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Matisse #1
The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse Volume One
"Matisse was born in 1869 in northern France and grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, near the Belgian border, on the drab, cold, wet beet fields of French Flanders. The same area, culturally and geographically speaking, had produced Vincent van Gogh sixteen years before." Thus begins the first full biography of an artist who, more than any other, is associated with Mediterranean heat, brilliant color and light, and languid, luxurious interiors.
As author Hilary Spurling points out, an open window is one of Matisse's frequent motifs. Given the climate of his youth, that image speaks more of escape than of the sea air of the French Riviera.
If all biographers wrote with Spurling's warmth, empathy, and intelligence, no one would likely want to read any other kind of book. The Unknown Matisse is thoroughly researched, with pages devoted to minutiae that Spurling imparts with wit and style, making every nuance of Matisse's early development fascinating. She tells too the story of Matisse's family life (Mme. Matisse risked her respectable reputation by adopting Henri's first, illegitimate daughter), his brilliant ideas about art, and the years it took for his paintings to find their rightful audience. It was her intention finally to give as much weight to Matisse's life as has been given to his work, but in the process of examining the man she sheds new light on the art as well. Peggy Moorman
As author Hilary Spurling points out, an open window is one of Matisse's frequent motifs. Given the climate of his youth, that image speaks more of escape than of the sea air of the French Riviera.
If all biographers wrote with Spurling's warmth, empathy, and intelligence, no one would likely want to read any other kind of book. The Unknown Matisse is thoroughly researched, with pages devoted to minutiae that Spurling imparts with wit and style, making every nuance of Matisse's early development fascinating. She tells too the story of Matisse's family life (Mme. Matisse risked her respectable reputation by adopting Henri's first, illegitimate daughter), his brilliant ideas about art, and the years it took for his paintings to find their rightful audience. It was her intention finally to give as much weight to Matisse's life as has been given to his work, but in the process of examining the man she sheds new light on the art as well. Peggy Moorman
512 pages, Hardcover
First published October 27, 1998
38 people are currently reading
1541 people want to read
About the author
Hilary Spurling
28 books49 followersHilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL (born 1940) is an English writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China was published in March 2010.
She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and two grandchildren.
She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and two grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 7, 2010
Solid biography of the early life of this amazing painter. It gets the basic whos, whys, and wheres of his life down nicely, but is a little thin when it comes to delving into his art itself, both in regards to social meaning and technique, which is a major flaw. Still, it's worth reading for anyone interested in Matisse and probably would make a good starting point for someone with little to no knowledge of them man or his work. If it was possible I would have given this book 3 1/2 stars.
December 10, 2014
A wonderful book, very rare to see this as a title. Understanding the creative genius behind one of the most loved artists is enjoyable. Well written and perfect for art lovers.
January 20, 2016
Preliminary remarks, will be updated after some additional thought.
For me this was a slow read, partially because it is so dense in description of a multitude of family, friends, schoolmates, art dealers, gallery mates, places, related events and throughout the whole course difficult finances.
Also, with a great deal of travel and work created on vacation, then transported and ultimately hung in shows in other locations, there's an awful lot of information and detail to keep up with, just to digest a single long paragraph. Is it worth it? Yes! Does it often require re-reading passages, yes, unless you're way more astute than I am! I have just finished the first volume on the first part of his life and will probably go back and make some notes to guide my further thinking before I begin the 2nd volume on his later years.
For me this was a slow read, partially because it is so dense in description of a multitude of family, friends, schoolmates, art dealers, gallery mates, places, related events and throughout the whole course difficult finances.
Also, with a great deal of travel and work created on vacation, then transported and ultimately hung in shows in other locations, there's an awful lot of information and detail to keep up with, just to digest a single long paragraph. Is it worth it? Yes! Does it often require re-reading passages, yes, unless you're way more astute than I am! I have just finished the first volume on the first part of his life and will probably go back and make some notes to guide my further thinking before I begin the 2nd volume on his later years.
May 13, 2013
A wonderful writer. As someone who loves this painter, but usually doesn't read books about artists, this is a good place to start, I find. And I'll refer you to someone who's becoming one of my favorite book bloggers,
http://tariqkataria3.blogspot.ch/2013...
http://tariqkataria3.blogspot.ch/2013...
December 29, 2021
Phenomenal. At times too dense, necessitating some skimming of tangential details and backstories, but eye opening, full of human dimension, and riveting.
December 23, 2009
Again, one of the rare biogrphies that makes you care for someone you never thought to care for - on a human level - before. It makes Matisse lovable, and you regret not having had him as a friend. What good this is I'm not sure - but it's uncommon enough to remark upon.
