Henri Matisse in Paris - His Art & his influences
Matisse
Henri Matisse stands among the greatest artists of the 20th century. He helped launch art into a new-found freedom, and in the process he developed a trademark style that is still recognizable after so many decades.
His only contemporary that comes close to his level of fame is Pablo Picasso. And like Picasso, Matisse’s artistic career frequently passed through Paris.
For that reason, a trip to Paris is a wonderful opportunity to get to know this unique artist.
Femme au Tambourin - Picasso - Orangerie Museum
The Life of Henri Matisse
Matisse was born on New Year’s Eve in 1869. His family was located in Picardy, enjoying a level of comfort thanks to his father’s successful grain merchant career. His father’s practical-mindedness pushed Matisse to pursue a law career in Paris.
But fate intervened.
At 19, he received a gift of paints from his mother. It was while experimenting with these new supplies that he found what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Almost immediately, he began studying art in Paris under the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau.
(Painting : The study of Moreau By Matisse)
Young Matisse wasn’t so unconventional, preferring to stick to fairly sober influences from the past. But he grew in appreciation for more recent artists like Manet. And like so many French painters in the 19th century, he fell in love with art from Japan.
In his late 20s, Matisse met with the Australian John Russell who exposed the young artist to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. It is at that point Matisse began to form his trademark style.
Soon, his own work was appearing in Salons. And he traveled around Europe to learn from other contemporary artists. Engaging with the art scene of the day, he racked up debt collecting all kinds of work — from Rodin, Gauguin, and many others.
The Birth of Fauvism
Along with André Derain, Matisse helped usher in a new era of painting with Fauvism. These works were daring in their use of color and brush strokes. Though the movement was a short-lived phenomenon at the very start of the 20th century, having a circle of people supporting his leaps into undiscovered territories of painting helped Matisse explore these new insights he was having.
This is the same period when he met with Gertrude Stein who introduced him to the man that would become one of his most important friends and rivals: Pablo Picasso.
At the end of this period, we begin to see a steadier hand emerge, one that is much more the iconic style we’ve come to love. You can see this in works like Marguerite with a Black Cat (1910) at the Centre Pompidou.
Paris had been so important to Matisse’s development. It is where his career was launched and the critical relationships that would serve him for the rest of his life were started. But in 1917, he wanted a change. He moved to the outskirts of Nice and pursued a different style — one a bit more reserved, a bit more traditional.
With the end of the First World War, many of his fellow artists were doing the same. There was a desire to end chaos, to reestablish firm earth underneath one’s feet.
The 1930s and beyond
The Dance, a mural commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in 1930, pushed Matisse out of his comfort zone. The next decade included some of the biggest changes in the artist's life, despite being in his 60s. It was during these years he met his famous collaborator Lydia Delectorskaya and once again took up exploring his radical side.
But in 1941, he was brought down by duodenal cancer. The surgery to treat it left him bedridden. Not one to be deterred, he discovered a new creative outlet: collaging colored paper (decoupage).
The last years of his life were spent this way. Gradually, he came to accept his decoupage not as a way to design artworks that would later be created by assistants, but as final works in their own right.
What is special about Matisse’s Art?
Once you’ve seen Matisse’s art, you’ll be able to spot it for the rest of your life. There is something so specific about his approach to image making, a one-of-a-kind way of translating the world into colors and shapes.
So the question is: what is it that makes Matisse’s art so special? Let’s look at his key influences and the way he used color.
Matisse had many influences
1 - Post-Impressionism
Probably the most important influence for Matisse was Post-Impressionism. When John Russell showed him the leading Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh, the young Matisse was awe-struck. Almost immediately, his output changed.
Post-Impressionism takes up the emphasis on individual style that Impressionism gave the world, but the new movement placed greater weight on symbolism and abstraction. Whereas Impressionism was fundamentally trying to capture how the eye saw the world, Post-Impressionism wanted to explore how the soul felt the world.
2 - Divisionism
Russell also taught Matisse color theory. And at the time, the most influential form of color theory was by far divisionism. Divisionism is a theory of painting that splits colors up into their most essential hues. It then places these colors next to each other on the canvas, allowing the eye to mix everything together.
This approach is most famously associated today with its pioneer Georges Seurat (consider his famous 1886 work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). A similar style, called Pointillism, achieves this divisionist technique through many little dots of color.
3 - Fauvism
Fauvism (named after fauve, the French word for “wild beasts”) was a seminal art movement running from 1905 to 1908. All told, there were only three official exhibitions for the group, which consisted of André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Henri Matisse — though there were many others whose affiliation was less fixed.
The Fauvists made extremely unrealistic color choices, surprising brush stroke patterns, and often reduced their images to highly abstracted forms. Wild beasts, indeed! Though the movement was short lived, the ideas clearly continued in different ways through the rest of Matisse’s career, and the long term impact these artists made can still be felt.
Power of Colors
As we can see from the main influences on Matisse, color is at the heart of everything. And Matisse loved color, worshiping it on his canvases — especially in those works that come after 1905.
The most characteristic way he did this was by placing pure colors on the canvas.
Instead of mixing colors on a palette and then blending them in smooth gradients, Matisse staked out expressive, direct colors right out of the tube. This gives his paintings many features that viewers have loved through the years, including sincerity, naivety, and youth.
His colors define the forms he paints, completely filling the shapes. To get a sense of this, consider his work La Blouse roumaine (1940) at the Pompidou.
Find Henri Matisse Paintings in Paris
Because he spent so much of his career here, Paris is a great place to visit for any Matisse lover.
Matisse in Centre Pompidou
This marvel of postmodern architecture also houses the best collection of modern art in the city of Paris. Here, you can find so many masterpieces, including many by Matisse.
Its convenient location near the Marais makes it a fun destination, too. You can explore some of the most iconic parts of the city within walking distance from this art museum!
Matisse in Musée de l'Orangerie
A major destination for any art lover visiting Paris, the Orangerie contains some of the best art from the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters.
Their recent exhibition on Matisse (covered below) shows just how well they are able to tell stories about these artists we care about so much.
Cahiers d’art, the Pivotal 1930s exhibit in Musée de l'Orang
If you are visiting Paris from March 1 to May 29, 2023, you can see a tremendous retrospective on his work through the 1930s at the Musée de l'Orangerie.
This exciting exhibition traces the story of Matisse’s pivotal decade in the 1930s. It is during this time that he reclaimed his more daring style and reinvented himself once more.
Unfortunately for Matisse lovers, his work from this decade is spread out across continents, making it difficult to appreciate the period altogether. The Orangerie changed this by working with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Matisse Museum in Nice to provide audiences with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
See Matisse in Paris with a Licensed guide
Visiting Paris is a chance to see many Matisse works in person. It is also a great opportunity to see the city that meant so much to him — from the school he studied art at to the works by the artists who influenced him.
There is no city that gives you better access to understand the man behind the paintings. It’s just one more reason why Paris is the capital city of the art world!