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“Chapter 9: An Artist’s Attrait — Henri Matisse’s Pilgrimage

‘When I’m getting angry I recite a little prayer I know well, word for word, dwelling on every syllable, and when I’m done I’ve got myself sorted.’
— Henri Matisse to Freire Rayssiguier (2 June 1949, JOURNAL, p.209)”

“‘My chapel is not “Brethren, you must die.” It’s the opposite, “Brethren, you must live!”’” — Henri Matisse, as quoted by Georges Charbonnier (1960) in Fourcade, ECRITS, p. 266

Chapter. 4: THE AESTHETICS OF LOVE: St. Dominic, the Virgin, and her Child —
“… the realities of the Gospel are the mysteries of love …”
— Pere Regamey (Les plus beaux textes sur la Vierge Marie [1942])
— as quoted by Charles Miller in THE SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE OF HENRI MATISSE: Vence’s Chapel of the Rosary, p. 98

“‘the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God … through the middle of the street of the city.’ … Early the next year Matisse turned from the dominance of angularity a la Jazz to vegetal forms. The images stored since the sojourn in Tahiti were re-emerging in Venice! What prompted such a release? — Rev. 22:1-2, quoted in THE SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE OF H. M.

“‘The faith of most is a bourgeois faith,’ says Matisse. Nonetheless, he recognizes that at the Easter Mass [13 April 1941] that he attended with his secretary who is Russian, he had, all the same, been deeply moved by it.” — Pierre Courthion, “Chatting With Henri Matisse,” THE SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE OF HENRI MATISSE: VENCE’S CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY, p. 46

“I love their [Russian icons’] moving Simplicity, which to me is closer and dearer than Fra Angelico …” — Henri Matisse to a Russian journalist, November 1913 … as quoted in THE SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE OF HENRI MATISSE: Vence’s Chapel of the Rosary, p.36

“… I began with the profane, and now in the evening of my life, in a wholly natural way, I end with the divine …” — Henri Matisse to Bishop Redmond, August 1951