August 3, 2016
Hilary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse is a detailed, biographical sketch of Henri Matisse's early life and an account of the events leading up to his embrace of Modernism and success as a painter. Spurling describes Henri's life primarily through daily contacts with family, friends and other members of the art circuit. The author begins by sketching the birth of Matisse and the major events surrounding it. The birth of Matisse coincided with the Franco-Prussian War, a time when the Germans marched through his hometown in St-Quentin to reach the already-defeated French army, who had withdrawn to this small town. The Germans quickly occupied St-Quentin, and it was this occupation that lasted for the first few months of Matisse's childhood. St-Quentin was occupied yet again in 1914 and a third time in 1940, as well as during World War I and World War II. The Germans left a defiant mark in St-Quentin through monumental amounts of physical, mental and emotional damages.
The depressing scenery of Henri's birth most certainly set the stage for what would be the first thirty-nine years of his life, a time during which he spent constantly trying to break free—not only from his father's incessant disregard for his true passions, but also from the constraints placed upon the art world during the time he was trying to take his first leap into painting. His first inkling to become a painter spurred from his mother's gift of water paints to pass the time. What began as a hobby became a revelation, as Henri boldly claims: “Before I had no interest in anything. I felt a great indifference to everything they tried to make me do. From the moment I held the box of colours in my hand, I knew this was my life. Like an animal that plunges headlong towards what it loves, I dived in, to the understandable despair of my father, who had made me study quite different subjects. It was a tremendous attraction, a sort of Paradise Found in which I was completely free, alone, at peace”(46). This was not the only significant event leading up to Matisse's painting career. During his time in school, he developed intense gastric problems and ended up in the hospital. Leon Bouvier, a man in the bed next to Matisse's, was working on a Swiss landscape with oil paints. Leon claimed that painting was the ultimate form of relaxation. It was there, in his hospital bed, that Matisse embraced the suggestion.
Henri's decision to become a painter was not an easy one. His parents always remained divided on his career choice—he lived amongst an unhappy, angry father and a loving, supportive mother. The residents of his family's home in Bohain continuously tortured him, calling him a fool. Henri's first wife, Camille, eventually gave up on him and thought he was throwing his life away—they eventually separated in 1897—the summer of which Matisse produced the most luxurious, shocking seascapes that drove the art world wild. His second wife, Amélie , never wavered in her faith and support of Matisse's career, despite financial struggles and three children in the mix. Hilary Spurling portrays Amélie as the heroin in Henri's life. In dire straits, Amélie pawned an emerald ring of hers in order to raise five-hundred francs to purchase Paul Cézanne's Three Bathers, a favorite of her husband's. He once stated: “It has supported me morally at critical moments in my venture as an artist; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance.”
Family life always seemed dramatic for this French painter and always remained an influence on his work. At one point, his in-laws, Catherine and Armand Parayre, supporters of Frédéric Humbert (a député) and his wife Thérèse were caught in a financial scam of epic proportions that endangered the French government and its banking system. The Parayres' association with the Humberts led to a downward spiral. Their great wealth and social status quickly decayed. It's just as they say: dung rolls downhill. Because Henri Matisse and his wife were related to the Parayres, they lost respect in their community as well. This led to what Hilary Spurling and other art historians call Matisse's “dark period.” Beginning in 1902 and lasting for around two years, Matisse fled from the official art world and started to embrace experimentalism.
When Matisse finally decided to take art classes, he remained continually bored with repetitive, mechanical exercises. Matisse persisted, attending art training in Saint-Quentin and Paris, although he found most of the teachings contradictory to his own feelings about art, and this prevented him from academic success. He once “staged a dramatic scene which ended with a body being hurled into the Seine—the victim was a dummy in regalia of a Beaux-Arts professor”(207). He failed the initial exam at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but was luckily accepted by Gustave Moreau—the first teacher Matisse took a liking to, as Moreau allowed students to develop a little more independently. “[Moreau:] planted question marks in our minds,” said Matisse. Everything he had previously learned about painting was trampled by Moreau, who taught: “[...:] colour has to be thought, passed through the imagination. If you have no imagination, you will never produce beautiful colour […:] The painting that will last is the one that has been thought out, dreamed over, reflected on, produced from the mind, and not solely by the hand's facility at dabbing on highlights with the tip of the brush”(86). Painting then become a possibility for Matisse: “I believed I would never be able to paint because I didn't paint like the others. […:] That was when I understood that art could be a language; I thought that I could become a painter.”
Camille Pisarro, an Impressionist painter, also became a major influence on Matisse's work and was also an advocate of a freer, more open way of painting. Impressionism focused on visible brush strokes, an emphasis on light, everyday objects and environments, human movement, and unusual angles. John Russell, another Impressionist, was credited by Matisse for introducing him to new theories of light and color, particularly those of Claude Monet. Upon first glance, Henri was shocked by Russell's work; but according to Spurling, after spending time with Russell, Matisse “abandoned his clay-coloured palate and he began to paint with the colours of the impressionists,” and that “Matisse's style loosened dramatically in both tone and texture, to the point where a break with the establishment...was inevitable.” Russell was also the first to provide Henri with a drawing by Vincent Van Gogh, most likely a meaningful influence on his later work.
