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HENRI MATISSE

La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952

THE WORKS OF HENRI MATISSE An Odyssey in Colour

ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY"To look all life long with the eyes of a child"

INDIVIDUAL WORKS• Luxe I winter 1907 (Luxe I), • Portefenêtre à Collioure (FrenchWindow at Collioure), 1914 • Le Violoniste à la fenêtre (The Violinist at the window), 1918 • Deux danseurs (Two Dancers), 193738• Liseuse sur fond noir (Woman Reading, Black Background), 1939• Le Clown et Le Lagon, in Jazz (The Clown, The Lagoon, Jazz), 19431947• Chasuble, Vitrail bleu pâle et Rosace (Chasuble, Pale blue stainedglass and Rose Window), projects for the Chapelle du Rosaire atVence, 194852

• Nu bleu II (Blue Nude II), 1952 • La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952 • Nu de dos I, II, III et IV (The Back I, II, III and IV), 19091930

CHRONOLOGY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This dossier is part of the series Monographs on the Great Figures of Modern Art, which will beadded to regularly on this part of the site.

These dossiers are built around a selection of works by the artists who are best represented in thecollections of the National Museum of Modern Art. Each dossier sets out to provide an accessibleapproach to understanding the work of a major artist in the history of 20thcentury creativeproduction.

Each of these dossiers includes: a general introduction which will present and situate the role of the artist and his or her work in ahistorical, geographical and aesthetic context, a biography of the artist, a selection of the most representative works from the Museum's collections, contained inindividual files each with notes and a reproduction, a chronology of the artist's works.

FOR YOUR INFORMATIONThere are more than 59,000 works in the Museum's collections.The Museum regularly varies the works on show in the exhibition spaces on the 4th and 5th levelsof the Pompidou Centre. The educational dossiers have links set up to these new hangs.To find out whether the works presented in this dossier are currently on show click here

The Henri Matisse Holdings at the National Museum of Modern Art

The dossier on Henri Matisse offers an insight into the main phases of his workthrough the exceptional holdings assembled in the collections of the Museum ofModern Art: 245 pieces, including drawings, sculptures, prints and paintings, with fiveworks being acquired in 2001, from the estate of Mme Marie Matisse (19141999), thewidow of Jean Matisse, the paintes er'lder son.

THE WORKS OF HENRI MATISSE An Odyssey in Colour

In 1951, when he had just completed the last major project of his life, the Chapelle duRosaire at Vence, Matisse summed up close on fifty years of work in these few words:"For me this chapel is the culmination of an entire working life and the flowering of ahuge effort that has been heartfelt and arduous."

The only working life of an artist to match his in longevity was that of hiscontemporary, Picasso. But unlike the latter, Matisse produced an oeuvre subservientto a single idea: the search for a balance of colours and forms; by the end of his life,he succeeded in imprinting this upon matter, though, as he himself made plain, it wasnot without effort.

Indeed we learn from Matisse that from the first picture that got him noticed, Luxe,calme et volupté, in 1904, all the way to the chapel at Vence, the simplicity, freshnessand the immediately striking brilliance that characterise his work came into being onlyas a result of much deep thought.In order to reconcile colour with drawing through his gouachepainted cutouts, he hadto deploy sculpture and flatness of colour in turn, in other words abstracting colourfrom design and vice versa, so as to circumscribe their respective potencies.So that "art and decoration" would be "just one and the same thing", he studiedarchitecture and saw how painting can transfigure it. Finally, for painting to become that "art of balance, purity and serenity, with notroubling or disquieting subjects, so that for any mental worker, for example thebusinessman just as much as the artistic man of letters, it can be a soothing influenceon the brain, rather the way a good armchair gives him relaxation from physicaltiredness" (as he observed in 1908), Matisse pursued his original intuition through thegreat currents of art history over half a century: divisionism, fauvism and abstraction without ever getting lost.He had to travel a great deal too: to Brittany and the south of France, opening himselfto Eastern influences on a trip to Morocco, visiting America and Oceania.

At the end of this odyssey through colour and ornamentalism, for the artists of thegeneration that came after him, both in the US and in Europe, Matisse became whatAndré Masson called "the oasis of Matisse"; for the American abstract painters of theFifties and Sixties, from Rothko to Kelly, from Sam Francis to Robert Motherwell;for Hantaï and Viallat in France in the Sixties all of whom drew their source ofinspiration from the freshness of his œuvre.

ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY "To look all life long with the eyes of a child"

HENRI MATISSECateauCambrésis, 1869 Nice, 1954

Henri Matisse was the son of a grain merchant. His first studies were in law and heworked as a legal clerk in a notary's office at SaintQuentin in the Picardy region.During a convalescence, he began to draw a little. This initial experience led to his moving to Paris in 1891 to study painting. His teacherswere the academic painter Bouguereau, and subsequently Gustave Moreau, whowas closer to the contemporary avantgarde movements. Matisse then discoveredImpressionism, Turner, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and others. In 1904, aftermeeting Signac, the theoretician of the divisionist method first developed by Seurat,he painted Luxe, calme et volupté. But he was not satisfied with this canvas: "Mydominant colours, meant to be deepened and given value by the contrasts, were infact swallowed up by the contrasts, to which I gave as much weight as to thedominants. This led me to paint using flat slabs of colour; this was fauvism".

In 1905, Matisse exhibited a portrait of his wife at the Salon d'Automne: La Femme auchapeau (Woman with the Hat). It caused a scandal. Gertrude Stein noted thatvisitors giggled in front of the canvas and someone tried to slash it. Yet, though

disparaged, Matisse now ceased to be anonymous and assumed the role of leader of anew avantgarde schoolFrom then on, he had no difficulty exhibiting and selling his pictures. One notablecommission was in 1909 from the rich Russian collector Shchukin, for two works, LaDanse and La Musique (The Dance and Music). The affluence his success broughtallowed him to travel, making trips like his two visits to Morocco in 1912 in 1913, anenriching experience for his work.During the First World War, Matisse, then aged 45, was not called up. He remained inCollioure, then settled in Nice where he worked until the late 1920s, his almostexclusive subject being the female body.

In 1930, in search of a different light and space, he embarked on a long trip to Tahiti.From that island he brought back photographs and sketches, and above all memories.It was only much later that he succeeded in integrating his Tahitian experience into hispictorial practice, through his gouache cutouts. After he underwent major surgery in1941, this new procedure gave rise to his final masterpieces, among them Jazz in1947, La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952, and the projects for the Vencechapel between 1948 and 1951.

INDIVIDUAL WORKS

Luxe I (Luxe I), winter 1907Oil on canvas210 x 138 cm© Succession H. Matisse

This canvas is one of Matisse's first great compositions and it shows apreoccupation which runs through the entire body of his work: that ofreconciling tradition with modernity. In a landscape style inherited from

modern Impressionist painting, the three bathers of Luxe I illustrate his fidelity to theacademic genre of the nude. The massive aspect of the body of the standing womanand her fixed expression also testify to the painters interest in primitive art andAfrican art in particular.

The work's theme, the Golden Age, also a traditional one, evoking the dawn ofhumanity in a realm of ideal harmony with nature, is inspired, like Luxe, calme etvolupté, by Baudelaire's L'Invitation au voyage*. The painter illustrated the work ofthe poet a number of times in the course of his career and shared his ambivalentattitude to modernity.

The process of making this painting involved a procedure for drawing which waselaborated during the Renaissance: pouncing. This is a kind of stencil technique whichconsists of a card with the design of the eventual finished work; its contours are thenperforated and coated with charcoal, thus transferring them onto the canvas. Thegouache cutouts of Matisse's final period are perhaps just an adaptation of thisprocedure.

When it comes to colour, here Matisse moves away from the Impressionist and Fauvestyles which he had previously practised, rediscovering the flat colours of his master

Puvis de Chavannes**. A proponent of decorative painting, Puvis de Chavannes hadrepudiated the shadows, reliefs and brilliancy of his compositions to return to thesimplicity of medieval frescoes. This same imperative is to be found to a degree inLuxe I, and even more so in the second version with its deeper and more even hues,which Matisse produced the following year.

