Henri Matisse
- In full:
- Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse
- Born:
- December 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, France
- Died:
- November 3, 1954, Nice (aged 84)
- Movement / Style:
- École de Paris
- Fauvism
- On the Web:
- The Met - Henri Matisse (1869–1954) (July 09, 2025)
When was Henri Matisse born and when did he die?
What art movement did Henri Matisse lead?
How did Matisse begin his art career?
What was significant about Henri Matisse’s Jazz?
What art style is Matisse known for in his mature paintings?
Henri Matisse (born December 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, France—died November 3, 1954, Nice) was an artist often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. He was the leader of the Fauvist movement about 1900, and he pursued the expressiveness of color throughout his career. His subjects were largely domestic or figurative, and a distinct Mediterranean verve presides in the treatment.
Formative years
Matisse, whose parents were in the grain business, was born in his grandparents’ home in Le Cateau in northeastern France. He grew up in neighboring Bohain-en-Vermandois, displaying little interest in art. From 1882 to 1887 he attended the secondary school in nearby Saint-Quentinand then spent two years of legal studies in Paris. In 1889 he returned to Saint-Quentin and became a clerk in a law office. He started to sit in on an early-morning drawing class at the local École Quentin-Latour, and, in 1890, while recovering in Bohain from a severe attack of appendicitis, he began to paint. At first he was copying the colored reproductions in a box of oil paints his mother had given him, but soon he was decorating the home of his grandparents. In 1891 he abandoned the law and returned to Paris to become a professional artist.
In order to prepare himself for the entrance examination at the official École des Beaux-Arts, Matisse enrolled in the privately run Académie Julian, where the master was the strictly academic William-Adolphe Bouguereau. That Matisse should have begun his studies in such a conservative school may seem surprising, and he once explained the fact by saying that he was acting on the recommendation of a Saint-Quentin painter, whose subjects often comprised hens and poultry yards. But it must be remembered that he was for the moment from a provincial area with tastes that were old-fashioned in, Paris, a city already familiar with the Post-Impressionism of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Matisse’s earliest canvases are in the 17th-century Dutch manner favored by the French Realists of the 1850s.
In 1892 Matisse left the Académie Julian for evening classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs and for the atelier of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts, without being required to take the entrance examination. Moreau, a tolerant teacher, did not try to impose his own style on his pupils but rather encouraged them to develop their personalities and to learn from the treasures in the Louvre. Matisse continued, with some long interruptions, to study in the atelier until 1899. That year he was forced to leave by Fernand Cormon, an intolerant painter who had become the professor after Moreau’s death in 1898. After that, although he was nearing 30, Matisse frequented for a time a private academy where intermittent instruction was given by the portraitist Eugène Carrière.
In 1896 Matisse exhibited four paintings at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and scored a triumph. He was elected an associate member of the Salon society, and his The Reader (1895) was purchased by the government. From this point onward he became increasingly confident and venturesome. During the next two years he undertook expeditions to Brittany, met the veteran Impressionist Camille Pissarro, and discovered the series of Impressionist masterpieces in Gustave Caillebotte’s contemporary art collection, which had just been donated—amid protests from conservatives—to the French nation. Matisse’s colors became, for a while, lighter in hue and at the same time more intense. In 1897 he took his first major step toward stylistic liberation and created a minor scandal at the Salon with The Dinner Table, in which he combined Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s luminosity with a firmly classical composition in deep red and green.

In 1898 Matisse married Amélie Parayre, a young woman from Toulouse, and left Paris for a year, visiting London, where he studied the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, and working in Corsica, where he received a lasting impression of Mediterranean sunlight and color.