After the Impressionists came the Neo-Impressionists, one of which was Paul Signac, another important mentor in Henri's life. Neo-Impressionism was a type of art which involves painting in very tiny and regular dots, which, at a distance make up an optical mix of color. Signac was the vice-president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the only successful outcast exhibition in the art world. It was at this salon that Matisse hung six of his paintings and sold two of them, one of which went for four-hundred francs—an unbelievable amount of money for a Matisse painting in 1904. Earning income for any of his work was a shock to Matisse as well as his circle of friends, as shown by his reaction to the later sale of his Still Life with Eggs and the act of showing his financial success to Charles Guerin: “I placed a one-hundred-franc bill on the floor. I stepped back one metre. I put down the second bill. Another metre. I put down the third. And then, one metre further back, the fourth. And Charles Guerin touched the bills with his foot, before asking me uneasily: 'Have you killed someone?'”(273).
These successes were just minor highlights in Matisse's career. The real success came once Leo and Gertrude Stein discovered his paintings. When Woman in a Hat placed in an exhibition, it went unsold. With one week left, an offer of three-hundred francs for the painting arrived via telegram. The buyers were two Americans, brother and sister Leo and Gertrude Stein. The Steins' desire to collect a number of Matisse's paintings caused his career to surge upward. In 1906, collectors began competing for his paintings, and by 1908 he had shows all over the world. The Steins' obsession with Matisse continued with sister-in-law Sarah Stein, who was also an avid collector and admirer.
Despite these long-deserved successes, Henri Matisse was consistently torn between academic success, which held the promise of financial success, and what one might call “true art,” or the free and uninhibited pursuit of expression. This search for freedom eventually led Matisse southward to Paris. As Hilary Spurling points out, Henri was constantly moving all around Europe, but always further southward. There was something peculiar about the south that allowed Matisse to be truly free. Perhaps it was the negative events surrounding his upbringing that made northern Europe appear so dreary; or the fact that the physical environment, as well as its residents, was quite dreary themselves. Matisse believed that this urge for light and color came about when he married Amélie. In fact, it was their honeymoon to Corsica in southwestern France in 1898 that provided Matisse with this new perception. Europe is enveloped in pulchritudinous color and light—it is fresh, scenic and lively—it encompasses precisely what Matisse's most prized paintings are all about: seascapes, bright hues, birds, and fish. It is for this reason that Hilary Spurling portrays Amélie as Henri Matisse's divine heroine, a savior of sorts.
In diabolical opposition to Henri Matisse emerged Pablo Picasso, a Cubist painter and sculptor. Picasso was seen as a rebel and risk-taker, while Matisse was seen as conservative and timid. While this is a popular assumption and belief, it is a myth that Hilary Spurling seeks to dissolve. When Picasso burst into the art world, Matisse was considered to be the intimidating leader of the avant-garde who had paintings at the Salon des Indépendants that were considered wild and terrifying. Picasso considered himself a wild one as well and began teasing Henri, thus starting the mythic rivalry between what were considered the two most savage, untamed artists at the time. However, they both had a common goal: to turn the art world upside down and to crush preconceived notions of the definitions of art. Each painter accomplished this in their own, unique way, largely influenced by their background. Hilary Spurling elaborates on this in her interview on ABC Radio National: “Picasso, as you know, grew up in Spain, where there was no immediate military threat. So I’m just saying he hadn’t encountered at first hand the horrors of the 20th century, which he came to paint in paintings which certainly express our feelings of fracture and of horror, which has been one of the main experiences of this century. Matisse never painted that, and I think it’s because he had very good reasons, the deepest and most profound reasons that a human being can have to need, to want, to desperately need a sense of serenity and peace and tranquility which life had not given him, either privately or in general terms. He knew war from his earliest memories as an infant, and he was rejected by his family when he wanted to become a painter.” Ultimately, the image of Matisse evolves and spreads through the image of Pablo Picasso.
In The Unknown Matisse, Hilary Spurling utilizes a combination of historical, cultural, environmental, familial, and social details demonstrates that Henri Matisse's most significant contribution to the art world was his explosive embrace of color as a form of free expression. From the beginning, Henri had nothing to lose. “Matisse said several times that having nothing to lose gave him a freedom not available to his more affluent contemporaries”(209). He was unhappy with his surroundings and ultimately his life. He only knew one thing: he wanted to experience and obtain pure freedom. Having nothing to lose and only something desired encouraged him to take on new challenges and face discouraging odds. Experiments with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, as well as his love of Southwestern Europe, led Matisse to develop his own sense of freedom: of expression, of color. At a time when Matisse was an art teacher, two American girls hoping to study under him exclaimed: “We want your color.” Matisse replied: “If you haven't brought your own colour, you will never get mine”(407). From the Franco-Prussian War and his father's disdain for his profession to the support of fellow painters and his wife Amélie, the early life of Matisse, as Hilary Spurling describes it, serves as a snapshot of the interminable rivalry between those forces that seek to define us culturally and the stubborn will of human individuality that refuses to succumb.
