'

Matisse on Art
 Jack D. Flam

·MATISSE
ON ART

A Dutton m Paperback

E. P. Dutton New York

 Frontispiece: The Swan. Illustration for Poesies de
Stephane Mallarme. 1932. Etching.

This paperback edition of

MATISSE ON A RT
First published 1978 by E. P. Dutton

First edition published 1973 by Phaidon Press Limited

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

For information contact: E. P. Dutton, 2 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

The originals of Texts 2, 3, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 26,
27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 43 and 44 by Matisse are
© S.P.A.D.E.M., Paris, and are translated with permission.
The illustrations are also© S.P.A.D.E.M., with the exception
of 45 an<l: 49·

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-93098

ISBN: o-525-47490-o
 Contents

�fure I
Biographical Note 3
Introduction 9
The Development of Matisse's Painting IO
The Historical Context I7
Academic Painting I8
Decorative Art 20
Impressionism 22
Cezanne 24
Cubism 25
The Texts 28
I Apollinaire's Interview, I907 3I
2 Notes of a Painter, I908 32
3 Statement on Photography, I9o8 40
4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I9o8 4I
5 Estienne: Interview with Matisse, I909 47
6 Clara T. MacChesney: A Talk with Matisse, I9I2 49
7 Interview with Jacques Guenne, I925 53
8 Statements to Teriade, I929-30
[On Fauvism and Expression through Colour; On Travel] 57
9 Courthion: Meeting with Matisse, I93I 64
IO Statement to Teriade, I93 3
[On Creativity] 66
I I Letters to Alexandre Romm, I934
I2 On Modernism and Tradition, I93 5
13 Statements to Tefiade, I936
[The Purity of the Means] 73
14 On Cezanne's Trois baigneuses, I936 75
15 Divagations, I937 76
I6 Montherlant: Listening to Matisse, I938 78
I7 Notes of a Painter on his Drawing, I939 So
I8 Carco: Conversation with Matisse, I94I 82

/
I9 On Transformations, I942 go
20 Matisse's Radio Interview: First Broadcast, I942 9I
2I Conversations with Aragon, I943
[On Signs] 93
22 Henri-Matisse at Home, I944 g6
23 The Role and Modalities of Colour, I94S g8
24 Observations on Painting, I94S IOI
2S Interview with Degand, I94S I03
26 Black is a Colour, I946 I06
27 How I made my Books, I946 I07
28 Oceania, I946 I09
29 Jazz, I947 IIO
30 Andre Marchand: The Eye, I947 114
3I The Path of Colour, I947 IIS
32 Exactitude is not Truth, I947 117
33 Letter to Henry Clifford, I948 120
34 Interview with R. W. Howe, I949 122
3S Henri Matisse speaks to you, I9SO I2S
36 The Text, I9SI
[Preface to the Tokyo Exhibition] 126
37 The Chapel of the Rosary, I9SI 127
38 The Chapel of the Rosary, I9SI
[On the Murals and Windows] 129
39 Matisse speaks, I9S I 130
40 Testimonial, I9SI 136
4I Interview with Charbonnier, I9SI 138
42 Interview with Verdet, I9S2 142
43 Looking at Life with the Eyes of a Child, I9S3 148
44 Portraits, I9S4 ISO
Notes ISS
Bibliography 177
List of Illustrations 193
Index I9S
To Max and Rose Flam
 Preface

The purpose of this book is to present the collected writings on art of Henri Matisse ( I 869-
I954)· Although Matisse is recognized as one of the most important artists of the twentieth
century and is the subject of one of the largest literatures in modern art, and although he
made public statements about his art for nearly half a century, his writings have been given
little attention. Only one very limited collection has appeared, in German, and there has been
as yet no collection in French or in English (see the Bibliography, below).* As a result, many of
Matisse's most important writings have never, or have only partially, and sometimes mis­
leadingly, been reprinted, or have appeared only in inadequate or fragmentary translations.
Further, many of the writings have been virtually inaccessible, and in some cases unknown,
even to specialists in the field.
In a certain sense the writings of artists are as much a part of the artistic tradition as the
body of works which form that tradition. This heritage, especially in France, has long been a
part of the 'artistic culture' which constitutes the basic intellectual milieu of the artist. It is
hoped that the publication of these texts, by enabling students of modern art and the general
public to become familiar with the thought of Henri Matisse, will promote a broader appre­
ciation and understanding of this most important modern master.

In the course of writing this book, I have benefited from the kind co-operation of many
institutions and individuals.
I should like particularly to thank the staff of the following museums: the Baltimore
Museum of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Penn­
sylvania: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Musee du Petit Palais and the
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris; the Musee Matisse in Le Cateau; the Musee Matisse
in Nice-Cimiez, especially Mme Oudibert.
I should also like to thank the staffs of the following libraries: The Architecture and Fine
Arts Library of the University of Florida, especially Miss Anna Weaver; Miss Julia Sabine,
Art Librarian, Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey; the Art Department of the
New York Public Library; the staff of the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York,
especially Mrs. Evelyn Semler, for many kindnesses; in Paris, the Bibliotheque Nationale,
the Library and Archives of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Bibliotheque Historique de la
Ville de Paris, the Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie (Fondation Doucet), the Library of
the Musee National d'Art Moderne and that of the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle.
I should also like to thank Miss Amy Tamburri for her great assistance with the early
phases of research; Professor Len Kesl for many kindnesses; Miss Hilary Adams, Mme Susan
Morgenstern, Mr. John Neff, Mr. Pierre Schneider, Mr. Henry Clifford, and Mile Daniele
qiraudy for generously sharing their resources with me; Mr. Jack Cowart for kindly
•After this book had been sent to press a French Fourcade, ed., Henri Matisse, ecrits et propos sur l'art.
edition of Matisse's writings appeared: Dominique Paris : Hermann, 1972.
2 Preface
sharing his knowledge of Ecole des Beaux-Arts entrance procedures and Matisse's early
training.
I should also like to express my thanks to my colleague Professor John L. Ward, with whom
I have shared many hours of fruitful and enjoyable discussion, and to Professor William G.
Wagner, Director of the Bureau of Research, College of Architecture and Fine Arts,
University of Florida, for a grant which greatly helped to facilitate the completion of the
manuscript.
To Professor Eugene E. Grissom, Chairman of the Art Department, University of Florida,
I should like to offer my warmest thanks for his constant understanding, co-operation, en­
couragement, and friendship; and I should also like to thank Dr. Laurie Schneider Adams for
her timely and important assistance with many of the translations.
Finally, I should like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Miss Bonnie S. Burnham. for
her dedicated and invaluable assistance with all phases of the preparation of this book.
 Biograph ical Notel

Henri-Emile Benoit Matisse was born at Le Cateau (Nord) on 3I December I869. After
attending the Lycee in St. Quentin, he spent a year in Paris preparing for his law exams,
which he passed in August I888. At this time it seems that Matisse was not particularly
interested in art or painting, and while in Paris did not even visit the Louvre. After an attack
of appendicitis in I89o, he began to copy colour prints with a box of paints given to him to
while away the time of his convalescence. He seems to have obtained his first ideas on painting
from a popular, rather dry treatise by Goupil. He began to become intensely interested in art,
and finally decided to go to the Ecole Quentin-Latour where he could further his studies;
abandoning law, he went on to Paris in I892, where he worked briefly under Bouguereau and
Ferrier. After failing the entrance examination to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he succeeded in
entering the atelier of Gustave Moreau, where he remained for the next five years. Among the
other students then at Moreau's studio were Rouault, Evenpoel, Camoin, Manguin, and
Linaret. At this time, Matisse also began a series of copies at the Louvre and in I896, he
exhibited at the Salon de Ia Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and two paintings of his were
purchased, one by the State. In the summer of I896, he travelled to Brittany and painted
outdoors with Emile Wery. In I897, he completed La desserte (Figure 5), which was exhibited
at the Salon de la Nationale of that year. Although the work was in a relatively conservative
Impressionistic style, it met with disapproval from the conservatives of the Academy who were
still fighting the battle against Impressionism. That summer, at Belle-lie, he made the acquain­
tance of John Russell who introduced him to the work of the Impressionists and Van Gogh.
In January I 898, Matisse married and, upon the advice of Pissarro, honeymooned in London
where he studied especially the paintings of Turner. This was followed by a trip to Corsica and
to the south of France where he mainly painted landscapes direct from nature, and occasionally
some interiors, such as the Chambre d Ajaccio. Early in 1 899 Matisse returned to Paris,
exhibited for the last time at the Salon de Ia Nationale, and finally left the Ecole des Beaux­
Arts, where Cormon had replaced Gustave Moreau who had died in 1898. In the same year,
he bought from Ambroise Vollard, Cezanne's Trois Baigneuses (Figure 9), which he could ill
afford but which he kept until I936, despite his severe financial problems at the tum of the
century.. This painting was to have a tremendous and far-reaching influence on his thought
and work. That same year Matisse also acquired a bust by Rodin and a painting by Gauguin,
Head of a Boy, in exchange forone of his own canvases, and a drawing by Van Gogh. At this
time Matisse also began to study sculpture at night.
In I900 Matisse, in dire straits, took a job painting decorations in the Grand-Palais for the
Exposition Universelle of 1 900, an experience to which later he would frequently refer. The
early years of the century were dark ones for Matisse, marked by extreme poverty and illness,
because of which he was obliged to be separated from his two sons, who were sent to live with
relatives. In I90 3 , he exhibited two paintings at the Salon d' Automne, and in June I 904,
had his first one-man show at Vollard's gallery, the catalogue preface to which was written by
4 Biographical Note
Roger Marx.2 The Summer of 1904 was spent at St. Tropez working with Signac and Cross
in the nco-Impressionist manner.
In 1905, Matisse exhibited Luxe, calme et volupte (Figure 13) at the Salon des lndependants.
This painting was in many ways the culmination of his nco-Impressionist experiment. In 1905,
Matisse also exhibited in the central room of the 'Fauve Gallery' of the Salon d' Automne.
This year was marked by the start of a buying public for his works; it was the year of the first
purchase by the Steins (Gertrude, Leo, Michael, and Sarah), and of support from Marcel
Sembat. The summer of 1905 Matisse spent at Collioure, where Derain came to join him. In
the same summer, he became friendly with Maillol and visited the collection of Gauguin's
South Sea pictures which were in the custody of Daniel Monfreid, a friend of Maillol. That
autumn saw the exhibition of two of Matisse's most important Fauve works, namely La
femme au chapeau and Portrait d la raie verte (Figure 16); in October 1905, while the
uproar over the Femme au chapeau was still raging, Matisse began the Bonheur de vivre (Figure
17), later retitled Joie de Vivre by Albert Barnes. The painting was completed before the
Salon des lndependants which opened on 20 March 1906, and, because of its size and bril­
liance of colour, it created a furore. This animosity was felt not only among critics and aca­
demic painters but even extended to Paul Signac, who was at that time the vice-president of
the lndependants, and who resented Matisse's disavowal of nco-Impressionism. Because of its
subject, composition, manner of rendering, and especially the blending of a variety of styles,
the Bonheur de vivre was to be one of Matisse's major early works, 'a magnificent act of cour­
age, a prime monument in the history of modern painting . . . 'a This was also the year of
.

