is a series of four bas-relief sculptures, by Henri Matisse. It's Matisse's largest and most monumental sculptures. The plaster originals are housed in the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France.
They were modeled between 1909 and 1930. Back (I) appeared in the second PostImpressionist show in London, and the Armory Show in New York City. Read more...
The oil painting is in the collection of Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, to whom it was given in 1912, thus becoming, according to the museum, the first Matisse to enter a public collection. Still Life with Geraniums was one of six paintings in the museum's collection to survive World War II. Read more...
Le Mur Rose (full title: Paysage, le mur rose;, Landscape, the Pink Wall), is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1898.
It was bought in Paris at the sale of La Peau de l'Ours on 2 March 1914 by JewishentrepreneurHarry Fuld, who founded Frankfurt, Germany based H. Fuld & Co. Telefon und Telegraphenwerke AG, which made telephones. After Fuld died on a business trip to Switzerland in 1932, his art collection passed to his son, Harry Fuld, Jr. Read more...
The Dance II by Henri Matisse is a triptychmural (15 ft high by 45 ft long) in the Barnes Foundation. It was created in 1932 at the request of Albert C. Barnes after he met Matisse in the United States. Barnes was an art enthusiast and long-time collector of Matisse's works, and agreed to pay Matisse a total of $30,000 for the mural, which was expected to take a year.
The mural was to be placed above three arches spanning the windows of the main hall of Barnes' gallery. In Nice, France, Matisse executed the mural on canvas provided by Barnes, as opposed to working on site. This was an unusual approach for such a work, but the patron had offered him complete artistic freedom, and working onsite would in any event have been impractical. Read more...
Sophie Alexina Victoire Matisse (born February 13, 1965) is an American contemporary artist. Matisse initially gained notoriety for her series of Missing Person paintings, in which she appropriated and embellished upon, or subtracted from, recognizable works from art history. Media coverage is often quick to note Sophie Matisse's family background, an art pedigree originating with her great-grandfather, the famous 20th century painter Henri Matisse. Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper in 2003 referred to Sophie as "art royalty," a term occasionally paraphrased when discussing Sophie and her artwork. Read more...