The depressing scenery of Henri's birth most certainly set the stage for what would be the first thirty-nine years of his life, a time during which he spent constantly trying to break free—not only from his father's incessant disregard for his true passions, but also from the constraints placed upon the art world during the time he was trying to take his first leap into painting. His first inkling to become a painter spurred from his mother's gift of water paints to pass the time. What began as a hobby became a revelation, as Henri boldly claims: “Before I had no interest in anything. I felt a great indifference to everything they tried to make me do. From the moment I held the box of colours in my hand, I knew this was my life. Like an animal that plunges headlong towards what it loves, I dived in, to the understandable despair of my father, who had made me study quite different subjects. It was a tremendous attraction, a sort of Paradise Found in which I was completely free, alone, at peace”(46). This was not the only significant event leading up to Matisse's painting career. During his time in school, he developed intense gastric problems and ended up in the hospital. Leon Bouvier, a man in the bed next to Matisse's, was working on a Swiss landscape with oil paints. Leon claimed that painting was the ultimate form of relaxation. It was there, in his hospital bed, that Matisse embraced the suggestion.
Henri's decision to become a painter was not an easy one. His parents always remained divided on his career choice—he lived amongst an unhappy, angry father and a loving, supportive mother. The residents of his family's home in Bohain continuously tortured him, calling him a fool. Henri's first wife, Camille, eventually gave up on him and thought he was throwing his life away—they eventually separated in 1897—the summer of which Matisse produced the most luxurious, shocking seascapes that drove the art world wild. His second wife, Amélie , never wavered in her faith and support of Matisse's career, despite financial struggles and three children in the mix. Hilary Spurling portrays Amélie as the heroin in Henri's life. In dire straits, Amélie pawned an emerald ring of hers in order to raise five-hundred francs to purchase Paul Cézanne's Three Bathers, a favorite of her husband's. He once stated: “It has supported me morally at critical moments in my venture as an artist; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance.”
Family life always seemed dramatic for this French painter and always remained an influence on his work. At one point, his in-laws, Catherine and Armand Parayre, supporters of Frédéric Humbert (a député) and his wife Thérèse were caught in a financial scam of epic proportions that endangered the French government and its banking system. The Parayres' association with the Humberts led to a downward spiral. Their great wealth and social status quickly decayed. It's just as they say: dung rolls downhill. Because Henri Matisse and his wife were related to the Parayres, they lost respect in their community as well. This led to what Hilary Spurling and other art historians call Matisse's “dark period.” Beginning in 1902 and lasting for around two years, Matisse fled from the official art world and started to embrace experimentalism.
When Matisse finally decided to take art classes, he remained continually bored with repetitive, mechanical exercises. Matisse persisted, attending art training in Saint-Quentin and Paris, although he found most of the teachings contradictory to his own feelings about art, and this prevented him from academic success. He once “staged a dramatic scene which ended with a body being hurled into the Seine—the victim was a dummy in regalia of a Beaux-Arts professor”(207). He failed the initial exam at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but was luckily accepted by Gustave Moreau—the first teacher Matisse took a liking to, as Moreau allowed students to develop a little more independently. “[Moreau:] planted question marks in our minds,” said Matisse. Everything he had previously learned about painting was trampled by Moreau, who taught: “[...:] colour has to be thought, passed through the imagination. If you have no imagination, you will never produce beautiful colour […:] The painting that will last is the one that has been thought out, dreamed over, reflected on, produced from the mind, and not solely by the hand's facility at dabbing on highlights with the tip of the brush”(86). Painting then become a possibility for Matisse: “I believed I would never be able to paint because I didn't paint like the others. […:] That was when I understood that art could be a language; I thought that I could become a painter.”
Camille Pisarro, an Impressionist painter, also became a major influence on Matisse's work and was also an advocate of a freer, more open way of painting. Impressionism focused on visible brush strokes, an emphasis on light, everyday objects and environments, human movement, and unusual angles. John Russell, another Impressionist, was credited by Matisse for introducing him to new theories of light and color, particularly those of Claude Monet. Upon first glance, Henri was shocked by Russell's work; but according to Spurling, after spending time with Russell, Matisse “abandoned his clay-coloured palate and he began to paint with the colours of the impressionists,” and that “Matisse's style loosened dramatically in both tone and texture, to the point where a break with the establishment...was inevitable.” Russell was also the first to provide Henri with a drawing by Vincent Van Gogh, most likely a meaningful influence on his later work.
