As a student he first studied law, then in 1890 turned seriously to painting.
Henri Matisse spent his entire life moving southward toward color and light. Matisse said he got his color sense for his mother, who was herself an accomplished painter on porcelain, a fashionable art form at the time.
He had a traditional academic training, studying with William-Adolphe Bougereau at the Academie Julian and then with Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
He gained his initial fame as one of the Fauve painters exhibiting in the Salon d’Automne of 1905.
For more than 50 years, the dogged pursuit of color led him to some of the most remote villages on the south of France, as well as to some of its most popular locations.
One of his distinctions was his use of abstraction, simplified line, and pure color to produce recognizable imagery that was life-affirming and joyous. Matisse died in Nice on 3 November 1954.
Henri Matisse
