Henri Matisse Timeline

Henri Matisse 38

1869 Henri Matisse born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis A weaving town in the north Born on the last day of 1869 above his grandparents' shop. His father ran a seed store and expected him to take it on.
1887 – 1889 Studies law in Paris And qualifies Matisse passed his law examinations and went to work as a clerk in Saint-Quentin, copying out documents he found meaningless.
1889 Appendicitis — and a box of paints The accident that made him a painter Bedridden for weeks, Matisse was given a paintbox by his mother to pass the time. He said it was the first time he felt free, quiet and alone.
1891 Abandons law for art His father never forgave it Matisse returned to Paris at twenty-one to enrol at the Académie Julian, against furious family opposition.
1892 – 1897 Studies under Gustave Moreau A teacher who told him to simplify Moreau sent his students to copy in the Louvre but encouraged personal vision over academic finish. Matisse called him the only master worth having.
1898 – 1899 Corsica and Toulouse Where the colour arrives A honeymoon year in the south. Matisse later said that in Corsica he was first astonished by the light, and his palette never went back.
1898 Marries Amélie Parayre A partnership that lasted forty years Amélie ran a hat shop to support the household through the years of poverty, and modelled for many of the early paintings.
1899 Buys a Cézanne Three Bathers — bought on credit he could not afford Matisse pawned Amélie's emerald ring to keep up the payments and kept the picture for thirty-seven years. He said it sustained him morally at critical moments.
1900 – 1902 The worst years Painting garlands for the Grand Palais Matisse took decorating work by the metre for the 1900 Exposition. The couple were so poor that their children were sent to live with relatives.
1904 First solo exhibition At Ambroise Vollard's gallery He was thirty-four. The show sold poorly, but it put him in front of the dealers and collectors who mattered.
1904 – 1905 Luxe, calme et volupté The title from a line of Baudelaire Bathers on a Mediterranean shore built from mosaic-like touches of colour. Signac bought it and hung it in his dining room.
1904 Summer with Signac at Saint-Tropez A season of divided brushstrokes Matisse tried the Neo-Impressionist method of separated dots of pure colour. He abandoned the technique within a year but kept what it taught him about intensity.
1905 Fauvism launched Matisse shocks Paris with pure colour Matisse and a group of artists exhibited together at the Salon d'Automne in 1905 with paintings of pure, unmixed colour. A critic called them "fauves" (wild beasts) — the name stuck and a movement was born.
1905 Woman with a Hat The scandal of the Salon d'Automne A portrait of Amélie with a green stripe down her face and a hat of clashing colour. Visitors tried to scratch it. Gertrude and Leo Stein bought it.
1906 Le Bonheur de vivre The picture Picasso answered with the Demoiselles A pastoral of nudes in arbitrary colour and undulating line. Leo Stein called it the most important painting of its time.
1906 Matisse meets Picasso Beginning of a lifelong rivalry Matisse met Pablo Picasso in April 1906. The two became lifelong friends and rivals, each pushing the other to greater innovation. They were united by their mutual obsession with colour, form and the female figure.
1906 Travels to Algeria Two weeks at Biskra Matisse brought back textiles and ceramics rather than sketches. The trip fed directly into the Blue Nude and a lifelong appetite for pattern.
1907 Blue Nude — Souvenir of Biskra Attacked as deliberate ugliness The reclining figure is wrenched and heavy, painted in blues and greens. When the picture reached Chicago in 1913 students burned a copy of it.
1908 Notes of a Painter His clearest statement of intent Matisse wrote that he dreamed of an art of balance and purity, like a good armchair for a tired man — a line held against him for the next fifty years.
1908 – 1911 The Académie Matisse Teaching a mostly foreign student body A free school in a former convent, filled with Scandinavians, Germans and Americans. Matisse closed it because it was eating his own working time.
1909 Sergei Shchukin commissions Dance and Music A Moscow textile magnate Shchukin bought thirty-seven Matisses for his palace in Moscow. His collection was nationalised after the revolution and is now split between the Hermitage and the Pushkin.
1910 Dance and Music completed Monumental panels for a Russian collector Matisse completed his monumental Dance and Music panels in 1910 for the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. The five dancing figures in Dance — red against green and blue — became one of the defining images of modern art.
1910 The Munich exhibition of Islamic art A revelation in pattern Matisse travelled to see thousands of Persian and Ottoman objects. He said afterwards that Persian miniatures revealed to him the full possibility of his own sensations.
1911 – 1913 The Morocco paintings Two winters in Tangier Rain kept him indoors for weeks, then broke into a landscape he painted in blues and acid greens. The Moroccan canvases were bought almost entirely by Russian collectors.
1911 The Red Studio painted Interior of his studio in vivid red Matisse painted The Red Studio in 1911, dissolving the studio interior into a single plane of red. It is one of the most radical paintings of the early 20th century and now hangs in MoMA, New York.
1913 The Armory Show Burned in effigy in Chicago Students at the Art Institute staged a mock trial of Henri Hairmattress and burned copies of his paintings in the street.
1914 – 1918 The war years Rejected for service at forty-four Matisse tried to enlist and was refused. His mother was trapped behind German lines and his brother was taken hostage. The painting turns severe, grey and geometric.
1917 Moves to Nice Where he stays for the rest of his life Matisse took rooms overlooking the sea and found the light he had been looking for since Corsica. He worked in Nice for thirty-seven years.
1920 Designs for Diaghilev Sets and costumes for Le Chant du Rossignol A commission from the Ballets Russes with music by Stravinsky — his first work at theatrical scale, and an early exercise in cut and pinned paper.
1921 – 1930 The Odalisques A decade of decorative interiors Models in patterned rooms hung with textiles from his own collection. Contemporaries accused him of retreating into charm — the work has been re-argued ever since.
1930 – 1933 The Barnes mural Painted twice after a measuring error Matisse completed the vast Dance for the Barnes Foundation, discovered the wall dimensions he had been given were wrong, and painted the whole thing again.
1930 Three months in Tahiti He barely paints there Matisse said the light was too even and he could not work. The lagoon forms surfaced twenty years later in the cut-outs.
1939 Separates from Amélie After forty-one years The marriage ended over Lydia Delectorskaya, his assistant and model. Amélie gave him an ultimatum and he could not give her up.
1941 Cancer surgery — a second life Given months, he lived thirteen more years Two operations for duodenal cancer left him largely bedridden. Matisse called what followed une seconde vie, and made his most radical work in it.
1943 – 1947 Jazz published Cutout collages become a new art form Matisse created Jazz between 1943 and 1947, a portfolio of paper cutout collages published as an artist's book. After surgery left him bedridden, he invented a new technique that would occupy his final years.
1944 Amélie and Marguerite arrested Both were in the Resistance His estranged wife was imprisoned and his daughter tortured by the Gestapo and put on a train to Ravensbrück. Marguerite escaped when the line was bombed.
1948 – 1951 Chapel of the Rosary, Vence His final and most spiritual work Matisse designed every element of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence from 1948 to 1951 — windows, murals, furniture, vestments. He called it his masterpiece despite being an atheist. It remains the most complete expression of his art.
1952 The Blue Nudes Drawing with scissors Cut from paper painted with gouache and pinned directly to the wall. Matisse said cutting into colour reminded him of the direct carving of sculptors.