After the Impressionists came the Neo-Impressionists, one of which was Paul Signac, another important mentor in Henri's life. Neo-Impressionism was a type of art which involves painting in very tiny and regular dots, which, at a distance make up an optical mix of color. Signac was the vice-president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the only successful outcast exhibition in the art world. It was at this salon that Matisse hung six of his paintings and sold two of them, one of which went for four-hundred francs—an unbelievable amount of money for a Matisse painting in 1904. Earning income for any of his work was a shock to Matisse as well as his circle of friends, as shown by his reaction to the later sale of his Still Life with Eggs and the act of showing his financial success to Charles Guerin: “I placed a one-hundred-franc bill on the floor. I stepped back one metre. I put down the second bill. Another metre. I put down the third. And then, one metre further back, the fourth. And Charles Guerin touched the bills with his foot, before asking me uneasily: 'Have you killed someone?'”(273).
These successes were just minor highlights in Matisse's career. The real success came once Leo and Gertrude Stein discovered his paintings. When Woman in a Hat placed in an exhibition, it went unsold. With one week left, an offer of three-hundred francs for the painting arrived via telegram. The buyers were two Americans, brother and sister Leo and Gertrude Stein. The Steins' desire to collect a number of Matisse's paintings caused his career to surge upward. In 1906, collectors began competing for his paintings, and by 1908 he had shows all over the world. The Steins' obsession with Matisse continued with sister-in-law Sarah Stein, who was also an avid collector and admirer.
Despite these long-deserved successes, Henri Matisse was consistently torn between academic success, which held the promise of financial success, and what one might call “true art,” or the free and uninhibited pursuit of expression. This search for freedom eventually led Matisse southward to Paris. As Hilary Spurling points out, Henri was constantly moving all around Europe, but always further southward. There was something peculiar about the south that allowed Matisse to be truly free. Perhaps it was the negative events surrounding his upbringing that made northern Europe appear so dreary; or the fact that the physical environment, as well as its residents, was quite dreary themselves. Matisse believed that this urge for light and color came about when he married Amélie. In fact, it was their honeymoon to Corsica in southwestern France in 1898 that provided Matisse with this new perception. Europe is enveloped in pulchritudinous color and light—it is fresh, scenic and lively—it encompasses precisely what Matisse's most prized paintings are all about: seascapes, bright hues, birds, and fish. It is for this reason that Hilary Spurling portrays Amélie as Henri Matisse's divine heroine, a savior of sorts.
In diabolical opposition to Henri Matisse emerged Pablo Picasso, a Cubist painter and sculptor. Picasso was seen as a rebel and risk-taker, while Matisse was seen as conservative and timid. While this is a popular assumption and belief, it is a myth that Hilary Spurling seeks to dissolve. When Picasso burst into the art world, Matisse was considered to be the intimidating leader of the avant-garde who had paintings at the Salon des Indépendants that were considered wild and terrifying. Picasso considered himself a wild one as well and began teasing Henri, thus starting the mythic rivalry between what were considered the two most savage, untamed artists at the time. However, they both had a common goal: to turn the art world upside down and to crush preconceived notions of the definitions of art. Each painter accomplished this in their own, unique way, largely influenced by their background. Hilary Spurling elaborates on this in her interview on ABC Radio National: “Picasso, as you know, grew up in Spain, where there was no immediate military threat. So I’m just saying he hadn’t encountered at first hand the horrors of the 20th century, which he came to paint in paintings which certainly express our feelings of fracture and of horror, which has been one of the main experiences of this century. Matisse never painted that, and I think it’s because he had very good reasons, the deepest and most profound reasons that a human being can have to need, to want, to desperately need a sense of serenity and peace and tranquility which life had not given him, either privately or in general terms. He knew war from his earliest memories as an infant, and he was rejected by his family when he wanted to become a painter.” Ultimately, the image of Matisse evolves and spreads through the image of Pablo Picasso.
In The Unknown Matisse, Hilary Spurling utilizes a combination of historical, cultural, environmental, familial, and social details demonstrates that Henri Matisse's most significant contribution to the art world was his explosive embrace of color as a form of free expression. From the beginning, Henri had nothing to lose. “Matisse said several times that having nothing to lose gave him a freedom not available to his more affluent contemporaries”(209). He was unhappy with his surroundings and ultimately his life. He only knew one thing: he wanted to experience and obtain pure freedom. Having nothing to lose and only something desired encouraged him to take on new challenges and face discouraging odds. Experiments with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, as well as his love of Southwestern Europe, led Matisse to develop his own sense of freedom: of expression, of color. At a time when Matisse was an art teacher, two American girls hoping to study under him exclaimed: “We want your color.” Matisse replied: “If you haven't brought your own colour, you will never get mine”(407). From the Franco-Prussian War and his father's disdain for his profession to the support of fellow painters and his wife Amélie, the early life of Matisse, as Hilary Spurling describes it, serves as a snapshot of the interminable rivalry between those forces that seek to define us culturally and the stubborn will of human individuality that refuses to succumb.