Matisse's second one-man show at the Galerie Druet, and of his trip to Biskra, and the sub­
sequent Nu Bleu of 1907 (Figure 18). In 1907 Matisse withdrew from his Fauve milieu, and
that suinmer travelled to Italy where he especially admired Giotto and the Sienese primitives.
Early in I 908, at the suggestion of Sarah Stein and Hans Purrmann, Matisse began a
painting class in his studio at the Couvent des Oiseaux, 56 rue de Sevres. 4 The school was a
success, and as enrolment increased Matisse moved the school to the Couvent du Sacre
Creur, 33 boulevard des lnvalides, where he also took up residence. The school closed in 1911.
The year 1908 was particularly important for Matisse's reputation since it marked his first
shows outside of France; the first Matisse canvas exhibited abroad was at the New Gallery,
London, in January; later that year, he exhibited in the United States at Stieglitz's '291'
Gallery, showed in Russia at the Golden Fleece Salon in Moscow, and in Berlin, at the Cas­
sirer Gallery. From a later (1910) exhibition at the '291' Gallery came the first acquisition of
Matisse's works for a museum, three drawings purchased by Mrs. George Blumenthal, wife
of the director of the Metropolitan Museum, New York. At the end of 1908, Matisse pub­
lished 'Notes of a Painter', his first, and surely his most influential theoretical statement.
In 1909 Matisse signed his first contract with the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and took a
house at Issy-les-Moulineaux, where he would later paint many of his major works. In 1910 he
had a large retrospective at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, and at the Salon d' Automne ex­
hibited two large paintings, La danse and La musique (Figures 21, 22) which had been com­
missioned in the previous year by the Russian collector Shchukin. He also travelled to Munich
to visit the exhibition of Islamic art, which made a deep and lasting impression on him, and
wintered in Andalusia. He returned to France early the next year, and worked at Issy-les­
Moulineaux until summer, when he travelled to Collioure again. In 1911 he began to develop
a complex and extremely rich vocabulary of space and form. In the autumn, at the invitation
of his patron, Sergei Shchukin, he went to Moscow, where he studied icons, and was evi­
dently quite impressed with the foreignness of Russia.s Early in the winter of I9II, Matisse
Biographical Note 5

left for Tangier, from whence he returned in the spring of I9I2. That March his first sculpture
exhibition opened at the '29I' Gallery in New York. Matisse left for Morocco again before the
end of the year, and met Camoin, Marquet, and James Morrice in Tangier, returning to
Paris in mid-April for the exhibition of his Moroccan paintings, sculpture, and drawings at
Bernheim-Jeune, and spending the summer at Issy-les-Moulineaux. In I9I3 Matisse ex­
hibited thirteen paintings, three drawings, and a large sculpture at the Armory Show in New
York, Chicago, and Boston, and was introduced to the American public by an interview in the
New York Times. a In the autumn of I9I3, he once again took a studio on the quai St. Michel
in Paris, where he had previously lived from I899 to I908. Matisse's retrospective exhibition
at the Gurlitt Gallery, Berlin, opened in July I9I4 and closed at the outbreak of the First
World War. That September he met Marquet and Juan Gris at Collioure, and returned to
Paris at the end of October.
In I9I5 he exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York, and in I9I6, spent the winter
at Nice in the Hotel Beau-Rivage. This was the period of his most austere and ambitious
works. He returned to Issy-les-Moulineaux in late spring of I9I7, was at Issy that summer and
worked in Paris in the autumn. Early in December he visited Marseilles and wintered again
at Nice at the Hotel Beau-Rivage. On 3I December I9I7, he visited Renoir for the first time,
at Cagnes.
In I9I7, Matisse also renewed his contract with Bernheim-Jeune, on terms which were
much better than those of his earlier contract. In I9I8, he showed some of his paintings to
Renoir, to whom he now paid frequent visits, and also visited Bonnard at Antibes. He had an
exhibition with Picasso at the Paul Guillaume Gallery and spent the spring and early summer
at the Villa des Allies at Nice. He returned to Paris in September, but later in the autumn
came back to Nice and took rooms in the Hotel de Ia Mediterranee on the Promenade des
Anglais. This was the real beginning of his so-called Nice period, marked by a return to small
studies done out of doors directly from nature. In the spring of I9I9, Matisse had another
exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune, and his first one-man show in London at the Leicester Gal­
leries. In that year Diaghilev suggested that Matisse design the decor and costumes for the
ballet Le Chant du Rossignol, the choreography for which was by Massine and the music by
Stravinsky; in I920, Rossignol was performed at the Paris Opera by the Ballets Russes. During
the summer, Matisse painted at Etretat and had an exhibition of his Etretat and Nice paintings,
with some early works, including his first and second paintings (painted in I89o), at Bern­
heim-Jeune. In I92I, by now almost universally considered one of the most important
living painters, Matisse was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International Exhibition in
Pittsburgh. He had spent the summer painting at Etretat, and the autumn in an apartment on
the Place Charles-Felix, in the old part of Nice. In I923 the two major Russian collections
of Matisse's works, those of Shchukin and Morosov, which had been confiscated during the
Revolution, were combined in the Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow. In I924
Matisse exhibited in New Yo_r k at the Brummer Galleries, and had a large retrospective
exhibition organized by Leo Swane in Copenhagen, which then toured Scandinavia. Matisse
visited Italy again in I925 and in July of that year was made a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. In I927, Matisse exhibited at the Valentine Gallery in New York, an exhibition
arranged by his son, Pierre; and was awarded first prize at the Carnegie International Exhibi­
tion for his Compotier et jleurs, I924, a relatively conservative choice by the Carnegie jury. For
years Matisse had dreamed of travelling to the South Seas, and in March I930, at a moment of
crisis in his life and art, he began his journey by way of New York and San Francisco. 'Vhile
in Tahiti, he did no painting. Instead, as he wrote to Escholier, 'I lived there three months,
6 Biographical Note
absorbed in my surroundings, with no other ideas than the newness of all I saw, overwhelmed,
unconsciously storing up many things.'7 Matisse's return from Tahiti was not through the
United States, but directly to Marseilles via Suez. In the autumn of I930, he was invited to
serve on the jury of the I930 Carnegie International Exhibition, and after this, returned to
New York, where he visited the homes of many collectors of his paintings. In the meantime,
Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the important American collector, who had invited him to visit the
Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, proposed a commission for a mural decoration
for the Foundation, on the subject of the dance. Matisse returned to France, but returned to
Merion in late December to plan for the commission, which he began later in an abandoned
film studio in Nice. In November I 93 I the Museum of Modern Art gave Matisse his first
large American one-man show in New York. This show had been preceded by an important
show in Berlin at the Thannhauser Gallery in the late winter of I930, and by a large show which
opened at the Georges Petit Galleries in Paris in I 93 I, composed in the main of pictures from
the Nice period, I9I8-3o.
Thus the years I930-I brought to fruition many of Matisse's personal ambitions and solidi­
fied his already growing international reputation. In I93 I Cahiers d'Art published a special
number on Matisse as did the French journal Les Chroniques du Jour. In I932 Matisse com­
pleted the Barnes Mural, only to find that the wall space had been measured incorrectly; he
then began a second version, which was eventually installed in I933 to the satisfaction of both
Barnes and Matisse. In October of I93 2, the Skira edition of Poesies de Stephane Mallarme,
Matisse's first illustrated book, was published. In I93 5 Matisse signed a contract with Paul
Rosenberg, and also was commissioned by George Macy of New York to illustrate an edition
of James Joyce's Ulysses. In I937 Massine asked Matisse to design sets and costumes for Rouge
et Noir, a ballet with music by Shostakovitch and choreography by Massine. His painting at
this period had begun to take on a new vigour and boldness. In I938 Matisse moved to
Cimiez, to the former Hotel Regina, overlooking Nice, where he designed set and costumes
for the ballet Rouge et Noir which was produced in the following year by the Ballets
Russes de Monte Carlo.
In I940, after the fall of Paris, Matisse secured a Brazilian visa and passage for Rio de
Janeiro, but he changed his mind. As he said in a letter from Nice to Pierre Matisse in New
York, 'When I saw everything in such a mess I had them reimburse my ticket. It seemed to me
as if I would be deserting. If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of
France?'B Despite the wartime shortages, Matisse managed to work, although not at full
capacity. As he put it to Pierre Matisse, 'I have to invent and that takes great effort for which
I must have something in reserve. Perhaps I would be better off somewhere else, freer, less
weighed down.'9 In any event, Matisse stayed in France throughout the war.
In March I 94I, Matisse was operated on for an intestinal occlusion at Lyons, and he
returned to Nice in May. The operation and ensuing illness left him seriously affected;
damage to the muscular wall of one side of the abdomen caused him permanent weakness so
that he was able to hold himself erect only for limited periods of time. While he was con­
valescing, he began to work once again, painting and drawing in bed. At this time he also
worked on illustrations for the Fabiani edition of Montherlant's Pasiphiii and the Skira
edition of Florilege des Amours de Ronsard. In I943; Matisse moved to the Villa 'Le Reve', at
Vence and, still in less than the best of health, started work on the cut and pasted paper
compositions for Jazz. In the early summer of I94 5 he went to Paris, where, for the first time
since I940, he had a retrospective exhibition of thirty-seven paintings at the Salon d' Automne.
The same year, an exhibition of paintings by Picasso and Matisse was given at the Victoria and
Biographical Note 7
Albert Museum in London, and an exhibition of Matisse's drawings was shown by the
Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.
In 1947 Matisse was elevated to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honour, and in the
spring of 1948 a large and important retrospective exhibition was given at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. In this year Matisse began his work on the designs for the Chapel of the
Rosary at Vence; this project, which originally grew out of a stained-glass window design, was
to occupy most of his efforts for the next two years (Figure 45). In 1949, Matisse had important
shows of his large recent works at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and at the Musee
d'Art Moderne in Paris. In December 1949, the cornerstone of the Chapel at Vence was laid,
and in 1950 the maquettes for the Vence Chapel were shown in an exhibition at the Maison de
Ia Pensee Fran�aise in Paris, and a retrospective exhibition was organized at the Galerie des
Ponchettes in Nice. Also in 1950, Matisse was awarded the first prize for painting at the
Venice Biennale.
In 1951, two very important exhibitions of Matisse's work were organized, one at the
National Museum in Tokyo, and the other at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
afterwards shown in Cleveland, Chicago, and San Francisco. To coincide with the American
exhibitions, Alfred H. Barr published Matisse: his Art and his Public, still the most important
work on the artist. On 25 June 1951, the Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominican Nuns of
Vence was consecrated, and in 1952, the Musee Henri Matisse was inaugurated at Le Cateau.
In 1953 Matisse had a large exhibition of works in cut and pasted paper at the Berggruen
Gallery in Paris. In the 1950s Matisse's late cut-outs were creating as much of a stir in the art
world as had his Fauve paintings half a century earlier.
Henri Matisse died on 3 November 1954. He is buried on the hilltop of the cemetery at
Cimiez, in a plot of ground offered by the city of Nice.
 Introductz.on

Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, graphic artist, book illustrator-and even, toward the end of
a career that spanned over half a century, architect-Henri Matisse managed in all these

fields of endeavour to produce some of the most original and significant works of one of the
most revolutionary periods in European art. But above all, as he himself insisted, he was a
painter,l and the greatest richness and complexity of his thought were expressed in his paint­
ings and in their later extension, compositions in cut and pasted paper. 2 The creation of pictorial
space on a flat surface by means of line and colour, the pure process of painting, adherence to
the basic means of expression, these were the means through which Henri Matisse reformu­
lated the nature of painting and defined new parameters of structure and expression.
In his earliest public statement about his art, he stated this outlook with the disarming
simplicity and straightforwardness that truly great practitioners of an art sometimes possess,
a simplicity that almost amounts to a personal mysticism: 'When difficulties stopped me in

my work, I said to myself, ''I have colours, a canvas, and I must express myself with purity,
even though I do it in the briefest manner by putting down , for instance, four or five spots of
colour or by drawing four or five lines which have a plastic expression''.'a This statement, in
one sense so abbreviated as to seem obvious, is yet truly a summation of much of the thought
behind Matisse's painting, for it expresses the two most powerful factors from which his art
grew: an absolute belief in his own powers, and an absolute belief in painting itself. It is no
exaggeration to say that Matisse conceived of himself as the high priest of a religion, and that
despite any doubts that came up along the way, the basic and unassailable assumptions of his
life lay in his refusal, one might say his inability, to doubt either his faith or his calling.
Such a man might be expected to maintain a close silence on his art, to consider verbaliza­
tion about painting at best, futile, at worst, wasteful. And when he sat down in 1908, at the
age of thirty-nine, to write his first public statement about his art, he evidently could not
himself escape that feeling: 'A painter who addresses the public not in order to present his
works but to reveal some of his ideas on the art of painting, exposes himself to several
dangers . . I am fully aware that a painter's best spokesman is his work.'4 Thirty-four years
• •

later, at the age of seventy-three, he would tell a radio interviewer that his advice to young
painters was: 'First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from
you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.' s And the first sentence of
Jazz, one of the most ambitious projects of his later career, contains the same thought: 'He
who wants to dedicate himself to painting should start by cutting out his tongue.'
Yet of the three major French painters of the first half of this century-Matisse, Picasso,
and Braque-Matisse was not only the earliest, but also the most persistent and perhaps most
conscientious theorist, 6 and was the only one of the three who for a time seriously taught
painting. It seems, then, that Matisse had a good deal of the pedagogue about him, and that,
lacking the enfant terrible stance of Picasso or the conscious mysticism of Braque, when he felt
impelled to discuss his art, he went about it in the direct, orderly, and reasonable way in
10 The Development of Matisse's Painting
which he approached his painting and his life-the same manner that had, earlier, led his
fellow students to call him 'the professor'. 7 Matisse's statements on art cover almost the entire
span of his career as a mature artist, and their content and frequency seem to form a counter­
point to the works themselves. In them one can see reflected the evolution of his art, for in
most cases exploration of new means is followed rather than preceded by a written statement;
the writings are in this sense reflective rather than exploratory, synthetic rather than analytic.
The painter speaks of results rather than of ambitions. s
Chronologically, Matisse's writings divide themselves into two distinct groups: those before
1929, and those after. The period before I 929 is remarkable for the rarity of either statements
or interviews, while from I929 on, and especially after I940, Matisse frequently expressed
himself on his art and career. During the first period, Matisse's statements do not in fact go
much beyond the ideas contained in 'Notes of a Painter', while after I929, having begun anew
an intense exploration and re-evaluation of his pictorial means, Matisse seems to have felt
a very real need to discuss his work. 'Notes of a Painter' {I9o8) came out of Matisse's success­

ful attempt to synthesize his own perceptions with the pictorial structures of the masters; an
attempt, as will be seen, 'to re-do Cezanne after nature'. It is a summation and defence of the
realizations that came to him after eighteen years of painting, and anticipates the austere and
synthetic works of the next decade. In order better to place it and other of Matisse's writings
within the context of his painting, it would be well to review briefly some aspects of his career
as a painter.

