“Fauvism is when there is a red,”[29] said Henri Matisse concisely putting into words the most straightforward notion held of Fauvism. Matisse has in fact become Fauvism’s leader over the years as a result of his contemporaries and researchers persistently perpetuating such an idea. Consequently, Matisse’s work has been scoured through in a search for the ultimate Fauvist painting. Matisse never pretended or aspired to such a role, and on the question of what Fauvism represents in theory and in practice, he never came to a final conclusion. With the other Fauvists it can be argued that their art was dominated by either reason or emotion. Matisse’s intellect, however, continuously searched for a direction where both reason and emotion became reconciled so balance and order might be found.
Henri Matisse was born on 31 December 1869 into a stallholder’s family in Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France. He began his education at the secondary school in Saint-Quentin and continued at Paris University where he read law. Upon graduating, he returned to Saint-Quentin where he worked in a lawyer’s office. During this period Matisse began to attend his first drawing classes and at the age of twenty, when an illness confined him to bed for nearly a year, he painted his first work.
Returning to Paris in 1891, Matisse started to take lessons at the Académie Julian, working as a law tutor to help pay his way. In 1892 he abandoned Bouguereau’s totally uninspiring lessons and transferred to Gustave Moreau’s classes at the École des Beaux Arts. During the evenings, Matisse also attended classes in applied art and there he made friends with Albert Marquet, who soon also became a pupil of Moreau. It was at these classes that a group of artists came together and formed friendships that would endure all the trials and tribulations of their respective lives.
From 1896 onwards, Matisse not only began to exhibit his work in official salons, but he also became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He was interested in the Impressionists and he also began to travel, going to Brittany and even as far south as Corsica. At this time, too, he married and started a family. After Moreau’s death, Matisse briefly attended Professor Ferdinand Cormon’s classes, before joining Eugène Carrière Académie, where in 1901 he became friends with Jean Puy and Andre Derain.
Matisse saw the twentieth century in as a father of three young children, a man in poor financial straits, an artist who had made only a limited name for himself, but nonetheless a highly respected member of the circle of artists in which he moved. In 1901 Matisse and his friends started to exhibit their work at the Salon des Indépendants and in Berthe Weill’s gallery. In 1903 they were involved in the founding of the Salon d’Automne, where, two years later, Vauxcelles would see their work and dub them “les fauves.”
Exhibitions of Matisse followed each other around Europe and America. The paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and graphic works displayed attested to the amazing breadth of his creative abilities. As well as constantly painting, he simultaneously worked in theatrical design, sculpted, produced lithographs, and during the Second World War, Matisse illustrated a great number of books. In 1948 he presented his first exhibition of “Engraved Gouaches” which brilliantly rounded off his lifelong experimentation in the realm of colour. Henri Matisse died in 1954 in Nice, already acclaimed as a great artist.