June 12, 2011
The parents of creative offspring should read this book to reconcile themselves to the years of support they have in front of them if Henri Matisse's early career is anything to go by - and the overwhelming importance of a supportive family (especially wife) and friends in the artist's life. This well researched book, which is festooned with reference numbers on every page but fortunately for the reader not with footnotes, is quite engrossing. A surprise for me was the major influence of the Australian painter, John Peter Russell, on Matisse and this artist's own fascinating history (including the sad dissolution of his family after his wife's death). Another surprise was Sarah Stein's importance to Matisse - having been vaguely aware of Leo Stein and more particularly of the strange Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The book is full of curious anecdotes - Henri Matisse playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony from beginning to end on a portable organ for one - and a parade of personalities and how they impacted on Matisse's art and fitted into the picture of society at the time. The shock of the Fauves on the public at the turn of the Century and Matisse's reaction are well documented. But it is the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" story of the Humberts, his wife's connection with them and their impact on Matisse's life and personality that was of most surprise to me. I am now keen to read the next volume.
May 26, 2010
I loved this. Writing a biography of an artist must be a formidable task: how do you satisfy artists as well as readers who are novices? I'm a novice, and it seemed to me that the actual art was well-explained. The discussion of Matisse's artistic influences and the impact of his art is never allowed to overtake the discussion of the man.
Nick Hornby mentioned this in one of his collections of essays, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt; The Unknown Matisse was one of the books he'd heard great things about and never got around to reading. On first glance it seems intimidatingly academic to a casual reader. The writing is slow at times as the author catalogs events, and I had to keep referring back to remind myself of the various artists, friends, and figures mentioned. She compensates by making him come to life without over-analyzing.
I can't wait to read the second volume.
Caveat: forgive this mundane advice, but get it in hardcover. The American paperback edition is poorly bound and I just ruined it by using krazy glue to reattach large sections.
Nick Hornby mentioned this in one of his collections of essays, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt; The Unknown Matisse was one of the books he'd heard great things about and never got around to reading. On first glance it seems intimidatingly academic to a casual reader. The writing is slow at times as the author catalogs events, and I had to keep referring back to remind myself of the various artists, friends, and figures mentioned. She compensates by making him come to life without over-analyzing.
I can't wait to read the second volume.
Caveat: forgive this mundane advice, but get it in hardcover. The American paperback edition is poorly bound and I just ruined it by using krazy glue to reattach large sections.
December 6, 2007
Along with Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf, this and Spurling's second volume, 'Matisse the Master,' are masterpieces of the life writer's art. From the artist's early days in the poor and dim north of France to his last days in the light-filled south, there's enough detail here to sink a lesser biographical vessel. There's so much that we didn't know before---Spurling's scholarship is exhaustive--- but it's all so well told. This is not the Matisse that introductory art history courses in college conjure up. Here is no happy bourgeois, the angst-ridden Picasso's opposite number. Matisse had a hard life, from beginning to end. I devoured both volumes and was sad when I finished them.
July 13, 2012
A bit of a chore for the first several hundred pages. Not sure why. It is certainly a solid piece of biography. At any rate, the last two hundred pages were more of a pleasure to read, and I learned a great deal from all of it. I hadn't known anything about Matisse's childhood in northern France near Flanders in a countryside that was not bucolic, but harsh and increasingly industrialized. The two major industries there were sugar beet farming and the dying and weaving of cloth (which influenced Matisse's sense of color and design and his love of textiles). And the book succeeds in making you understand how really revolutionary his work was in which "color became sticks of dynamite."
December 21, 2016
This is a well-researched biography of Matisse in his early years. I wouldn't recommend it if you are not a huge fan of art and Matisse in particular, but if you're looking to read about everything that ever happened to the artist up to 1908, this is the book for you. There is great attention to detail here and plenty of photographs and illustrations as befits a book about an artist, so Matisse fans, enjoy!
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May 2, 2010This is a brilliant analysis of Henri Matisse's stubborn Northern character, his rebellion against his father, his rebellion against conformism, and his struggle to transform modern art into a glittering world of light and colour.
This biography is well-written and interesting. However, it's very long and detailed.
This biography is well-written and interesting. However, it's very long and detailed.
December 3, 2007
This was a year to catch up. The title sat on my shelf for almost nine years; it came out at the time I gave up (for a time, it turns out) one of my greatest interests.
Erudite, sensitive, breaking a lot of new ground -- well. That's pretty good, I think. The dedication, alone, deserves a look.
Erudite, sensitive, breaking a lot of new ground -- well. That's pretty good, I think. The dedication, alone, deserves a look.
April 6, 2016
Pithy read. Lots of names dropped, french towns, cities and terms. That can slow down the reading pace a bit...You gotta love Matisse to love this book. If you do, you will.