* L'Invitation au voyage, Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

** To consult a site on Puvis de Chavannes

Portefenêtre à Collioure (FrenchWindow at Collioure), 1914Oil on canvas116 x 89 cm© Succession H. Matisse

With this canvas painted at Collioure in the autumn of 1914, Matisseoffers a radically strippeddown image bordering on abstraction. It isin this sense that the work was interpreted when it was presented for

the first time, long after the artist's death, in a travelling exhibition in the UnitedStates in 1966. Nonetheless, as a number of its elements indicate, this paintingremains connected to representation, with all the sensuality and emotion whichattaches to the theme of the window in Matisse's work.Some details are explicitly figurative, like the scorings on the lefthand shutter whichare reminiscent of slashes. Likewise, the oblique angle of the wall at the bottom of thecanvas reintroduces threedimensionality to represent the floor of the room. Lastly,there are trees and the balcony ironwork still visible, despite the black colourwashapplied during the final stage of work.

Talking about a painting from 1916 in which black predominates, Matisse says hebegan "to use black as a colour of light and not as a colour of darkness". He appearsalready to be heading towards this discovery of black as an intimation of blinding light,here penetrating the space of the open window.Unlike numerous other windows painted at Collioure after 1905, this one does not setout to articulate an interior space and a landscape. Between a dimmed interior and aneven darker exterior, only the edges, the shutters or the bounds of the opening are lit.Merging with the rectangle of the picture, this window is approached for itself, as anemblematic subject of painting.

Le Violoniste à la fenêtre (The Violinist at the window), 1918Oil on canvas150 x 98 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Matisse painted this canvas shortly after his arrival in Nice in the winterof 191718, when he settled there alone to concentrate on his art whilehis wife and three children stayed on in Paris.

In a continuity of style with the works that precede it, here he returns to the motif ofthe window and again uses black, though with new colours that are less heavy. As forthe subject of the canvas, Matisse again takes up a theme he has handled before:music.

Music is very present in the iconography of the period, for it fuels reflections on the

nature of painting and its relationship to imitation; as a nondiscursive and nonrepresentational art, music provides a model for the painting of the early century. Butit was also particularly dear to Matisse, since he himself played the violin every day.In this respect Le Violoniste à la fenêtre can be interpreted as a selfportrait. The artistis playing to a window which for him represents painting.

Returning to the figure of the violinist in La Musique (Music), one of the two decorativepanels commissioned in 1909 by the Russian collector Shchukin, in the manner ofthose medieval artists who represented themselves in one corner of their pictures,here Matisse hints at a disguised selfportrait, as would often be the case in his work.

Deux danseurs (Two Dancers), 193738Pencil, gouache on paper, cutouts pinned and stuck to cardboard80 x 64 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Matisse had often dealt with dance as a subject before, for examplethrough the theme of the Golden Age (see the first note), in one of thepanels commissioned by Shchukin in 1909*, and when he was asked

in 1937 to produce the ballet screen for Léonide Massine's Rouge et Noir or Etrangefarandole.

For this project he used a method elaborated between 1930 and 1933 for three panelsintended for the country house of Doctor Barnes at Merion, Pennsylvania. This was tobe a monumental fresco, also on the theme of dance, in which Matisse had set out toexpress the dynamism of bodies in movement. While working on this, he made use ofcoloured paper which he cut up and pinned on the canvas, as a way of adjusting theforms of his compositions and seeing how alterations might look.

Here he proceeded in the same way, using small pieces of cutout paper which hewould gradually add to or trim off, as if employing brush strokes to achieve thedesired forms.By developing what was still only a working method, Matisse put in place the pictorialvocabulary that was soon to renew his work: the gouache cutouts.

* La Danse, 1909, The Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg: see the work

Liseuse sur fond noir (Woman Reading, Black Background), 1939 Oil on canvas92 x 73.5 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Painted in Paris in the summer of 1939, this picture gathers elementsfrom different worlds into one homogeneous space. Motifs drawn fromreal space the young woman, the pages on the table, the bouquet of

marguerites and violet scabious are mingled with elements already formed asimages, like the mirror or the drawing of a nude hung on the wall, a sketch whichMatisse probably made for the occasion, based on the same model.

As in other works, for example Le Peintre dans son atelier (The Painter in His Studio),1916, where he depicts himself from the back facing his model and the picture being

painted, he constructs a complex play of repetitions and reflections. But unlike thisother canvas where the metaphor of painting is evoked through the framing of thewindow, the process of pictorial creation appears here by means of the mirror and thereflection of the model, placed by the painter between the representation of the youngwoman and her body which is schematised by the drawing.