The Development of Matisse's Painting

Matisse's mature paintings may be grouped into the following five periods: Fauve period,
I900-1908; Experimental period, I9o8-I9I7; Nice period, I9I7-I929; period of Renewed
Simplicity, 1929-I94o; period of Reduction to Essentials, I940-I954·
Matisse's works before I897 (see Figures 1-4), are essentially those of an apprentice or
student painter. They include several copies after the old masters at the Louvre, a series of
still-lifes very much in the tradition of Chardin, and interiors in the manner of the little Dutch
Masters. The palette of these paintings is for the most part muted, on occasion almost drab.
It was not until I897 that Matisse, inspired by the Impressionists, began to brighten his
palette by using dabs of pure colour, a method of working that he elaborated variously for the
next two years (see Figures 5, 6). In I899, he began to work in two seemingly different manners,
both of which were to contribute to the later Fauve paintings. Typical examples of these
manners are La malade (Figure 7) and Buffet et table (Figure 8). The former is painted in
broad brush strokes, in fairly high colour, which, while exaggerated in various areas of the
painting (for example, the greens in the shadows of the tablecloth, the reds and greens in the
face of the women in bed, and the colours of the wall), is not the pure free colour of the
Fauve period, which goes beyond mere exaggeration and has its own life. While in La malade
the brushwork anticipates that of the Fauve period, being relatively brusque, the paint put
do�n somewhat roughly, the colour of the Fauve period is anticipated in Buffet et table, which
is painted in a somewhat Impressionistic technique and in high colour. Thus neither has the
complete consort of Fauve colour and brushwork, and even in Buffet et table the colour is laid
on against a series of open white spaces which prevent its taking on the density and compactness
of the Fauve paintings.
 The Development of Mat-isse's Paint-ing II
In I900 Matisse began to work in what might be called his proto-Fauve style. The paintings
include a series of standing male and female figures (Figure IO ), composed of heavily brushed
areas with sharp colour and value contrasts, though the colour is not in itself as bright as in the
Fauve period, and the value contrasts are for the most part modified at the contours.
The development of Matisse's painting followed this pattern, for the most part, to around
1904. Although there are variations in the detail in which he rendered his objects, the paintings
till then were still usually heavily brushed, emphasizing large flat areas of paint, as in Notre­
Dame: fin d'apres-midi, I 902 (Figure II). The difference between this and other paintings of
this time, such as La guitariste of 1903 (Figure IS), is largely a matter of detail; the vision
behind them is essentially the same. In I904, Matisse began to assimilate more thoroughly the
lessons of Cezanne, as is evident in such paintings as Nature morte au purro, I (Figure I2) and
in the important transitional period of I 904-5 Matisse began to develop a much brighter
palette as may be seen in Nature morte au purro, II, I 904-o5 . This neo-Impressionist phase
of Matisse's paintings is best seen in his Luxe, calme et volupte, 1904-5 (Figure IJ). With
this painting, Matisse began a series of works with a new subject, the imagined pastoral, and a
new method, working from a constructed or imagined scene. Throughout most of his life,
especially in the years of his early development, Matisse did not work from imagination, but
from life : from actual landscapes, models in the studio, or from interiors and still-lifes. In
Luxe, calme et volupte and its related studies, Matisse began to work toward an ensemble in
which, though the individual parts are studied from models, the totality is imagined. The
final painting combines vibrant colour, which is virtually Fauve in spirit, with a pastoral
subject matter that seems to be based on Cezanne's Bathers. The intensity of the colour,
however, is still somewhat modified by the ubiquitous presence of the white ground of the
canvas showing between strokes.
This is also true of the even more overtly Fauve Fenetre ouverte, Collt:oure (Figure 14) of
the summer of 1905, in which the passage which describes the scene through the window is
broken up into many little strokes, suggesting the rhythm of the growing plants and of the
rocking boat in contrast to the solid architecture of the room. This area of the painting also
shows a good deal of the canvas, and has the effect of seeming looser in its visual texture, more
nervous in its linearity, and less intense in colour because of this separation of colour areas by
the white ground. Even in La femme au chapeau, which was the scandal of the I 90 5 Salon
d'Automne and combines bright colour with density of surface handling, many areas of the
painting are tempered by the addition of white to the pigment so that there is a certain chalki­
ness in some of the colour. La raie verte (Figure I6) which was painted in the autumn of
1905, is perhaps a more cogent statement of both form and colour than was the Femme au
chapeau, and is definitely more synthetic. In this painting, instead of the somewhat splotchy
modelling of the face of the Femme au chapeau, the forms are simplified into a series of planes
based on relatively complementary colours. Thus the blue of the hair plays against the red­
orange of the left central background as a complementary; against the yellowish side of the
face it operates as a blue violet, and near-complementary; the green strip down the face, in
relation to the reds in the background and the dress, simultaneously sets up a by-play of red
against green and at the same time becomes a spatial indicator: the brighter green of the face
jumps forward from the duller green of the right-hand background. On the whole the painting
is perceived as a series of large flat colour areas, which are broken by abrupt shifts in plane, so
that the painting is simultaneously three-dimensional and quite flat.
In many ways, the culmination of this aspect of Matisse's style is the magnificent Bonheur de
vivre (Figure I7), a continuation of his imagined subject matter in an extremely complex
12 The Development of Matisse's Painting
compositional format. Matisse made several studies for this painting, which was not only one of
his major pictorial statements up to that time, but which, because of its large size, brilliant
colour, and spatial complexity was to become one of his most influential paintings. In 1907,
Matisse began to coalesce and to solidify many aspects of his paintings. The Nu bleu (Figure
x8) is a good example of his desire to combine strong two-dimensional pattern and strong -
three-dimensional modelling into a single ensemble, and there are overtones here, as in Nature
morte bleue of 1907, which show his wish to realize greater solidity of form, probably inspired
by re-study of Cezanne following the large Cezanne retrospective of I 907.
Early in 1907, Matisse also began a series of large decorative panels (such as Le Luxe, I)
which follow the general direction of the Bonheur de vivre, but are more restrained in colour,
sharper in value contrast, and more direct and cogent in their spatial construction. In 1908,
Matisse brought the Fauve period to a close with a series of large flat decorative compositions,
such as Joueurs de boules (Figure 19), and Harmony in Blue, repainted as Harmonie rouge
(Figure 20).
·

Harmonie rouge, with its translation of the total ensemble into a kind of ecstatic arabesque,
marks the beginning of a new, Experimental period in the art of Matisse. It is one of a
series of monumental compositions with which Matisse redefined the direction of his own
painting, and to a certain degree, that of European painting, as a whole. This in itself is an
interesting paradox, for while Matisse's most immediate effect upon European painting came
directly out of the high Fauve period paintings (roughly 1905-1908), the period from 1908
to 1917 is perhaps the richest single period in his art, both in terms of the ideas and problems
that it presented, which he would use in his later development, and of the ultimate influence
that Matisse would have upon succeeding painters. The study of some major works from this
time will clarify these statements.
Matisse's earlier paintings had been for the most part concerned with the lyricism of pure
colour, and relied upon an essentially nineteenth-century vision. The paintings which follow
Le Luxe in the tradition of imagined spaces, such as Joueurs de boules, La danse (Figure 21), and
La musique (Figure 22), and the paintings which come out of the 'realistic' tradition of observed
interiors and intimate scenes, still-lifes and interiors, such as Harmonie rouge, provide good
background for the synthetic aspect of Matisse's painting in the later Experimental period.
The Experimental period might be divided into two parts, the earlier of which ( 1 908-10) is
characterized by a certain fluidity and preference for organic form, the later (19 1 1 -17) by a
preference for rectangularity and strong geometrical substructure, possibly as a result of
Matisse's exposure to Cubism.
Harmonie rouge is one of Matisse's first attempts to investigate the possibilities, on a large
scale, of a space which is at once descriptive of tangible objects and at the same time pictorially
intangible, or flat. Precisely what is meant here can be seen by comparing this painting with
La desserte of 1 897 (Figure 5). The subject matter is essentially the same-a woman at a table
which has similar objects on it. Harmonie rouge is a later restatement of La desserte, translated
into Matisse's new vision. Although both these paintings were painted from what might be
called the experience of natural perceptual phenomena, Harmonie rouge restructures these
phenomena in such a fashion that the viewer sees a resynthesis of plastic objects in an essentially
non-plastic, symbolic space. The painting represents two areas, that inside a room and that
seen through a window. As the space of the painting is perceived by the viewer, however, it is ,
essentially flat, since the green seen through the window and the reds inside the room balance
each other out and tend to lie on the same plane in space. By colour Matisse unites almost the
entire painting on a single plane, but by very subtle juxtapositions such as overlapping,
The Development of Matisse's Painting IJ

rhythmic placement of objects over the surface of the painting, and the use of contours to
define separation of areas where there is no colour separation (as in the table top), he creates a
space which has strong plastic overtones. Thus the painted space is perceived simultaneously
as being flat and also three-dimensional. The three-dimensionality of the painting, however, is