November 8, 2019
And I thought Van Gogh was a tortured soul! After reading Hilary Spurling’s book (the first of two) about Henri Matisse I’ve since realized it’s a common theme with great artists. The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Matisse: The Early Years, 1869 - 1908 is terrific. It’s meticulously researched with several colored images of Matisse’s works which enhance the reading experience greatly. Reading of Matisse’s struggles with colour, with form, with finding out how to break the rules—you can see it all unfold in his paintings. One of my new favorite paintings is one of Matisse’s first successes, Woman In a Hat—it was shown in the Paris Salon in 1905. It’s an odd painting of Matisse wife’s, with strange colours, loose brushwork and a piercing gaze. It was controversial. It created an uproar among the public and critics. It was ridiculed, scorned. How strange it was! His contemporaries thought it the work of a dangerous lunatic (fig 24). Yet it set Matisse’s career forward, and launched the movement of Fauvism, or les Fauves, French for 'wild beasts'. Woman In a Hat was purchased by the Leo Stein, an American collector who along with his sister and sister- in-law, helped launch Matisse’s career in France and the US. The book goes into interesting detail of the Stein family and their contributions to the art world, not only via Matisse but his peer Pablo Picasso.
Not only does Spurling write about Matisse’s struggles with his work, but also about his challenges with family—which were signifiant. His wife’s family was affiliated with one of the biggest scandals in France of the 19th century, the Humbert affair. Matisse’s mother-in-law was a maid servant of a fraudster, Therese Humbert. The scandal affected the Matisse family greatly during its height. Yet Matisse, along with other life challenges, including an unwell daughter and estranged father still managed to forge a style of painting that disrupted the art world and left us with a collection of works admired and studied today.
But Matisse was not simply discarding perspective, abolishing shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and colour. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries, going to back to painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo and before them to the Greek and Roman master of antiquity (pg. 325).
I enjoyed too how Spurling writes of Matisse’s contemporaries; it’s apparent Matisse did not create in a vacuum. Many European and US artists collaborated with, and studied works of their contemporaries. They often bought works of each other, and even traded their works. But the lives of some of these artists, are sad and lonely. Spurling manages to capture their inner lives within Matisse’s story.
An excellent book; I look forward to book two.
Not only does Spurling write about Matisse’s struggles with his work, but also about his challenges with family—which were signifiant. His wife’s family was affiliated with one of the biggest scandals in France of the 19th century, the Humbert affair. Matisse’s mother-in-law was a maid servant of a fraudster, Therese Humbert. The scandal affected the Matisse family greatly during its height. Yet Matisse, along with other life challenges, including an unwell daughter and estranged father still managed to forge a style of painting that disrupted the art world and left us with a collection of works admired and studied today.
But Matisse was not simply discarding perspective, abolishing shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and colour. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries, going to back to painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo and before them to the Greek and Roman master of antiquity (pg. 325).
I enjoyed too how Spurling writes of Matisse’s contemporaries; it’s apparent Matisse did not create in a vacuum. Many European and US artists collaborated with, and studied works of their contemporaries. They often bought works of each other, and even traded their works. But the lives of some of these artists, are sad and lonely. Spurling manages to capture their inner lives within Matisse’s story.
An excellent book; I look forward to book two.
August 9, 2022
I'm not an "art" guy, by which I mean I don't know anything about the history of art. I spent a lot of time looking up paintings by late 19th and early 20th century French painters while reading this book, and I can't say that I understand Matisse or his Fauvres' work. I'm also colorblind, so his shift to working with brighter and brighter colors may have gone over my head.
That being said, the story is well told. Matisse knew from a young age that he was on this Earth to do one thing, and he did it. When people told him he was doing it wrong and that he could surely make more money doing it right, he lived on beans and bought more paint so that he could keep doing it his way. Eventually, despite his inner demons and the outer demons of the art world, he won out. Now his descendants are all rich, and the descendants of the people who didn't believe in him don't have any Matisse paintings in their galleries.
So... qu'est-ce que c'est?
That being said, the story is well told. Matisse knew from a young age that he was on this Earth to do one thing, and he did it. When people told him he was doing it wrong and that he could surely make more money doing it right, he lived on beans and bought more paint so that he could keep doing it his way. Eventually, despite his inner demons and the outer demons of the art world, he won out. Now his descendants are all rich, and the descendants of the people who didn't believe in him don't have any Matisse paintings in their galleries.
So... qu'est-ce que c'est?
January 12, 2019
This is an amazing biography on an artist I have known very little of. It has opened my mind to an appreciation for the faux movement and the life and influences of an incredible and epic artist. Although the level of detail in the book is phenomenal at some points it is easy to get lost in trying to keep all the characters straight and this detracts from the continuity of the story even though it is a biography. None the less the book has changed my life as an artist far more than I ever expected it would when I opened the first page
August 26, 2019
This is a magnificent biography of my favorite artist Henri Matisse. It is the first book of a two-volume set. It covers the years from his birth in 1869 to 1909 when Matisse turned Forty. Matisse died in 1954.
In discussing his formative years, you learn so much about the man, his creations, the world he inhabited and the young artists he inspired like Picasso.