These elements are combined through the adjusting of various frames and rectangles,with the curves of the female body and the flowers softening their geometric rigour.But, above all, they are synthesised by the black background which, instead of lookinglike an occlusive curtain, lends the painting its depth of field and its mystery

Jazz, Le Clown, Planche I (Jazz, The Clown, Plate I), 1943Gouachepainted paper cutouts stuck to paper mounted on canvas67.2 x 50.7 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Jazz, Le Lagon, Planche XVIII (Jazz, The Lagoon, Plate XVIII), around 1944Gouachepainted paper cutouts stuck to paper mounted on canvas, 43.6 x 67.1 cm© Succession H. Matisse

These two collages are part of the maquette for the book Jazz, published by Matisse in1947 in collaboration with the publisher Tériade, who was of Greek origin. The natureof this work, which combines colour plates and pages of handwritten text, wasretrospectively defined by Matisse at the end of the book: "These images with theirvivid, violent tones are grounded in crystallised memories of the circus, of populartales or journeys. I did these pages of writing to quieten accompanying reactions tomy chromatic and rhythmic improvisations, as pages that form a kind of "ambientsound" carrying them along, surrounding them and thereby protecting theirparticularities."Le Clown and Le Lagon, which are respectively placed on the flyleaf and at the end ofthe book (Jazz has 20 plates in all), are in fact related to two different stages.

Le Clown, one of the first illustrations done for the book, perhaps even before theproject was actually established, is still, in its uneven cutout style, close to earlierworks like the Deux danseurs*, where one also finds the motif of the airbornesuspended body. This plate is probably the original starting point for the theme of thebook titled Le Cirque. Indeed, there are numerous figures within this universe;Monsieur Loyal (Plate III), Le Cauchemar de l’éléphant blanc (The White Elephant'sNightmare Plate IV) or again L’Avaleur de sabres (The SwordSwallower Plate XIII)must have been the basis of its content.

But, as his project gradually progressed, Matisse found himself remembering his tripto Tahiti in 1930. For example, he introduces exotic vegetable forms into his circusscenes, as in Les Codomas (Plate XI) which pays homage to famous trapeze artists atthe beginning of the century. The line of the cutout is increasingly a continuous one,

the violent glare of the footlights becomes softer and more akin to daylight.The last three plates, on the theme of the lagoon, explain the change in the work's titleto Jazz, which is no longer a description of its dramatic content, but rather of theimprovisation and vitality which have characterised its making.Moreover, the word "Jazz" is graphically interesting for Matisse. In 1944 he toldAragon: "I now know what a J is". For the work also contains texts written by him andrecopied with the paint brush, black on white, its calligraphy counterbalancing thecolour plates, supplying something like aphorisms "which people will read or not read,but will see... Like a kind of wrapping for my colours", as he put it.

* Deux danseurs, 193738: see the file

Chasuble, 195052Maquette for a decorative project Gouachepainted paper cutouts,stuck on paper mounted on canvas126 x 197.5 cm145.3 x 205.2 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Vitrail bleu pâle (Pale bluestainedglass)Second maquette for the stainedglasswindows in the Chapelle du Rosaire atVenceVenceNiceDecember 1948January 1949Gouachepainted paper cutouts, stuckon brown paper, then on white paper,mounted on canvas (a total of 14 panels)© Succession H. Matisse

Rosace (Rose Window),1951Indian ink, gouache on papermounted on canvas149.9 x 150.6 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Through Sister JacquesMarie, who nursed him from 1941 until the time when sheentered the convent and introduced him to her congregation, Henri Matisse designedthe Chapelle du Rosaire for the Dominican sisters of Vence (in the Maritime Alps).The overall conception aims for a balance between line and colours, within thearchitectural environment of a completely whitewashed construction; this symbolisesthe coming together of all the colours, while also being reminiscent of the traditionalMediterranean habitat.The blue and white roof of the belltower, the soberly coloured stainedglass, designedusing gouache cutouts, are counterbalanced by the black lines of the belltower andthe three interior frescoes on a white background, representing the Stations of theCross, a Virgin and Child, and a Saint Dominic.

The pieces presented here are part of the decorative programme for the chapel towhich Matisse exclusively devoted his creative energies between 1948 and 1951.