not constant, as it was in La desserte where the construction of space was codified into a
system of perspective. In Harmonie rouge, the table cloth is at once in front of, and on the same
plane as the wall, and the window is pictorially both behind and on the same plane as the table
and the wall. Even such a heavily overlapped object as the chair next to the woman tends to
operate most actively as a shape rather than as an object in space. The flattening out of the
elements in this painting, the reduction of tangible objects to an intangible space, and the
simplicity of the rendering of individual objects, all mark this painting as a distinct departure
from Matisse's Fauve works. The metaphorical implications of this kind of space, the simul­
taneous presentation of the 'Norld as perceived and as conceived, also lay the groundwork
for the symbolic overtones of Matisse's later works-the balance between objects and
'signs'.
A similar flattening of space is to be observed in many of the works of 1909 to 1910, notably
La danse (Figure 2I), Nature morte d 'Ia danse' and La conversation of 1909, and La musique
of 1910 (Figure 22).
In Lafamille du peintre, 1911 (Figure 23), Matisse builds upon the new space and imagery of
Harmonie rouge, but organizes his space in a different fashion. Although the painting is full of
varied floral motifs, and is essentially a very richly ornamented and decorative painting, the
painter treats the intangible space that was seen in Harmonie rouge in an even more complex
fashion. Here, instead of the essentially frontal and straightforward presentation of objects, and
the simple silhouette rendering of the figure, there is a complex relationship between the person­
ages represented; the space depicted in the interior of the room is deeper, and the drawing is
more complex in terms of the repertory of poses and of viewpoints. While in Harmonie rouge
there is essentially no viewpoint (the objects are presented hieratically), in La famille du
peintre there is a constant by-play between passages of perspective and passages of non- or
even anti-perspective. By rendering almost everything in the painting in a flattened manner
and by playing the perspective of the draught-board with its slanting pattern and strong
insistence on drawn perspective, against the flatness of the painting, Matisse constructs a
complex and contradictory space. The draught-board seems to be a pivotal part of the structure
of this painting. Because of its strong black and white pattern and its perspectival rendering
and because it is surrounded by the very bright reds of the boys' clothes, it operates as a focal
area of tension. While Matisse uses a colour shift and three-dimensional drawing to heighten
the plastic effect of the draught-board, he does not construct a space around it which is
plastic enough to contain it, and the contradiction produces a strong tension. This kind of
spatial contradiction was to become one of the bases of Matisse's pictorial structure.
A similar structuring, but in a much more sombre key is to be found in La fenetre bleue,
1911 (Figure 24). The painting, a view through a window, is given a certain uniformity of
space and density by the pervai S ve blue hue, and the isolation of the objects against the rigid
geometrical substructure lends it a certain severity and serenity. Even more important is the
ambiguity of the rendering of semi-plastic objects in an ambiguous space. This aspect culmin­
ates in the pincushion and the green vase on the left of the painting. Although they are in the
same area as, and are thereby read as being with, the objects on the table, they are in fact not
on the table, but 'on the wall'. The objects, if one were to read them literally, thus perform an
impossible action: they defy gravity and float in space. In fact, of course, the viewer does not
 The Development of Matisse's Painting
read the objects as floating, but because of the dense and poetic space, accepts the ambiguity of
the placement and relative plasticity of objects in the same way that the reduction of the trees
into circular forms and of the cloud into an ellipse, is accepted ; the same way that the space
outside the window and inside the window is accepted as paradoxically united on the same
plane. This kind of ideogrammic rather than logical space is carried out in a large series of
works from 191 1 onwards, most especially in Grande nature morte aux aubergines, L'atelier du
peintre, Fleurs et ceramique, the so-called Moroccan triptych, and Le riffain, in which there is
a similar tension between the description of space through colour and the description of space
through . drawing, which results in an intangible space. Sometimes the spatial ambiguity is
produced by drawing, as in the Madame Matisse of 191 3 (Figure 26), in which objects such as
·the scarf are made to appear and disappear and to change from areas into lines ; at other times
the ambiguity is the result of painting : areas of the same colour are made to define different
areas in depth, and in so doing tend to make ambiguous the spaces or areas which they describe
-as in the grey area around the head of Madame Matisse. This handling of space is overtly
Cezannesque in its play of line against area, and in the delicate brushwork, as may be seen in
the similar treatment of space in the Femme au tabouret of 191 3 -14. One of the culminations of
this handling of symbolic space is the well-known Portrait de Mademoiselle Yvonne Landsberg
of 1 914, in which lines radiate from the figure in a manner which is not descriptive at all, but
purely expressive.
From early in 1 914 to the end of 1917, Matisse's work took on a decidedly architectonic
quality. This is apparent in Le boca/ aux poissons rouges, of early 1914, in a series of still-lifes,
and even in a series of figures studies and portraits, such as the Tete rose et bleue, L'italienne,
Sarah· Stein, and Greta Prozor. This sense of broad architectonics, tense and rarified space,
and an icon-like severity, reaches its culmination in 1916 in such austere compositions as
L' atelier du quai Saint-Michel (Figure 29), L' artiste et son modele (Figure 28), and especially
the Lefon de piano (Figure 27). One of the last of these severe period paintings, which just
begins to indicate Matisse's move toward more three-dimensional space, is Interieur au violon
(Figure 31), painted in Nice during the winter of 1917-1 8.
The year 191 7 was the beginning of Matisse;s so-called Nice Period, which was to last until
about 1 930. The Nice period is marked for the most part by an overall sense of relaxation.
The paintings become much smaller in size and less architectonic than those of 1916-17, they
are softer in colour, and much more loosely painted. A good example of this change may be seen
by comparing L' artiste et son modele of 1916 (Figure 28), with L'artiste et son modele of 1919
(Figure 30), in which the space is much more tangible, and the drawing more consistent in
terms of the relationship of the spectator to the total pictorial space. This tendency is also seen
in Interieur d Nice of 192 1 (Figure 32) in which Matisse again begins to indulge in optical
devices, such as the transparency of the curtains through which the view through the window
can be seen. In these works, as well as in the numerous still lifes and odalisques of this period,
the space is much more tangible than in the preceding period, the colour more relaxed, and the
overall space and imagery decidedly less synthetic, even in such highly decorative canvases as
the Jeunes filles au paravent mauresque (Figure 35) or such contemplative and serene works as
Femme et poissons rouges. Although the subject matter (interiors, figures, and still lifes) remains
fairly similar to that of the paintings of the Experimental period, the construction is quite
different.
Around 1929, Matisse began to broaden his forms once again, and the scale of the paintings
often increased in correspondence with the broadened forms (as in Femme au turban 1 929-30
[Figure 33]), and more architectonic compositions, as in Jeune fille en jaune, 1929-3 I (Figure
The Development of Matisse's Painting IS
34), in which the familiar device of the French window is used to carry out the architectonic
framework from which the figure of the girl is, as it were, suspended in the space of the
painting.
From the time that Matisse received the commission for the Mural at the Barnes Foundation
in I930 until around I 933, he concerned himself mostly with large murals and graphic works
(see Frontispiece) and did not do much easel painting. When eventually he retu rned to the
steady production of easel painting in I 934, the experience of the large murals was evident
in the works that followed, for there was a tendency toward a renewed simplicity, partly the
outgrowth of the simplicity that was needed to cover the large walls of the Barnes Foundation
(Figure 36) and also a reaction against the optical effects and detail of the Nice period works.
In the Barnes Foundation Murals, Matisse had gone back to the theme of the dance, and to
imagined rather than an observed subject matter. In his easel painting, he returned to painting
from life, but began to simplify from life as he had simplified in the construction of the imagined
imagery of the Barnes Murals. In paintings such as Le reve of I 93 5 , or the famous Nu rose
(Figure 38), this process is once again apparent. This simplification is marked by a new sense
of drawing in relation to painting. Whereas in the Nice period, as in the periods before, the
drawing and painting were integral to each other (that is, the forms were painted and drawn
simultaneously), in the paintings of the late I930S the drawing very often acts in counterpoint
to the large areas of colour, as in Tete ochre or Grande robe bleue, fond noir (Figure 3 9 ) of I 937,
Le jardin d'hiver of I937-8, or the Overmantel Decoration done for Nelson Rockefeller. These
large works and others, such as La musique of I 939, signal a permanent return to large simpli­
fied areas of space, with very bright colour. Space in these works is less tangible than in those
of the Nice period, the scale of the paintings is larger, and the cadences grander. In I 94I , with
the war around him, Matisse retired again to the south, and began his large cut gouaches
decoupees. His works of this period are even more simplified and the space even less tangible
than in the paintings of the late thirties (see Figures 4o-44) . If in his late paintings, such as
Grand interieur rouge (Figure 44) , he reduced the objects of the real world to signs and presented
them in a rarified, intangible space, in many of the late cut-outs he arrived at imagery
which seems to have no existence in space, which exists as pure idea, as in the grandly meta­
phorical L'escargot of I9 5 3 (Figure 48).

When Matisse's painting is viewed retrospectively, it is seen to have a development that alter­
nates between polarities of tangible and intangible space, three- and two-dimensionality,
description and synthesis. During each of the major turning points in his art, the crisis
involved a reformulation of pictorial space. From I900 to I 908 he explored and built upon
the pictorial means of the nineteenth century, basing his imagery on his sensations and feelings
after nature. During the Experimental period he explored various means of achieving highly
synthetic equivalents for those sensations and arrived at dynamic and original conceptions of
pictorial space. By I 9 I 8 , exhausted by the demands of his austere new formulations, 9 and
perhaps needful of returning toJnore tangible means, Matisse backed away from the path that
he had been following and returned to the cautious, empirical paintings of the Nice period.
Instead of sustaining the symbolic abstract equivalences for light and space that he had
explored between I908 and I9 I7, he returned to analysis. In effect, he had backed away from
the creation of imagery in which the sensations of light and space simultaneously are constituted
by colour energy, and for a decade settled for the description of light and space through colour.
Around I930 he began to advance again, working inductively from analysis toward synthesis.
By I940, the path was clear, and despite difficulties, he was finally able in the late paintings and
16 The Development of Matisse's Painting
cut-outs to achieve that ultimate synthesis of light and space through colour to which he had
first addressed himself some forty years earlier.
Matisse's key writings relate to these pivotal points in his career, and to his changing
concerns. 'Notes of a Painter' coincides exactly with the transition into the Experimental
period, sums up many of the concerns of his early career, and outlines the course that he
would follow for the next decade. Thus it is a prime document in the painter's conception of
his own recent work, as well as a summation and evaluation of many of the ideas that he had
passed through en route. But although the years between 'Notes of a Painter' and the 1929
'Statement to Teriade' are some of the most important of his career, he wrote nothing and
gave only a few interviews which merely repeated or elaborated on the ideas in 'Notes of a
Painter', or which were essentially autobiographical. It is quite likely that he felt unwilling
to theorize until he had arrived at a reformulation of his imagery.
The three statements to Teriade (Texts 8, 10, 1 3) reflect Matisse's concern, around 1930,
with more synthetic imagery. Having spent over a decade seduced by the charms of southern
light, and committed to a descriptive rather than a synthetic vision, Matisse was evidently
impatient with his own progress, and seems to have felt that he had stood still or even retreated
since the bold and daring works of 1 916-17. Thus in these statements to Teriade, as well as in
'On Modernism and Tradition' of 1 935 (Text 12), Matisse emphasizes the liberation of Fauve
colour, the clarification of his visual sensibility, and the 'purification' of the means of expres­
sion : 'When the means of expression have become so refined, so attenuated that their power of
expression wears thin, it is necessary to return to the essential principles which made human
language . . This is the starting point of Fauvism : the courage to return to the purity of the
• •

means.' His statement refers as much to his recent painting, in which he had returned to pure
colour and broad simplified forms, as to his original Fauve experience.
Though after I 929 Matisse seems to have become more willing to discuss his art, he still for
the most part spoke in fairly concrete terms. Not until the 1939 'Notes of a Painter on his
Drawing' does he begin seriously to elaborate on the symbolic quality of his forms. While in
'Notes of a Painter' he had discussed the process of how he arrived at his forms, in many of
these later statements, he discusses the result : the creation of plastic signs. This idea, which runs
throughout the late writings, has its equivalent in Matisse's paintings of the period, in which he
had been reducing his objects into signs which, taken together, would form an ensemble in
which the objects functioned like actors in a play or pieces on a chess-board, images that Matisse
himself used repeatedly. Throughout the 1940s Matisse also developed the theme of keeping
one's instincts fresh through contact with nature and avoiding cliches. In his later years
there is a strong emphasis on synthesis from remembered experience rather than direct con­
tact with a specific motif. These ideas also follow the development of his increasingly abstract
imagery. Yet, curiously, they are quite consistent with his similar remarks in 'Notes of a Painter'
about the value of working both from nature and from imagination.
In fact, Matisse's theoretical writings, even though they span almost half a century, have a
remarkable consistency, possibly because his earliest writings date from a period of relative
maturity. The major themes in his writings have to do with expression and with the relation­
ship of art to what might be called 'sensations before nature'. Matisse's painting is based upon
a condensation of fleeting sensations, recorded � the drawings, into a permanent image on

canvas. Thus, although throughout his writings he constantly stresses expression and freshness
of conception, the dependence of the artist upon nature is also emphasized. Matisse's intuition
is informed, as it were, by deep self-appraisal and by contemplation of natural forms ; he at all
times tries to avoid formulae. These concerns are to be found in his earliest published state-
The Historical Context
ments, such as the 1 907 interview with Apollinaire and 'Notes of a Painter' , and persist in
statements made almost half a century later. His writings reflect his conviction that art is a
form of projection of self through imagery, a form of meditation or contemplation which acts
as a private religion. The artist develops his art by developing himself.
Later in life when he felt compelled to advise young artists, as in the 'Letter to Henry
Cliffo rd', Matisse mentioned, as he had forty years earlier in his school, the importance of the
study of nature, technical proficiency, discipline, and the development of one's sensibilities.
In this, as in so many other aspects of his career, he demonstrates the extreme importance to
his later career of his early training : the forces and influences to which he was subject in the
early part of his career, the same- factors that he synthesised in 'Notes of a Painter', were to
make themselves felt throughout his life.

The Historical Context

When at the turn of the century, in Paris, Matisse arrived at his first maturity as a painter, he
was subject to more diverse influences and cross-currents than perhaps had existed simultan­
eously in a single place in the whole history of European painting. These influences were not
only crucial to his early development but were also to have a lasting effect upon his whole
career and were probably an important determinant of the polarity of imagery that marked his
career as a painter, and which is reflected in his writings.
The basic matrix of his early development, the popular art of the time-that which one lived
and breathed-was a curious composite of academic 'poetic realism' such as may be seen in the
paintings of Bouguereau, and such fin de siecle phenomena as Art Nouveau. If the official
Academic style represented the last degenerate phases of neo-Classicism and Realism brought
to their ultimate degradation, what Ortega y Gasset has called 'a maximum aberration in the
history of taste' ,10 Art Nouveau, with its emphasis on decorative symbolism, may likewise be
seen as a somewhat degenerate form of the Symbolist tendencies of the last third of the nine­
teenth century. These two styles present an interesting dichotomy, offering on the one hand
imagery which is almost photographic in its rendering ('copy nature stupidly'), and on the
other, imagery which is highly synthetic. In other words, Academicism and Art Nouveau
represented polarities of imagery not unlike those polarities which were, transfigured, to run
through the art of Matisse ; the one three-dimensional, descriptive, realistic ; the other two­
dimensional, synthetic and symbolic. It must be realized that while neither Academic painting
nor Art Nouveau necessarily had a direct or conscious influence upon the development of
Matisse's later imagery, they both represented attitudes, habits of mind-even more important,
vocabularies of form-which made up the essential visual milieu out of which Matisse grew
and which he himself was later to redefine.
In opposition to such popular imagery, an important part of the culture of painting in
France in the first years of the-century was the, by then, 'tradition' of the avant-garde, the
most important currents of which were Impressionism and post-Impressionism. Matisse,
like any painter then working in Paris, was subjected to a series of reactions and counter­
reactions against the traditions of this avant-garde as well as the traditions of the Academy and
of the street as embodied in the official style and in Art Nouveau ; all were to stay with him
through the rest of his life. Perhaps more than any other major painter, Matisse represented
not only a continuation but a constant reformulation of these currents which may, for the sake
of convenience, be divided into two major groups : those in which the subject and motif were
18 Academic Painting
real (actually derived from nature), and the technique improvised ; and those in which the
subject and motif were synthetic (not derived directly from nature), and the technique pre­
determined. To the former category belong the Impressionists, Van Gogh, and Cezanne ; to
the latter the Academics, Seurat, Gauguin, the N abis and Symbolists. In almost all cases, the
main flow of tradition with which Matisse moved was that which dealt with direct sensations
from nature and a technique improvised to correspond to those sensations, that is the tradition
of the Impressionists and Cezanne. At the same time, the various traditions of syntheticism
also had an enormous effect upon him. It was the balancing of these traditions, modified and
informed by his own enormous will and intellect, that enabled Matisse to achieve his pre­
eminent position.

