Artist Feature: Henri Matisse

Living a Life in Unrestrained Color and Natural Simplicity

Le Bonheur de Vivre, 1905 - 1906, Oil on Canvas, 176.5 x 240.7 cm, inn the collection of the Barnes Foundation.

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Colorful, eccentric, flattened compositions – the works of Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) are unmistakable. With fervent energy, he seems to paint with an almost dire and insatiable need to portray his enthusiasm for color through every aspect of a piece.

To summarize his life briefly, he had a strangely similar upbringing to Degas without the outright teenage rebellion phase. He was born in 1869 to a secure, prosperous family and completed an education in law. It wasn’t until he reached the age of 22 that he discovered his love for art when his mother gifted him with a box of paint tubes. He had just returned home with a bout of appendicitis but this brief moment changed his life forever. With this revelation, he quit law and attempted to pursue a life in the arts despite his father’s disapproval.

A fun anecdote about the beginning of his career: he originally tried to go through the traditional route by applying for the famous École des Beaux-Arts but he failed his entrance exam. So, every morning, he would stand outside the institution and “accidentally” bump into the professors with his drawings in hand. One time, he was successful and was invited into the classroom to attend one of the lessons. Unfortunately for him, he still continued to fail his entrance exams even after that moment.

Matisse is formally labeled as a Fauvist but many would regard Fauvism as an extreme offshoot of Post-Impressionism (primarily Van Gogh) with Neo-impressionist qualities (harking on Seurat). In a 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, an art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, referred to Matisse and his companion artists as “les fauves,” or “the wild beasts.” Isn’t this such a noticeable pattern? An artist does something “outrageous” and critics accidentally name a movement? Yes, I’m looking at you, Louis Leroy. This is how the term Fauvism came to be.

Known for their saturated, unnatural coloring, Fauvists sought out the spontaneity from untouched, out-of-the-tube paints. Typically, they balance the chaos of these complementary colors through a simplified composition, often flat and lacking in depth. Patterns, shadows, and other fine details were reduced to often thick, unblended splotches of color. Other Fauvists included André Derain, Georges Rouault, and the early works of Georges Braque but Henri Matisse is still considered to be the leading figure in the movement.

Woman with a Hat, 1905, Oil on Canvas, 80.56 x 59.69 cm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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Despite originally experiencing massive criticism for his painting technique, notably for “Woman with a Hat” shown above, Matisse still pushed forward with his stylization. Many thought he was a bit strange considering that he, himself, was extremely conservative in appearance and held strict bourgeois work ethics unlike his bohemian circle of artistic friends. Imagining a stoic, neutral tone Matisse with his colorful and explosive works must have been quite an amusing juxtaposition.

Alas, the Fauvist movement only lasted for three years (1905 – 1908) but Matisse still retained elements of this style throughout the rest of his career, gaining international popularity and a renowned reputation. He even continued to create his art after receiving a surgery that left him virtually disabled and unable to walk. This is when he began to create his famous large-scale collages featuring simple shapes and blocks of color paper on typically white canvas. (Stay tuned for Saturday's post - Javelin created a tutorial inspired by Matisse's collages!)

As a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, he encouraged his students to think outside of the box and be unafraid to chase their artistic vision. Matisse once confessed, “It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.” But don’t worry Matisse, we love your art and now recognize it as a notable gateway into modernity.

And that’s art.

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Sources

10 Amazing Facts about Henri Matisse. YouTube . Artist in School , 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWFzKdegq-0.

“Art Term: Fauvism.” Tate. Accessed May 14, 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/fauvism.

Friedman, Samantha. “Henri Matisse.” MoMA. 2016. https://www.moma.org/artists/3832.

Wolf, Justin. “Fauvism Movement Overview and Analysis.” TheArtStory.org. January 25, 2015. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/fauvism/.