Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French visual 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.
Paintings by Henri Matisse
Le bonheur de vivre (1906)
Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) is a painting by Henri Matisse. Along with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Le bonheur de vivre is regarded as one of the pillars of early modernism. The monumental canvas was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1906, where its cadmium colors and spatial distortions caused a public expression of protest and outrage.
In the painting, nude women and men cavort, play music, and dance in a landscape drenched with vivid color. In the central background of the piece is a group of figures that is similar to the group depicted in his painting The Dance (1909–10).
Dance (Matisse) (1910)
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, where it hangs beside Music. 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, where it has been labeled Dance (I).
La Danse was first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1910 (1 October – 8 November), Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris.
Woman with a Hat (1905)
Woman with a Hat (French: La femme au chapeau) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Henri Matisse. It depicts Matisse's wife, Amélie Matisse. It was painted in 1905 and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne during the autumn of the same year, along with works by André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and several other artists later known as "Fauves".
Critic Louis Vauxcelles, in comparing the paintings of Matisse and his associates with a Renaissance-type sculpture displayed alongside them, used the phrase "Donatello chez les fauves..." (Donatello among the wild beasts). Woman with a Hat was at the center of this controversy, marking a stylistic shift in the work of Matisse from the Divisionist brushstrokes of his earlier work to a more expressive style. Its loose brushwork and "unfinished" quality shocked viewers as much as its vivid, non-naturalistic colors.
The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1907)
The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) is a painting by Henri Matisse. Previously titled Harmony in Blue, the painting had a blue background when Matisse first exhibited it in 1908. In 1909, Matisse changed the blue to red, retitling it The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room).
The background of the painting was originally green, but Matisse changed it to blue before exhibiting it at the Salon d'Automne in 1908. Sergey Shchukin purchased the work from the exhibition. In 1909, Matisse repainted the background in red, giving it the new title The Dessert: Harmony in Red. Matisse had the goal of capturing still life and the interiors of the time. Today, the painting is in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Green Stripe (1905)
The Green Stripe (also known as The Green Line or Madame Matisse) is an oil painting from 1905 by French artist Henri Matisse of his wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre. The title stems from the vertical green stripe down the middle of Madame Matisse's face,is an artistic decision consistent with the techniques and values of Fauvism. The painting features a bust-length view of Madame Matisse in blocks of bold and vibrant colors. It is associated with the Fauvist Movement due to this unnatural and experimental use of color. The portrait has received both praise and criticism due to this technique as well as the artistic representation of the model. The Green Stripe is currently displayed in the Staten Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Matisse spent the summer of 1905 painting and drawing in the Mediterranean fishing town of Collioure, France with fellow artist André Derain. During this time, Matisse and Derain explored the role of color in their art, using blotches of bright and bold colors that did not always follow the actual natural coloring of their subject. This experimental summer was foundational to the movement now known as Fauvism, which was characterized by vibrant and unnatural colors and the simplification of line.
Music (Matisse) (1910)
Music (La Musique) is a wall-size painting made by Henri Matisse in 1910. The painting was commissioned by Sergei Shchukin, who hung it alongside Matisse's 1910 Dance on the staircase of his Moscow mansion. Matisse made the painting without any preparatory sketches, and thus the painting bears many traces of modifications. One can virtually trace the steps Matisse took to find the intended effect. As in Dance, the aim was to show man's attainment of a state of completeness by immersion in creativity.
The painting is now in the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Open Window (Matisse) (1905)
The Open Window, also known as Open Window, Collioure, is a painting by Henri Matisse. The work, an oil on canvas, was painted in 1905 and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the same year. It was bequeathed in 1998 by the estate of Mrs. John Hay Whitney to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
It is an example of the Fauvist style of painting that Matisse became famous for, and for which he was a leader, roughly between 1900–1909. The Open Window depicts the view out the window of his apartment in Collioure, on the Southern coast of France. We see sailboats on the water, as viewed from Matisse's hotel window overlooking the harbour. He returned frequently to the theme of the open window in Paris and especially during the years in Nice and Etretat, and in his final years, particularly during the late 1940s.
Woman Reading (1895)
Woman Reading (La Liseuse) is an oil-on-board painting executed in 1895 by the French artist Henri Matisse. It is displayed at the Musée Matisse, in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, having been on loan from the Centre Pompidou since 2002. It shows a woman, dressed in black, seated and reading, with her back to the viewer, in the calmness of a somewhat cluttered room. Matisse incorporated a self-portrait into the painting in the form of a framed drawing hanging on the wall at the upper left.
Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) (1907)
Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) (French: "Nu bleu, Souvenir de Biskra"), an early 1907 oil painting on canvas by Henri Matisse, is located at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the Cone Collection.
Matisse painted the nude when a sculpture he was working on shattered. He later finished the sculpture which is entitled Reclining Nude I (Aurore).
The Snail (1953)
The Snail (L'escargot) is a collage by Henri Matisse. The work was created from summer 1952 to early 1953. It is pigmented with gouache on paper, cut with shears and pasted onto a base layer of white paper measuring 9'43⁄4" × 9' 5" (287 × 288 cm). The piece is in the Tate Modern collection in London.
It consists of a number of colored shapes arranged in a spiral pattern, as suggested by the title. Matisse first drew the snail, then used the colored paper to interpret it. The composition pairs complementary colors: Matisse gave the work the alternative title La Composition Chromatique. From the early-to-mid-1940s Matisse was in increasingly poor health, and was suffering from arthritis. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of gouaches découpées, paper cutouts. The Snail is a major example of this final body of works.
La Blouse Roumaine (1940)
La Blouse Roumaine (English: The Romanian Blouse) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Henri Matisse from 1940. Measuring 92 × 73 cm, the painting is currently held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. It depicts a woman in a blue skirt and a white embroidered blouse.
Although the Centre Pompidou cites Lydia Delectorskaya as the original model, other candidates for the inspiration for the painting include Elvira Popescu, Elena Văcărescu, Anna de Noailles and Marthe Bibesco.
Luxe, Calme et Volupté (1904)
Luxe, Calme et Volupté (French pronunciation: [lyks kalm e vɔlypte]) is a 1904 oil painting by the French artist Henri Matisse. Both foundational in the oeuvre of Matisse and a pivotal work in the history of art, Luxe, Calme et Volupté is considered the starting point of Fauvism. This painting is a dynamic and vibrant work created early on in his career as a painter. It displays an evolution of the Neo-Impressionist style mixed with a new conceptual meaning based in fantasy and leisure that had not been seen in works before.
Prior to the beginning of his Fauvist period Matisse had been formally educated in the arts and started his career copying works from old masters. His first original works resembled those from his education. After he left school, influence from Impressionism developed into his work and gradually led him to the Post-Impressionist movement where this style stuck with him until it evolved into Fauvism. Matisse frequently purchased works from artists such as Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin during his time before Fauvism that influenced his painting and the development of his style over time.