Academic Painting

Matisse's experience of Academic painting had a curious effect upon his career: it was a
tradition for which he expressed an active and long-lived contempt, yet his whole career was
affected by what he learned and kept from it. Although he was repelled by the narrow-minded
and moribund teaching that he had encountered there, and in his later years wrote and spoke
out against it with passion, certain aspects of his Ecole des Beaux-Arts background stayed with
him all his life and had far-reaching effects on his thought. Despite Matisse's contempt for the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, however, he was as powerless completely to do away with its influence
on him as is a child to avoid the influence of a despised parent. In some part, at least, it seems
that this was due to his late start as a painter.
As we have said, when Matisse arrived in Paris to study art in the winter of 1891-2, his
previous training had consisted of drawing courses at the Ecole Quentin-Latour (primarily a
tapestry and textile design school) and his own efforts with one of Goupil's popular treatises on
how to paint. 11 This book by Goupil, as might be expected, seems to have had some fairly
direct influence on his early technique. l2 Further, the book, which is essentially a popularized
compendium of nineteenth-century Academic practice, probably had some effect upon Matisse's
early conception of what painting was, and some of the attitudes in it find specific echoes in
Matisse's own later writings. At the very beginning of the book, Goupil discusses 'Initiative
and Progress', saying 'How does one arrive at success? . . . Success is often only a long
patience ! ! ! '13 The term ' a long patience' not only describes Matisse's later advice to younger
artists, 14 but also describes his early career, during which he constantly forced himself to
proceed slowly and thoroughly, even when frustrated by the system at the Ecole des Beaux­
Arts.
It is difficult to say for sure just what the twenty-year-old Matisse, recently taken by the
desire to paint, would have found meaningful in Goupil. But there are themes that persisted in
his thought which, though commonplace, he must have encountered there for the first time.
'Before one can create and compose pictures, it is indispensable to learn to copy', writes
Goupil. 15 'He who can copy can create', Matisse was to write in 'Notes of a Painter'. Goupil's
emphasis upon copying the works of the old masters must also have affected Matisse's early
ideas on painting. Goupil urges copying both nature and the works of the masters, and quotes
Delacroix to the effect that one should make the study a pleasure: 'One therefore retains the
memory of fine works by means of labour which is not at all accompanied by the fatigue and
inquietude of the mind of the inventor who has had the anguish of the original work.'16 That
this feeling stuck with Matisse may be witnessed by his 1 942 remark to Gaston Diehl that 'too
Academic Painting 19
many of the young painters have thought i t well to neglect the study o f the masters ; that alone,
however, permits one to take account of the possibilities of expression of colour and drawing. , 1 7
Goupil also suggests the use o f photographs a s models, a procedure that Matisse used, especially
around 190o,1s although once again the practice is so general as to make it impossible to
attribute it directly to the influence of Goupil.
Certain aspects of Matisse's later teaching also seem to be related to phrases from Goupil
which, while not particularly original, may have stayed with Matisse. Goupil, in his discussion of
working from the model advises : 'The painter who wants to make a picture should begin first
of all by fixing his idea on the canvas. It is through drawing that one sets the general com­
position and gives to each thing in particular the form that it should have. 1 9 Although quite
simple, such advice forms a leitmotif in Matisse's writings. To be sure, a good deal of Goupil's
advice is quite general, even simplistic. Although it would be absurd to think that Matisse
actually followed it all his life, it is evident that such an outlook, based on methodical study of
nature, was part of the foundation of the attitude to painting on which he would later build.
Matisse's early training in Paris followed the same lines as his introduction to painting in
Saint-Quentin and Goupil's book ; he relied upon the standard approaches and the traditional
methods. His experience at the Academie Julian, a private school taught by professors from the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and in the atelier of Bouguereau and Ferrier disgusted him by the
quality of the teaching and made quite an impression for he would repeatedly refer to it in
later life as a symbol of all that was wrong with the Academic system. 2 o
In 1942, he told a radio interviewer : 'Undoubtedly the instruction given at the Beaux-Arts
• . . is deadly for young artists' , 21 and yet, despite his reaction to the Beaux-Arts teaching,
which included that of the hated Bouguereau, Matisse in 1 948 was to write urging the patient
study of nature in words that bear a striking similarity to Bouguereau's ideas on the training of
the artist. 22 And in I 892, when Matisse failed the entrance examination to the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, he decided, instead of working as an independent, to draw in the glass-enclosed
Court of the 'Cours Yvon', 23 where he attracted the attention of Gustave Moreau, who accepted
him as a student in his atelier. 24 In Moreau's studio Matisse at last found a sympathetic
atmosphere. Although Moreau was almost totally oblivious of the 'modern' advanced works of
such painters as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne, he was a very liberal teacher with catholic
tastes and a good sense of his students' individual personalities. Though Moreau seems to have
given Matisse little direct criticism of his work, he supported him enthusiastically and gave
him a 'liberal education' in painting for which Matisse later felt a real sense of gratitude. 25
Further, even though Matisse's works of this period (mostly interiors, still-lifes, and figure
studies in a somewhat dark tonality) have little in common with the sumptuous fantasy of
Moreau's paintings he doubtless absorbed some of Moreau's ideas about imagination, and
these would later appear in his own writings. Such thoughts as ' Colours must be thought,
dreamed, imagined' , 26 or 'I believe neither in what I see nor in what I touch, I believe only in
what I feel. My brain and my reason appear to be ephemeral and of doubtful reality. Sub­
jective emotion alone seems to me to be eternal and unquestionably certain' , 27 have strong
analogies with some of Matisse's own statements in 'Notes of a Painter' : ' I am unable to dis­
tinguish between the feeling I have about life and my way of translating it.'
At this time Matisse was still proceeding very slowly, working on small unimaginative
canvases, perfecting his technique and doing copies of paintings in the Louvre, mostly Baroque
and Rococo works, many of the French school, in which he gave himself the opportunity to
study the structure and composition of such masters as Poussin, Philippe de Champ agne,
Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, and especially Chardin. 2 8
20 Decorative Art
Matisse's ambitions at this time also seem to have been somewhat ordinary. In the spring
of I 896 he exhibited four works at the Salon de Ia Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and sold
two of them. 29 He was also elected an Associate Member of the Societe, a considerable honour
which gave him the privilege of exhibiting several works each year without having to submit
them to the Salon jury, and which also increased his chances of selling both to collectors and
to the State. That summer, when he went to Brittany and painted out-of-doors, he still kept his
somewhat muted palette and saw and composed in terms of value tones rather than colour,
and both his subject matter and method of working, massing darks and lights, striving after
the general effect seen in terms of chiaroscuro rather than colour, are very much in the tradi­
tion of the Academic landscape study (see Figure 4).30 It was not until I897 that Matisse,
inspired by the Impressionists, began to break away from the Academic tradition and to reach
toward a new vision. But even after spending the entire year of I 898-9 working mostly out of
doors and in the Impressionist manner, when he returned to Paris in February I899 it was to
the atelier of the late Gustave Moreau. Although part of the reason behind his return to student
status surely had to do simply with needing to work from the model, it is evident that at this
period he still considered himself a student. 31
In I900, when Matisse at last truly became an independent painter, he had spent a full
decade more or less under the influence of traditional methods of training, and had been
exhibiting in the conservative salons. (Not until the spring of I90I did he exhibit at the Salon
des lndependants, his first overt step in the direction of the avant-garde.) From his Academic
training he obtained a great respect for the necessity of technical proficiency and a belief in the
study of nature as a means of arriving at truth. This provided him with firm roots in the tradi­
tions of the nineteenth century and doubtless contributed to the streak of conservatism that
ran through his later thought. At the same time it also gave him the confidence and proficiency
which would serve as a source of liberation from the very tradition which had nurtured him.

Decorative Art

Matisse had a profound and abiding interest in decoration and decorative art. Throughout
his life he expressed this interest in his constant use of decorative objects (rugs, tapestries,
screens, vases, etc.) as motifs for his paintings and drawings, and by his interest in large
decorative paintings, such as the S hchukin La danse and La musique, the Barnes Murals and
the late cut-outs. The aesthetic of decoration was also expressed in his writings, especially
'Notes of a Painter' .
When in October I 892, Matisse enrolled for an evening course at the Ecole des Arts
Decoratifs, he may have reflected an early interest in the decorative arts, which often tended
during the I 89os to be allied to the Fine Arts. 3 2 When the convalescent Matisse was intro­
duced to painting in I 890, it was by the director of a textile factory who occupied the next
bed, 33 and his first formal training was at the Ecole Quentin-Latour, under what he himself
characterized as 'draftsmen who designed textiles' . 34 It seems therefore likely that he may early
have come to know and take an interest in a book_ like Henry Havard's La decoration. 35 Some
of the ideas in this book have indeed sufficient parallel to parts of Matisse's 'Notes of a Painter'
to warrant mention. Havard discusses general similarities and differences between painters and
sculptors and decorators, noting that there is a separation between them, even though 'all the
arts seek Beauty'. 36 He then goes on to discuss some of the differences between artists (e.g.
history painters, etc.) and decorative artists. He notes that while artists can depict violent
Decorative Art 21
movement, decorators should avoid it, that while painters can depict sadness, horror, disgust,
and pain, decorative artists should not : 'The duty of the decorator . . . is not to provoke
sentiments of fear or enthusiasm, but simply to adorn, and embellish. He should interest the
spectator, but never move him.'37 The decorative artist, Havard goes on to say, should avoid
subjects which provoke an intense emotion, and should be careful not to create an illusion, not
to imitate nature too closely. a s These thoughts not only seem germane to Matisse's painting
around 1908, but have an equivalent in 'Notes of a Painter' where Matisse states his desire for
'an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter . . .
a soothing, calming influence on the mind . . . '-a statement of his belief in painting as a
decorative, purely visual, as opposed to narrative art. Havard speaks similarly of decoration :
'The role of decoration . . . is uniquely to charm the eyes. That is why the decorator so often
has recourse to fabulous representations to express abstractions . . . not being contained within
the limits of reality he can give free rein to his fantasy, and with the aid of these gracious fic­
tions produce exquisite creations.'39 Havard's comments seem not only to relate to some of the
ideas in 'Notes of a Paintee, but also to Matisse's paintings of that period. Speaking of the use
of modern subjects it is noted that the artist 'should carefully avoid giving these objects too real
an aspect, which would certainly attenuate their emblematic value'. 40 Most of Matisse's works

of this period avoid this 'too real aspect' by generalized rendering of costume (which perhaps
carries over even into the odalisques of the Nice period), and by using nude figures-thus
avoiding a sense of specific time and place-even in such topical works as the Joueurs de boules of
1908 (Figure 19) . In keeping with the aesthetic of decoration, Havard insists that the decorator
should make his form quite legible : 'He should underline the principal features, to accentuate
their character', 41 which is quite in line with Matisse's insistence upon reducing things to
their 'essentials'. Havard also notes that the painter should represent only the durable : 'All
violent actions whose transitory character is too accentuated, are ill-suited to decorations which
are fixed for a relative eternity on the place which has been given to them', 42 a sentiment that
has direct parallels in 'Notes of a Painter'. Thus it seems that the aesthetics of decorative paint­
ing had their part in Matisse's formulation of his own ideas on painting and in his paint­
ings themselves.
In addition, Matisse was quite obviously influenced by certain aspects of Art Nouveau
decoration, which comprised an important aspect of the visual environment at the turn of
the century. S. Tschudi Madsen has noted that the 'principal ornamental characteristic of
Art Nouveau is the asymmetrically undulating line terminating in a whip-like, energy-laden
movement', 43 a description which might well characterize some of the impulse behind the
arabesques in Matisse's painting from 1905 onward. As Trapp has remarked, a good deal of
the impulse behind Matisse's early sinuous arabesques, such as that of Bonheur de vivre, seems
to come out of the milieu of Art Nouveau, and also to be connected with paintings such as
Derain's L'Age d'Or of 1905,·or Long's Pan of 1899, both of which represent bacchanals in a
landscape. 44 Trapp further goes on to point out the similarity between several of Matisse's
large interiors such as Harmonie rouge of 1909 (Figure 20) and Grande nature morte au.x
aubergines of 1911, with various Art Nouveau interiors.45 Matisse not only adopted the super­
ficial look of Art Nouveau, but he seems to have well understood its symbolic character.
Madsen has noted :

If we penetrate still deeper into the nature of Art Nouveau ornamentation, we shall find
that at times it may constitute a feature of the object which is endeavouring to express
something. This may both apply to its function as an artifact and be a purely aesthetic
22 Impressionism
element. We are here approaching the significance of Art Nouveau decoration as a
symbolic factor. In this respect its most important aspect is its ability to emphasize the
structure of form and, next, to fuse the object and its ornament into an organic entity :
the aim is unity and synthesis . . . . The budding, growing ornamentation thus reflects
essential elements of Art Nouveau-the very force and creative ability of the style.46

Matisse's early arabesque, that seen in the Bonheur de vivre (Figure 17), seems to come directly
out of the immediate milieu of Art Nouveau ; indeed his use of the arabesque seems through­
out his career to have had a distinctly metaphorical or symbolic character. During the
most synthetic moments of the development of his style, as in the period from 1 905 to
19 17, and from 1930 onwards, Matisse made great use of the symbolic arabesque, to express
growth or 'becoming'. During the less synthetic moments of his stylistic development, as in
the period before 1905 and during the Nice period from 1917 to 1929, he made less use of it.
Thus the arabesque seems to have had a direct correspondence in Matisse's art to his most
synthetic style, and may be seen as an important by-product of his experience with and
understanding of Art Nouveau.