The drawings for the frescoes done on a ceramic base were made very quickly, eachin a few hours, though after long sessions of study and working up to this, "like aprayer one says better each time". The stainedglass windows "which rise from floorto ceiling, and which convey, in cognate forms, an idea of foliage that is always fromthe same source, a tree characteristic of the region", needed three successivemaquettes. After a first try on the theme of the heavenly Jerusalem which Matisse

considered overaustere, the second multicoloured maquette overlooked the demandsof the metallic structure supporting the stainedglass windows.In the final model, which was elaborated in a few months on the theme of the tree oflife, the colours were finally reduced to a lemon yellow, an ultramarine blue and abottle green.The studied simplicity, aiming "to express the idea of immensity, over a very limitedsurface", gives a response to religious feeling and brings about "the lightening of thespirit" which Matisse wanted to prompt in visitors to the chapel.

For this work which played a part in the renewal of sacred art, Matisse collaboratedwith Brother Rayssiguier, who developed the plans with the architect AugustePerret, and Father Couturier, who commissioned the Monastery of Les Tourettes, aproject designed by Le Corbusier.

Nu bleu II (Blue Nude II), 1952Gouachepainted paper cutouts stuck to paper mounted on canvas116.2 x 88.9 cm© Succession H. Matisse

Like the other four pieces in a series produced in 1952, Nu bleu IIreturns to a pose arms crossed behind the back of the neck, leg bentin front of the torso often used by Matisse both in painting (Nu assis,

Olga, Seated Nude, Olga, 1910) and in sculpture (Nu couché, Reclining Nude, 1907;Vénus à la coquille, Venus with Seashell, 193051).

This twodimensional work gives an impression of being in the round. As an heir toCézanne, Matisse regarded blue as a colour expressing volume and distance. Thegaps indicating the articulations of the body, while unifying the fragmented parts alongthe contours, gives the whole the effect of a relief. Lastly, the simplification of theforms recalls the stylisation of the body in African sculpture, which Matisse hadcollected since early in his career. The body seems to assume form deep inside alimitless space, which gives it a monumental character.

The series of Nus bleus can be seen as the culmination of a deeply reflectiveinvestigation of the figure in space which occupied Matisse throughout his life.

La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952Gouachepainted paper cutouts, mounted on canvas292 x 386 cm© Succession H. Matisse

With the works preceding this, Matisse had discovered therichness and creative freedom offered by these pieces ofpaper covered in a single colour, a matt gouache made of

pigments, lime and gum arabic, and cut up with scissors.It was with this technique that he was to produce a number of monumental picturesduring the very last years of his life; these are works on a par with the greatestclassical compositions.

In this respect, La Tristesse du roi is a reference to one of Rembrandt's canvases,David jouant de la harpe devant Saül (David Playing the Harp before Saul), in which

the young Biblical hero plays to distract the King from his melancholy, as well as tothe late selfportraits of the old Dutch master. In this work, Matisse layers the themesof old age, of looking back towards earlier life (La Vie antérieure*, the title of a poemby Baudelaire which the artist had already illustrated) and of music soothing all ills.

In this final selfportrait, the painter represents himself by this black form, like asilhouette of himself sitting in his armchair, surrounded by the pleasures which haveenriched his life: the yellow petals fluttering away have the gaiety of musical notation;the green odalisque symbolises the Orient, while a dancer pays homage to the femalebody. All of these Matisse themes are combined in this magisterial painting.

* La Vie antérieure, Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

Nu de dos I (The Back I), 1909190 x 116 x 13 cm

Nu de dos II(The Back II), 1913188 x 116 x 14 cm

Nu de dos III(The Back III),19161917190 x 114 x 16 cm

Nu de dos IV (The Back IV), 1930190 x 114 x 16 cm

Basreliefs, bronze cast by cire perdue method © Succession H. Matisse

Throughout his oeuvre Matisse worked on sculpture as a way of perfecting hisapproach to form. With Nus de dos, a series running from 1909 to 1930, one by one hetackled the pictorial problems he encountered: the design of monumental figures (hiswork on Nu de dos I, 1909 was contemporaneous with his great compositions LaMusique and La Danse), and the relationship between form and background (thefrescoes for the Barnes Foundation were produced in 1930, as was Nu de dos IV).However, although the series does not seem to have been conceived to be presentedas a single entity (the bronze castings were made only after Matisse's death) thesefour sculptures form a plastic unity.