I was lucky enough to see the blockbuster Matisse exhibit in NYC held at MoMa in 1992. I remember people lined up around the block to witness this historic retrospective and was blown away.
In discussing his formative years, you learn so much about the man, his creations, the world he inhabited and the young artists he inspired like Picasso.
I was lucky enough to see the blockbuster Matisse exhibit in NYC held at MoMa in 1992. I remember people lined up around the block to witness this historic retrospective and was blown away.
November 19, 2017
Although I like his work (his later work, it turns out), and I've been to Nice and have seen where he lived and been to the Matisse Museum devoted to his work in Cimiez, it turns out I knew nothing about him. This book has fixed that, at least in part. Because it is only part of the story, taking you up to 1908, when he was 39 and just becoming successful. Since he lived to be 85, there is a second volume that needs to be read.
November 5, 2017
Excellently researched. Possibly more than you wanted to know about Matisse, but a fine biography.
November 2, 2018
Fabulous!! (still working on the second volume which is equally excellent.) Stupendous scholarship.
June 4, 2021
thorough, bordering on tedious.
May 28, 2022
Excellent bio. Balance between biographical details and discussion of his work is just about perfect.
December 8, 2008
The Unknown Matisse is the first of two volumes, taking our hero from 1869-1908. I actually bought it some time ago on Jee Leong’s recommendation, but it has taken me some time to finish, mainly I think because the simple physical size of it makes it slightly awkward to read in bed. It’s not that huge, but it’s quite a fat volume and printed on large format paper to make space for some colour reproductions of the work. Which are, of course, lovely and very welcome.
It’s fascinating to read about the outrage that greeted paintings which now seem, if not tame exactly, at least uncontroversial. Indeed the first time he shocked the Parisian public, it was with a painting (The Dinner Table) that now looks positively conventional. Over the past hundred years, outraging the public has become an explicit part of the job description for artists; but how much more satisfying to shock people not by placing a sculpture of Christ in a glass of urine, or exhibiting a work consisting of a room with the lights going on and off, but with a painting of a woman in a hat.
Not that Matisse seems to have been temperamentally inclined to shock people for its own sake. Some of the other modern artists obviously rather enjoyed the opportunity to wind up the public: André Derain came back from a visit to London with a classically tailored English suit made fauvist by the choice of a green fabric, with a red waistcoat and yellow shoes. Matisse, though, was more inclined to respectability: partially because unlike most of his contemporaries he had a young family, which meant he needed at least enough saleable work to keep them in food. But also because (through no fault of his own) he was caught up in the most magnificently baroque financial and political scandal I’ve ever heard of — really, it would merit a book by itself — which gave him enough experience of public notoriety to last a lifetime.
It’s a fine book, readable, evocative, well-researched. Or at least it gives the impression of being well-researched, which is as much as I have the expertise to judge.
It’s fascinating to read about the outrage that greeted paintings which now seem, if not tame exactly, at least uncontroversial. Indeed the first time he shocked the Parisian public, it was with a painting (The Dinner Table) that now looks positively conventional. Over the past hundred years, outraging the public has become an explicit part of the job description for artists; but how much more satisfying to shock people not by placing a sculpture of Christ in a glass of urine, or exhibiting a work consisting of a room with the lights going on and off, but with a painting of a woman in a hat.
Not that Matisse seems to have been temperamentally inclined to shock people for its own sake. Some of the other modern artists obviously rather enjoyed the opportunity to wind up the public: André Derain came back from a visit to London with a classically tailored English suit made fauvist by the choice of a green fabric, with a red waistcoat and yellow shoes. Matisse, though, was more inclined to respectability: partially because unlike most of his contemporaries he had a young family, which meant he needed at least enough saleable work to keep them in food. But also because (through no fault of his own) he was caught up in the most magnificently baroque financial and political scandal I’ve ever heard of — really, it would merit a book by itself — which gave him enough experience of public notoriety to last a lifetime.
It’s a fine book, readable, evocative, well-researched. Or at least it gives the impression of being well-researched, which is as much as I have the expertise to judge.
January 25, 2018
This was a well researched biography of the early years of Henri Matisse, one of the masters of twentieth century art. Having always loved his paintings because of the vibrant use of color, it was interesting to see as a young boy growing up in a northern France textile town, he was drawn even then to the different uses of colors and textures in the textiles. Although Matisse struggled as a "starving artist" for a lot of years in his early days in Paris in the art community, his wife and three children were very supportive of his work. The beautiful images of his paintings and sculptures through 1908 were included in the book, as well as the details of his early life and career and how each influenced the other.
July 16, 2016
One of my "heavy" summer reads - well worth it! Learned so much about Matisse - we take him too much for granted - or that process of creation. It looks so easy superficially, but deep down there's an amazing history.
I've always liked Matisse's work, but truly never had any idea about his early years. Obviously, I enjoyed the read.
I've always liked Matisse's work, but truly never had any idea about his early years. Obviously, I enjoyed the read.
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