Impressionism

If when Matisse worked in his most synthetic mode he seems to have relied upon his essentially
Art Nouveau-inspired arabesque, when he worked in a more naturalistic or descriptive style,
he seems instead to have gone back to the tradition of Impressionism.
As Meyer Schapiro has shown, many aspects of Matisse's style, including his subject
matter, seem to derive from Impressionism. Schapiro points out that 'the flatness of the field
or decomposition into surface patterns, the inconsistent, indefinite space, the deformed con­
tours, the peculiarly fragmentary piecing of things at the edges of the picture, the diagonal
viewpoint, the bright, arbitrary color of objects, unlike their known local color, constitute
within the abstract style of Matisse an Impressionist matrix.'47
Impressionism represented for Matisse his first and most vivid awareness of the analysis of
light and the creation of the effect of light through pure colour. As he himself stated, before
his awareness of Impressionism he transposed in the transparent tones of the Louvre ;48 the
dark, old master palette which he had used was determined both by his experience in the
Louvre and by the palette of the Academic painters. Even his first ambitious Impressionist
composition, La desserte of 1897 (Figure 5) is indeed a very conservative brand of Impression­
ism. The colour is brushed on in somewhat broad strokes, more in the manner of early Manet
than Monet or Renoir, and the breaking up of colour within local colour areas, even in the
white of the tablecloth, is not nearly so dynamic as that of the Impressionists. La desserte in
retrospect seems more of an Academy piece with an Impressionist inflection than an Impres­
sionist picture. Matisse's first really Impressionistic paintings date from the summer of 1 897,
when he brightened his palette and began to conceive of his pictures in terms of colour
sensations rather than masses of light and shadow. In I 897 he also met Pissarro, who encouraged
him to work in an Impressionist manner, and even advised him to study Turner in London as
Pissarro himself and Monet had done in 187�advice which Matisse did in fact follow in
January 1898. When Matisse left Paris for the South shortly after his return from London, he
was already committed to a new vision and a new method. He set out consciously to seek out
vivid optical sensations and to record them directly. The canvases executed during that year in
Impressionism 23

Corsica and near Toulouse are mostly small landscape sketches concerned with the general
impressions of the landscape, but conceived in terms of colour rather than values (see Figure
6). While in a certain sense they are as much landscape etudes as were the pictures executed at
Belle-lie in 1 896, the intention is entirely different, effects of chiaroscuro being sacrificed for
vividness of colour and a certain surface tension. By the end of 1 899, in Nature morte d contre-
jour and Buffet et table (Figure 8), in which form is actually dissolved by light and the compon­
ents of areas of local colour are analysed and described, though exaggeratedly, he had achieved
a kind of personal Impressionism.
Matisse, however, tended constantly to see form as integral rather than as dissolved by light,
and as a result did not long stay with orthodox Impressionism. At the same time, the influence
of Impressionism upon his succeeding \vorks is marked by liberation of colour and by a certai n
delectation i n the rendering o f light and light effects. In 1 904-5 , during his nco-Impressionist
or Divisionist phase, he managed to merge some of the technique and vision that he had learned
from his Impressionist studies with a greater synthesis of form and a structural ordering of
colour. This experiment was also short-lived, but had a pronounced effect upon his following
works, especially those of the high Fauve period ( 1 905-6), after which he moved constantly
away from Impressionism to other concerns. He began to seek a greater solidity and structure
in his pictures, and moreover a greater synthesis of his vision itself. This is clearly reflected in
'Notes of a Painter' where he writes : 'Often when I start to work I become aware of fresh and
superficial sensations . . . . A few years ago I might have been satisfied with the result . . . I
would have recorded fugitive and momentary sensations which would not completely define my
feelings, which I would barely recognize the next day.' He goes on to characterize the Impres­
sionists, saying, 'The word "impressionism" perfectly characterizes their style, for they
register fleeting impressions. ' 49 Matisse, seeking at this time more enduring images, based on a
' condensation of sensations' , turned away from Impressionism somewhat as Cezanne had done
a generation before him, and in search of similar ends. For Matisse, who wrote of his inability
'to distinguish between the feeling I have about life and my way of translating it' , truth was to
be found in the confrontation between the individual personality and nature, not in nature
itself. He expressed his understanding of this when he said, 'A Cezanne is a moment of the
artist while a Sisley is a moment of nature . ' 50 Matisse's ambitions lay in the direction of Cezanne
rather than of Impressionism.
It is significant, however, that when during the Nice period he began to return to direct obser­
vation of nature, his Impressionist experiences of some twenty years earlier had a profound effect
upon him. 51 The paintings of the Nice period are good evidence of this. For one thing, unlike
those of the Experimental period, they have much of the casualness of objects seen at a glance.
As Schapiro says of painters after Monet, 'They discover their pictures in looking around at
objects, and execute swift sketches which have the immediacy of a glance. Sensibility operates
instantaneously, in the very act of seeing.'52 This is seen in many of M atisse's paintings of the
Nice period, which dwell upon the fleeting effects of light and texture (see Figures 3 1-33),
and which often have truncated_ compositions. Matisse's consciousness of the Impressionist
tradition before him may be seen especially in the Etretat series executed in 1 920, in which he
painted the Needle and the Elephant rocks on Etretat beach, a theme especially dear to Monet.
Even Matisse's return in the early 1 920s to paintings done out-of-doors is part of a conscious
return to nature via Impressionism, as is his return to tonalities of yellow and violet, which give
a distinct sense of atmosphere and of light and shadow. It was not until the transition into the
more austere works toward the end of the Nice period, that he finally moved away from a
distinctly Impressionist attitude.
 Cezanne
The Impressionist experience, however, was deeply rooted in Matisse's mentality, and when
he designed the stained-glass windows for the Chapel at Vence, the colour scheme of green,
violet, yellow and blue with which he broke up the light coming through the glass and the
fragmentation of the forms of the windows into little sections, is an indirect but positive echo
of Impressionism. Thus it may be seen that Impressionist doctrine not only affected Matisse
in his formative years, but remained throughout his life a force in his paintings and writings.

Cezanne

Cezanne's influence upon Matisse is extremely rich and varied, and most important. No other
outside influence seems to have been so strong, yet no other influence was more thoroughly
assimilated. Despite Kurt Badt's contention that Cezanne had no heir or successor, it seems
that Matisse (even more than the Cubists) represents the continuation of the tradition of
Cezanne. 53
The influence of Cezanne upon Matisse is seen alike in motifs, techniques, and attitudes.
Throughout the earlier part of his career, Matisse made significant use of compositional
motifs taken from Cezanne, as in his St. Tropez: Ia baie of 1904 which closely resembles,
among others, Cezanne's L'Estaque: Ia baie.54 Although Matisse's brushwork is broader, his
colour brighter, and his form less solid, the painting expresses his desire to treat in his own
way some of Cezanne's actual motifs and compositional devices.
This may also be seen in Carmelina of 1 903 which shares with Cezanne's Portrait de
Chocquet 1 879-8255 a similar compositional format (placing the figure firmly in the middle of a
series of rectilinear forms which echo the format of the painting itself), and an opportunity to
use Cezannesque modelling. Although the colour scheme in Carmelina does not have as
complicated a break-down of local colour areas as does the Cezanne portrait, the sense of form
and of the total pictorial space is very similar, and Carmelina has in common with the Cezanne
portrait a sense of simultaneous solidity of form and two-dimensional design.
Nature morte au purro, I of 1904 (Figure :12) is also an excellent example of Matisse's
Cezannesque handling of form during this early period in which Matisse developed a certain
sense of clear colour, of solidity and austerity. Mter the height of the Fauve period, in order to
solidify his forms, he returned again to Cezanne, as may be seen in such paintings as the Barnes
Nature morte bleue of 1907 and, in a less obvious way, Nu bleu (Figure x8) of the same year.
In 19 1 1, one of the most crucial years of Matisse's development, he began once again to
resynthesise his forms after Cezanne. Lafenetre bleue of 191 1 (Figure 24) seems quite obviously
to be based upon Cezanne's Le vase bleu (Figure 25) which had been given as part of the
Camondo legacy to the Jeu de Paume in 191 1 . The two paintings have much in common
besides their blue tonality. The dense and poetic handling of space in Fenetre bleue is extremely
Cezannesque, especially in terms of the modelling and the interaction between painting and
drawing. Furthermore, both paintings share a similar compositional device of centring objects
in relation to a frame-with-a-frame : the window in the Matisse and the window frame in the
Cezanne. Both paintings also have a tendency to make vertical divisions of form in which various
objects are centred in relation to other objects · in a series of changing near-symmetrical
relationships. This multiple centring of objects gives each painting its sense of simultaneous
repose and dynamism.
Even during the Nice period, Matisse tended to refer back to certain Cezannesque devices,
although toward different ends. Les joueurs de dames of 1923, for example, is quite obviously
Cubt$m 25
based upon the early Cezanne Overture de Tannhauser, in which the patterning of the wall
behind the piano also expresses a visual embodiment of the music.
Another adaptation by Matisse from Cezanne, one which had an extraordinary longevity i n
the formulation and reformulation o f his pictorial means, was the study o f the figure imagery
of his own Cezanne, Trois baigneuses (Figure 9), which he had bought in 1 8 99 . Its influence
may be seen in both the subject matter and certain aspects of pose in both Luxe, calme and
volupte of 1 904-5 (Figure 13) and the Bonheur de vivre of 1 90 5 -6 (Figure 17) . 5 6 Further,
the Cezanne Trois· baigneuses seems to have been one of the major impulses behind Matisse's
use of imagined idyllic and pastoral subject matter. The adaptation of specific motifs from the
painting may be seen in Matisse's Baigneuse of 1 909, in the four reliefs of Le dos ( 1 909-30), and
in the Barnes Murals of 193 1-3 .
57
Matisse's return to his own Cezanne around 1930 seems significant. This reconception and
simplification of form at the end of the Nice period reflects some of his feeling towards Cezanne,
who seems to have represented for him an ultimate synthesis and condensation, as opposed
to the much more immediate and fleeting effects which could be created with a version of
Impressionist vision. Within Matisse's hierarchy of visual contexts, that of Cezanne gave
him the greatest structural awareness and feeling for synthesis, a realization of the enduring
quality behind objects. Thus at certain crucial moments in his career he seems not only to
have turned to Cezannesque motifs, but also to a certain Cezannesque technique, as in
L' atelier du quai Saint-Michel (Figure 29), in which the fluidity of the forms, the dynamism of
the plastic space, the constantly shifting planes, and the uncanny sense of simultaneous
two- and three-dimensionality are all part of the legacy of the Master of Aix-en-Provence.
There are also distinct parallels between Matisse's thought and that of Cezanne, many of
which are pointed out in the notes to the texts, below. 58 In general terms Matisse shares with
Cezanne a sense of research with regard to arriving at a fully 'realized' canvas. This sense of
study and research which runs throughout Matisse's writings has a definite precedent in
Cezanne. 59 Like many other aspects of Matisse's painting it had its roots in nineteenth­
century empiricism in a way that quite differentiates it from Cubism.