Studies are in agreement that Matisse produced each new phase on the basis of thepreceding one, successively recutting his plaster moulds. Thus, the breast, the handand the hair are made increasingly schematised, the lopsidedness of the body is lostfor the sake of a central axis which assimilates the figure into an engaged column, andthe design fades gradually to merge into the background. Through this series, Matisseprogressed towards the figure as being increasingly independent from its model andfrom any representation. Each piece is a stage on the way to a synthesis andautonomy of form.

CHRONOLOGY

1904Matisse's first exhibition, at the Ambroise Vollard gallery, Paris.

1905Luxe, calme et volupté, painted during the previous summer at StTropez, is exhibitedat the Salon des Indépendants and bought by Signac. Other canvases are presented atthe Salon d'Automne alongside works by Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet and others in aroom which the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, the originator of the term "Cubism", dubs"la cage aux fauves" (the wild beasts' cage). A new movement is born, with Matisse asits leader.

1906Matisse stays for a time at Biskra in Algeria, and at Collioure, where he is fascinatedby the Mediterranean landscape.

1907Having acquired a degree of fame, he teaches in a school set up by a group ofadmirers.

1908At his New York gallery, the "291", Alfred Stieglitz organises the first exhibition ofMatisse's work in the United States.

1909The Russian collector Shchukin commissions two decorative panels from him: LaDanse and La Musique.

1910Retrospective exhibition at the BernheimJeune gallery, Paris.

1911Matisse travels to Seville, Collioure and Moscow, where he studies the icons, thenspends the winter of 19111912 at Tangiers; he discovers the dazzling light ofMorocco.

1913The paintings done in Morocco are exhibited in Paris along with recent work, at thesame time as 17 works are hung at the great international exhibition, the ArmoryShow, in New York.

1914When war is declared, in spite of having volunteered Matisse is not mobilised. Hesettles in Collioure where he becomes the friend of the most intellectual of the Cubistpainters, Juan Gris.

1918The Paul Guillaume gallery organises an exhibition which compares his works withPicasso's.

1920Matisse designs the sets and costumes for Diaghilev's ballet, Le Chant du rossignol,with music by Stravinsky.

1924First major retrospective in Copenhagen.

1927Matisse is awarded the prestigious Carnegie Prize.

1930He embarks on his trip to Tahiti, with New York and San Francisco as ports of call.He begins work on illustrating Mallarmé's poetry, and accepts Doctor Barnes'scommission for three decorative panels for his Merion Foundation in Pennsylvania.

1937Diaghilev's Ballets Russes commission a new set from him for Rouge et Noir.

1938Matisse goes to live at the Hôtel Régina in Cimiez, where he is to produce the bulk ofhis final masterpieces.

1941Major surgery leaves him an invalid; he works lying down, with the help of assistants.

1944His wife and daughter are arrested for involvement in the Resistance. Matisse, whohas stayed in the South of France, illustrates Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal.

1947Publication of Jazz by the publisher Tériade.

1948He begins work on the decoration of the Chapelle du Rosaire for the Dominican nuns atVence; this will be inaugurated by Father Couturier in 1951.

1950Matisse is prizewinning artist at the 25th Venice Biennale.

1952Opening of the Matisse Museum at CateauCambrésis, the town where Matisse wasborn.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In the French version of the "Henri Matisse" dossier, you can consult

• extracts from the reference text: Henri Matisse, "il faut regarder toute la vie avecdes yeux d'enfants", edited by Régine Pernoud, Le Courrier de l'UNESCO, vol. VI,No 10, October 1953 ; reproduced by Dominique Fourcade, Henri Matisse. Ecrits etpropos sur l'art, Hermann, Paris.

• a selective bibliography: essays on Henri Matisse, exhibition catalogues and texts byHenri Matisse.

To consult the other dossiers on the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art

In French

In English

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Credits © Centre Pompidou, Direction de l'action éducative et des publics, April 2005Development : Florence MoratDocumentation, Editing : Vanessa MorissetTranslated by Liz Heron Graphic Design : Michel Fernandez, Aleth VinchonCoordination : MarieJosé Rodriguez