Cubism

Although Picasso was not far off when he said that he and Matisse represented the North and
the South poles, they both had a common point of departure in Cezanne. 6 0 For each of them
Cezanne amounted to something like a talisman, a paragon, and a definition of modernity ; but
each interpreted and synthesized Cezanne to a different end. While Picasso took from Cezanne
the outward structure of his late paintings and brought it to a conclusion beyond anything
that Cezanne had conceived, Matisse saw in Cezanne a method of perception rather than of
construction. For while Picasso was committed to the avant-garde, Matisse always balanced
his daring with a good measure of caution. 'Matisse possessed, as the counterpoint of his
recurrent boldness, an almost equally persistent streak of caution. It was a part of his strength ;
he never moved until the way ahead was clear.' 6 1 While Matisse mistrusted modernism for its
own sake, Picasso espoused it, and while Matisse considered his paintings to be researches,
probing into a diffi cult and elusive reality, Picasso was ever ready to impose his own truth : 'To
search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing.' 6 2
At the turn of the century the arts in general were involved in seeking a new workable
balance between the objective and subjective, what Shattuck refers to as the 'self-reflexive'
 Cubism
element of modern art ; 6 3 both Matisse and the Cubists, strongly tied to Cezanne and to an
essentially Bergsonian outlook, reflect this. 64 The Cubists, no less than Matisse, were involved
in the problem of reaching a truth underlying visual experience, and their early professed aims
bear a certain similarity to those of Matisse. 65 The pictorial means they arrived at, however,
differed, and by I 9 I I any similarity between their goals had become barely recognizable. For
while in I 908 both were involved with depicting a kind of Bergsonian knowledge of the objects
they painted-in which accumulated memory and experience become the basis for the know­
ledge of objects-the Cubists tended to move increasingly toward an art of deduction, 6 6
whereas Matisse maintained, with only a few exceptions, an art of induction. Thus while the
legibility of objects in Cubist paintings between I 908 and I 9 I I was becoming increasingly
more diffi c ult, the representation of obj ects in Matisse's paintings remained clear. While
Matisse stayed with an inductive, empirical method, based on direct visual sensations and
an attempt to avoid pre-knowledge of obj ects (a legacy of nineteenth-century empiricism, the
Impressionists, and Cezanne) , the Cubists arrived at an art of deduction, in which the process
of deduction depends on inventing forms from pre-existing ideas. 67 Within this context the
physical work of art could contain concrete fragments of unsynthesised reality (undisguised
collage elements) which became part of the new reality of the work of art by participating in an
ensemble which was composed of fragments of pre-existing ideas, rendered in a predetermined
fashion.
In other words, the Cubists and Matisse, starting initially from similar assumptions about
painting, worked toward divergent ends, both by intention and in terms of the pictorial means
employed. The Cubists throughout the Analytic phase constructed in terms of a limited
fairly tangible relief space, whereas Matisse's pictorial space at this time is much less tangible.
In Matisse, space is not described so much as it is suggested ; in an Analytic Cubist painting
the limits of the pictorial space are fairly well described even though the objects which fill it
are not. Further, whereas the Cubists constructed in terms of geometry, Matisse constructed
in terms of the arabesque, and while the Cubists used colour to describe form in space,
Matisse used it to constitute space itself. The Cubists in this early phase relied upon the
modelling of form with dark and light in order to construct a sculptural space, whereas Matisse
constructed space in terms of colour and thereby arrived at a pictorial space which has less
plastic actuality.
Within these contexts, the problems of the description of objects were different. Whereas
M atisse invented forms which were synthetic equivalents of obj ects, the Cubists invented new
objects. This may be seen in a painting such as Picasso's Ma Jolie of I 9 I I , in which, although
the forms suggest a woman with a guitar, what is actually described in the painting is a
combination of brush-strokes, lines, and planes in a limited but internally fluid space, which
is activated or animated by fragments of figurative imagery. The subject is represented as a
gathering of energies rather than as a discrete form. In order to maintain the legibility of the
obj ects being described in such a painting, the painter resorts to cliches to describe parts of the
subject involved. Throughout the Analytic Cubist painting of this period, the forms used to
describe eyes, hands, ears, pieces of rope, fragments of musical instruments, etc., are self­
conscious cliches (pre- existing ideas) which are easily legible. This cliche aspect of Analytic
Cubism maintains the legibility of the total image ·of the painting. In Matisse's paintings of this
period (Figures 19-24) the overall imagery is extremely clear, but the details of many of the
forms are so synthetic that they would be meaningless outside the context of the painting.
Whereas the rendering of a hand in an Analytic Cubist painting may be identifiable outside
the context of the painting, many of Matisse' s forms in this period, although they are very
Cubism
clear within the context of the painting, are almost completely illegible as discrete objects out­
side that context. Thus the Cubist painting not only constructs a distinct plastic space, it also
constructs an internal temporal environment. Because the painting is perceived as an accumu­
lation of details, and because of the relatively difficult legibility of many forms, the painting
not only articulates its own temporal environment, but also imposes that sense of time upon the
consciousness of the viewer, since, like words on a printed page, the Analytic Cubist painting
cannot be taken in at a glance. A Matisse painting, on the other hand, involves a simultaneous
presentation of its spatial totality. While the Cubist painting is composed of a series of occur­
rences or interactions of form which happen in time, with something like a causal relationship
between them, a Matisse painting is literally read as a condensation of sensations into a total
image which suggests past and future time, but which is unequivocally depicted in terms of the
'present' . Thus while Matisse's paintings almost never have any internal sense of cause and
effect, they almost always have a strong suggestion of before and after. Just as an Analytic
Cubist painting constructs a plastic actuality, so it constructs a temporal actuality ; whereas in
the contemporary paintings of Matisse time is no more actual than space.
Although it is quite likely that the flowering of Cubism around I9I I may have given Matisse
an added impetus and boldness in his own formulations at that time,6 8 he remained constant
to an inductive method based on actual vision. Although he occasionally deviated from this, 6�
even his most austere and geometric works, such as the Lefon de piano of I 9 I 6 (Figure 27) are
an organic part of his imagery and have little to do with Cubism. Around I 9 I 8 , when he seems
to have exhausted his involvement or belief in synthetic imagery, he returned to empirical
descriptive painting, the legacy of the · nineteenth century. When he returned to synthetic
imagery after I 9 29 , he first worked in terms of reformulating his earlier imagery (as in the
Barnes Murals) , and then once again from life. And even, toward the end of his life, when he
began to work in his most abstract style, his method remained largely inductive, as may be
seen in his description (Text 42, L'escargot (Figure 48).
below) of the evolution of
This attitude persists also in his later pedagogical position (Texts 33, 35, 43 , below) , and in
his attitude toward non-figurative art (Texts 34, 42, below), which he saw as 'abstractions
based on abstractions' . For Matisse art was always more or less directly based on visual ob­
servation, even in his last, magnificently metaphorical works. 'My destination is always the
same but I work out a different route to get there', he wrote in I9o8, and the words turned out
to have a truth far beyond what he could then have imagined.
It is in this sense that Matisse also presents one of the most striking paradoxes in all modern
art. His reliance upon actual sensation from nature and his mistrust of purely synthetic means
of expression seem to be almost anti-modern, especially in contrast to the theoretical bases of
the Cubists and other schools independent of direct, empirical observation. Yet his flexibility
and acuity of awareness allowed him to transcend the object by realizing form and space in
terms of pure colour. As Gowing has pointed out, 'In the end, when the developments of the
first half of the twentieth century were complete, it was apparent that while for his contempor­
aries representation of one kind- or another and the basic reference to form had outlasted the
luminous substance of painting, with Matisse the reverse had happened. Light had outlasted
representation . . . . No one else was travelling the same way. M atisse had developed a self­
protective, conservative attitude. ' 70
Matisse's imagery depended upon the sensations of light energy upon the eye and mind of
the artist. In this adherence to purely visual phenomena, he remained perhaps the only major
painter of his period to construct space in a purely visual way, with light energy articulated
by colour. 71 In this sense, Matisse, like Cezanne, stands apart from the schools and systems
 The Texts
that were contemporary with him. While for the Cubists, especially Picasso, the history of art
was like a vast encyclopaedia of forms which, through modification, could be reinvented into
new forms or recombined into new entities, for Matisse the history of art served mainly as an
impetus to new modes of vision. Thus while many influences can be seen at work in his paintings,
they never possess the conscious eclecticism of Picasso or Braque. Instead Matisse drew from
the past what he needed to organize and put into context his own sensations before nature,
and therefore, unlike Picasso, who created a whole new language of forms and shapes-of new
characters, as it were, in the world of painted imagery-Matisse arrived at a new formulation of
pictorial space itself. It was precisely the openness of his attitude and his extreme flexibility
which allowed him constantly to revitalize himself from the same sources and to create a
notion of pictorial space which, because of its empirical, totally pictorial nature, can be seen as
no less than the discovery of a new reality for painting.
It is this, above all, that has made Matisse so important to painting today.

The Texts

In the following collection, Matisse' s writings have been arranged chronologically ; each
selection is preceded by a critical introduction, and each is annotated in order to explain
certain points, identify persons and circumstances not generally known, and to call attention to
significant parallels in other statements by Matisse and others.
A word should be said about the use of the term 'writings' since the present volume is both
more and less than a collection of Matisse's complete writings. The term is here meant to
denote the body of Matisse's significant statements on art regardless of the manner of presen­
tation. These are of three types : statements written by the artist, statements transcribed by
someone else, and interviews. The present collection includes all of Matisse's own significant
writings, and most of the transcribed statements and interviews. The final criterion for the
selection has been to represent as fully and deeply as possible Matisse' s thoughts on art. Almost
all the texts presented here have either been published during Matisse's lifetime or were
approved by him before his death. Taken together, then, they represent his formulation of the
principles and ideas behind his art, as well as his observations on his career, on the various
art movements of importance which occurred during his lifetime, and on some problems of the
arts in general.
Within this context, the artist's general correspondence has been of only limited interest
since most of his letters to friends and relatives are concerned with daily affairs and problems of
the sort that make up any man's life. When these letters do discuss artistic problems, they are
often confined to a brief mention or discussion of the problems inherent in single works, and
although such letters are interesting from a documentary point of view their general interest is
limited. Further, those letters which do address themselves to general problems and attitudes
usually repeat or echo public statements. Because of this, and because most of the available
letters have recently been or soon will be published-see the Bibliography-the present
collection does not include Matisse's general correspondence. The available letters have, how­
ever, been carefully examined and are quoted from where they seem relevant to the specific
texts and ideas here presented.

Such diverse writers as George Moore and Vladimir Nabokov have argued that translations
should sound like translations. In the following, I have tried to preserve the original sense by
The Texts
following, whenever possible, the phrasing and sense of wording of the originals. In many
instances gallicisms have been retained in order to preserve some of the vividness although
occasionally I have transposed person or tense to conform to more natural English usage.
Apart from the few cases where a text was originally published in English and the original
French manuscripts has not been obtainable, all the texts except Texts 1 and 21 have been
retranslated expressly for this volume and all translations are my own.
 The Texts

Apollinaire' s In terview, I 907 1

In December of 1907 the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire published an essay which
contains four quotations by Matisse. While the general style is lyrical ( 'When I came to you ,
Matisse, the crowd had looked at you and as it laughed at you, you smiled' ) , Matisse's own
statements are marked by the calm sobriety which was to characterize most of his theoretical
writings and his interviews.2 For the most part Matisse's statements are on a personal level. He
says very little about his specific theories of art, but does speak of his general method of con­
ception, which he equates with self-discovery, as when he relates how he found his artistic
personality by looking over his earliest works, and how he made an effort to develop it by relying
on 'intuition� and by returning always to 'fundamentals' . This emphasis upon fundamentals is
of particular interest, for it is a point that Matisse was to return to again and again. At this time
Matisse was also somewhat defensive about his reliance upon the art of others, most notably
Cezanne, and both courage and a certain defensiveness may be noted in his statement that he

( never avoided the influence of others. This conception of the development of his own art in
relation to other artists and nature is Matisse's first public statement, here only implicit, of his
belief that the act of creation is a synthesis of the individual's relationship to the art that has
come before him and his own confrontation with nature.

APPOLLINAIRE'S INTERVIEW
I have worked . . . to enrich my knowledge by satisfying the diverse curiosities of my
mind, striving to ascertain the different thoughts of ancient and modern masters of plastic
art. And this study was also material because I tried at the same time to understand their
technique.

Then . . • I found myself or my artistic personality by looking over my earliest works.

They rarely deceive. There I found something that was always the same and which at
first glance I thought to be monotonous repetition. It was the mark of my personality
which appeared the same no matter what different states of mind I happened to have
passed through.
32 2 Notes of a Painter, I9o8
I made an effort to develop this personality by counting above all on my intuition and
by returning again and again to fundamentals. When difficulties stopped me in my work
I said to myself: 'I have colors, a canvas, and I must express myself with purity, even
though I do it in the briefest manner by putting down, for instance, four or five spots of
color or by drawing four or five lines which have a plastic expression.'

I have never avoided the influence of others, I would have considered this a cowardice
and a lack of sincerity toward myself. I believe that the personality of the artist develops
and asserts itself through the struggles it has to go through when pitted against other
pe�sonalities. If the fight is fatal and the personality succumbs, it means that this was
bound to be its fate.

Notes of a Pa in ter) 1 9081

'Notes of a painter' , Matisse's earliest theoretical statement, and one of the most important
and influential artists' statements of the century, was written at a time when he was involved in
controversial ideas about painting and seems to have been opposed especially to certain aspects
of contemporary Cubism. 2 This essay is an attempt by Matisse to state the basic tenets of his
art and by implication to clear himself of some of the criticism levelled against him. s
The presentation of ideas in 'Notes of a Painter' is quite methodical, and seems to reflect
Matisse's legal training. He begins the essay with a disclaimer, saying that the painter who
addresses the public with words exposes himself to the danger of being literary, but notes that
other painters have written about their work, thereby associating himself directly with his
contemporaries and indirectly with such illustrious names as Leonardo, Ingres and Delacroix,
who also wrote extensively.
The ideas that Matisse discusses are relevant not only to his painting of around 1 908, but are
for the most part germane to his pictorial thought until his death. It should be remembered
that when Matisse wrote this he was no longer a young man ; in I 908 he was already thirty- ·

nine years old, and although he had not by far exhausted the range of his stylistic development,
much of his basic theoretical outlook was already formed. Matisse's theory was, with certain
modifications, generally valid over a long period of time and for a great number of stylistic
changes. This has to do with a basic outlook expressed in 'Notes of a Painter' , where he notes
that his fundamental thoughts have not changed, Qut instead have evolved and that his modes
of expression have followed his thoughts ; it also has to do with the general nature of the ideas
expressed : Matisse's essay is more philosophic than technical.
One of the basic ideas of 'Notes of a Painter' , and of Matisse's whole theory of art, is his
professed goal of 'expression', which is inseparable from the painter's pictorial means. The
 2 Notes of a Painter, Igo8 33
emphasis here is on the creation of intuitive symbolism through perceptual experience. As
Gauss has said of this expressionistic viewpoint of art, 'This intuition is a consciousness of life
which is of the nature of a religious attitude. They [expressionists] make no distinction between
their consciousness of life and their manner of expressing it. The work of art is thus a sample
of the feeling it expresses. It is only the rendition of that feeling in concrete form. The work of
art is therefore a symbol in a special sense.' 4
This emphasis on intuition also has much in common with the writings of Bergson ( 1 8 59-
1941) and of Croce ( 1 866-1952), whose ideas were current at the time. (Croce's Aesthett"cs was
puhlished in 1 902, Bergson's Creative Evolution in 1907.) The broad concepts of Bergsonism
were especially in the air at the time, much as Einstein's theory of relativity, or, much later,
Sartre's Existentialism would be. Not only were these ideas current among artists and writers ;
they also found their way, condensed, into the popular press (in the same way as Matisse's own
ideas later, somewhat garbled, were to find their way into the New York T£mes Magazine in
1913). s There are indeed similarities between certain aspects of Matisse's thought and Croce's. 6
Bergsonian Intuition also offers a striking parallel with Matisse's theory. Based on reciprocal
action between past and future, space and time, Intuition, by the 'sympathetic communication
which it establishes between us and the rest of the living, by the expansion of our consciousness
which it brings about, introduces us into life's own domain, which is reciprocal interpenetra­
tion, endlessly continued creation.' ? Matisse placed great importance on the possibility of

(
'-eXpanded consciousness through 'sympathetic communication' and 'reciprocal interpene­
tration'. So much so, that it may be described as his method. It was from precisely such a flow
, of time : 'this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and
things . . . and which is continually modifying and transforming them', that Matisse wanted
to evolve forms which �ould express the 'more' essential character' of things, so that he might
'give to reality a more lasting interpretation'.
Matisse, conceiving of existence as flux, and perceiving happening in a fashion similar to
Bergson's duree, wanted intuitively to evolve forms that would express the elusive 'present'
even as it was being eroded by the mutual interpenetration of past and future. The goal of
the process is to arrive at an absolute which, paradoxically, has only relative validity : that is,
for a given situation. Thus Matisse, who could say that he would not repaint any picture in the
same way, follows a process which is remarkably close to that outlined by Bergson in Intro­
duction to Metaphysics :B
I t follows that an absolute can b e reached only b y an intuition, whereas the rest [of our
knowledge] arises out of analysis. We here call intuition the sympathy by which one
transports oneself to the interior of an obj ect in order to coincide with its unique and
therefore ineffable quality.

For Matisse the goal of this process, was 'that state of condensation of sensations which
constitutes a picture' . This single idea, which is as important to the art of Matisse as that of
realisation was to the art of Cezanne,D also has affinities with Bergson : l o
Now the image has at least this advantage, that it keeps us in the concrete. No image
can replace the intuition of duration, but many diverse images, borrowed from very
different orders of things, may, by the convergence of their action, direct the conscious­
ness to the precise point where there is an intuition to be seized.

This of course is also close to Matisse's idea of taking different routes to arrive at the same
place (realisation through condensation), and possibly explains why Matisse was not a painter
 34 2 Notes of a Painter, I908
/

of a small number of 'masterpieces', but of numerous realizations of condensed and frozen

duration, of multiple absolutes. It is in this special sense that Matisse's paintings become
symbols ; they are like a cinematographic record of the intuited perceptions of the duration
of his lifetime ; only their field of action is limited by the painter's subject matter. l l
By abandoning the liter�l representation of objects and of movement, and by avoiding
anecdotal subject matter, Matisse hoped to achieve 'a higher ideal of grandeur and beauty' and
to raise decorative painting to the level of philosophy. Matisse clarifies this idea with the well­
known statement, 'What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of
troubling or depressing subject matter . . . a soothing, calming influence on the mind, some­
thing like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. ' It is important to
realize that this statement is more an explanation, and perhaps defence, of Matisse's limited
range of subject matter than an expression of simple-minded optimism. Unfortunately the
phrase, 'something like a good armchair' , which has been quoted so often, tends to give the
impression that Matisse desired from painting merely a means of relaxation or of entertain­
ment-in short that his ideals were somewhat superficial.12 Matisse, however, does not advocate
an art of superficial decoration or entertainment, but states his belief in art as a medium for the
elevation of the spirit above and beyond, yet rooted in the experience of, everyday life. In other
words, the transfiguration of experience into a state of what might in the past have been called
'the sublime'. This is borne out by Matisse's statement that there are no new truths besides the
discoveries within the formal configuration of a single painting. Truth is as intuitive and
relative a process as is individual perception, and 'rules have no existence outside of indivi­
duals'.
Matisse's reliance on nature, so evident in his paintings, is very strongly stated in 'Notes of a
Painter'. He emphasizes honesty and sincerity of perception in relation to the final image, to the
degree that the painter should feel that he has painted only what he has seen : 'And even when
he departs from nature, he must do it with the conviction that it is only to interpret her more
fully. ' Within Matisse's theoretical framework, nature is the ultimate source of art, and the
work of art is a synthesis of imagery perceived in nature and translated, by an act of belief in
the artist's own perceptions, into the final image. The act of painting is an act of belief, a
synthesis (or 'condensation') of sensations into perceptions, and of perceptions into significant
form.
Although Matisse dwells at great length on the general process of the creation of art through
the temperament of the painter and by contact with nature, he discusses only to a limited
degree the actual formal nature of paintings themselves. Indeed he says virtually nothing about
the creation of space in painting, about drawing and line, or about the relationship between the
nature of painting and drawing. In the main, 'Notes of a Painter' is concerned with subject
matter and its function, and the relation of this to the artist himself. The only formal element
that he discusses in specific terms is colour.
The discussion of colour is for the most part in terms of expression. Like Matisse's drawing,
which is based upon an aesthetic of condensation of meaning through essential lines, colour is
considered to be a reduction to essentials, the finding of an equivalence. 1a Matisse's search for
colour equivalence points to his desire not to reproduce direct optical sensation but rather to
transfigure it, thus finding a configuration of form which, while it does not imitate nature, is an
-- equivalence of the painter's perception of nature ; all of which is accomplished through instinct
rather than by the application of a set theory. This synthetic balancing of tones and hues is
part of a conception in which the picture is not fragmented, but in which, right from the begin­
ning, the painting is conceived as a total image rather than a conglomeration of vignettes.
2 Notes of a Painter, Igo8 35
Consonant with this idea of total conception is Matisse's idea of clari ty , the clarity which he so
admired in Cezanne's paintings. Just as Cezanne's painting was woven into the fabric of
Matisse's pictorial thought-so Cezanne's theories had also been absorbed and synthesized.
The main concerns of 'Notes of a Painter' then, are those of expression , synthesis from nature,
clarity and colour. In this essay Matisse states his faith in art as personal expression, his con­
ception of which is not 'imaginative' or literary, but based instead upon the intuitive synthesis
of sensations from nature . The artist, working toward an ideal that he intuitively understands,
is a person of extremely fine perceptions who is able to translate these perceptions into tangible
form. The most important aspect of painting is not the imitation of nature, but the transfigur­
ation of perceptions into an enduring image. This more lasting interpretation was to be achieved
by balancing the total structure of the picture rather than by dwelling upon specific emotion :
the drama of Matisse's painting, he implies, is to be found in form rather than specifically in
subject matter. It is a drama of happening, not of events. The realization of a painting is
achieved through synthesis of nature and the organization of visual ideas in a clear and lucid
fashion. The process of painting has an almost religious significance because it involves a
restructuring of time and space, a penetration into Reality itself.

NOTES OF A PAINTER
A painter who addresses the public not just i n order to present his works, but t o reveal
some of his ideas on the art of painting, exposes himself to several dangers.
In the first place, knowing that many people like to think of painting as an appendage
of literature and therefore want it to express not general ideas suited to pictorial means,
but specifically literary ideas, I fear that one will look with astonishment upon the
painter who ventures to invade the domain of the literary man. As a matter of fact, I am
fully aware that a painter's best spokesman is his work.14
However, such painters as Signac, Desvallieres, Denis, Blanche, Guerin and Bernard
have written on such matters and been well received by various periodicals.15 Personally,
I shall simply try to state my feelings and aspirations as a painter without worrying about
the writing.
But now I forsee the danger of appearing to contradict myself. I feel very strongly
the tie between my earlier and my recent works, but I do not think exactly the way I
thought yesterday. Or rather, my basic idea has not changed, but my thought has
evolved, and my modes of expression have followed my thoughts. I do not repudiate
any of my paintings but there is not one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had
it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.
Finally, if I mention the name of this or that artist it will be to point out how our
manners differ, and it may seem that I am belittling his work. Thus I risk being accused
of injustice towards p_ainters whose aims and results I best understand, or whose accom­
plishments I most appreciate, whereas I will have used them as examples, not to establish
my superiority over them, but to show more clearly, through what they have done, \vhat
I am attempting to do.16

What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a
certain technical ability but that all the same my ambition is limited, and does not go
beyond the purely visual satisfaction such as can be obtained from looking at a picture. 1 7
But the thought of a painter must not be considered as separate from his pictorial means,
 2 Notes of a Painter, I9o8
for the thought is worth no more than its expression by the means, which must be more
complete (and by complete I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am
unable to distinguish between the feeling I have about life and my way of translating it.lS
Expression, for me, does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested
by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive : the place
occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has
its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements
at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible
and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is
not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its
entirety : any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of
the spectator.
Composition, the aim of which should be expression, is modified according to the
surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of a given size, my drawing will have a
necessary relationship to its format. I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of
different proportions, for example, rectangular instead of square. Nor should I be satis­
fied with a mere enlargement, had I to transfer the drawing to a sheet the same shape,
but ten times larger. A drawing must have an expansive force which gives life to the
things around it. An artist who wants to transpose a composition from one canvas to
another larger one must conceive it anew in order to preserve its expression ; he must
alter its character and not just square it up onto the larger canvas.19

Both harmonies and dissonances of colour can produce agreeable effects. Often when I
start to work I record fresh and superficial sensations during the first session. A few years
ago I was sometimes satisfied with the result. But today if I were satisfied with this, now
that I think I can see further, my picture would have a vagueness in it : I should have
recorded the fugitive sensations of a moment which could not completely define my
feelings and which I should barely recognize the next day. 2o
I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which makes a painting. I
might be satisfied with a work done at one sitting, but I would soon tire of it ; therefore,
I prefer to rework it so that later I may recognize it as representative of my state of mind. 21
There was a time when I never left my paintings hanging on the wall because they re­
minded me of moments of over-excitement and I did not like to see them again when I
was calm. Nowadays I try to put serenity into my pictures and re-work them as long as I
have not succeeded.
Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm,
but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body
by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must
eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more
fully human. The charm will be less striking since it will not be the sole quality of the
painting, but it will not exist less for its being contained within the general conception
of the figure. 22

Charm, lightness, freshness-such fleeting sensations. I have a canvas on which the

colours are still fresh and I begin to work on it again. The tone will no doubt become
duller. I will replace my original tone with one of greater density, an improvement, but
less seductive to the eye. ·

The Impressionist painters, especially Mopet and Sisley, had delicate sensations, quite
close to each other : as a result their canvases all look alike. The word 'impressionism'
perfectly characterizes their style, for they register fleeting impressions. It is not an
appropriate designation for certain more recent painters who avoid the first impression,
2 Notes of a Painter, I908 37

and consider it almost dishonest. A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one
moment of its existence [duree]. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to
risk losing charm in order to obtain greater stability.
Underlying this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of
beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can
search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may
give to reality a more lasting interpretation. When we go into the seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century sculpture rooms in the Louvre and look, for example, at a Puget,
we can see that the expression is forced and exaggerated to the point of being disquieting.
It is quite a different matter if we go to the Luxembourg ; the attitude in which the sculp­
tors catch their models is always the one in which the development of the members and
tensions of the muscles will be shown to greatest advantage. And yet movement thus
understood corresponds to nothing in nature : when we capture it by surprise in a snap­
shot, the resulting image reminds us of nothing that we have seen. 23 Movement seized
while it is going on is meaningful to us only if we do not isolate the present sensation
either from that which precedes it or that which follows it.
There are two ways of expressing things ; one is to show them crudely, the other is to
evoke them through art. By removing oneself from the literal representation of movement
one attains greater beauty and grandeur. Look at an Egyptian statue : it looks rigid to us,
yet we sense in it the image of a body capable of movement and which, despite its rigidity,
is animated. The Greeks too are calm: a man hurling a discus will be caught at the
moment in which he gathers his strength, or at least, if he is shown in the most strained
and precarious position implied by his action, the sculptor will have epitomized and
condensed it so that equilibrium is re-established, thereby suggesting the idea of duration.
Movement is in itself unstable and is not suited to something durable like a statue, unless
the artist is aware of the entire action of which he represents only a moment.24

I must precisely define the character of the object or of the body that I wish to paint.
To do so, I study my method very closely : If I put a black dot on a sheet of white paper,
the dot will be visible no matter how far away I hold it : it is a clear notation. But beside
this dot I place another one, and then a third, and already there is confusion. In order
for the first dot to maintain its value I must enlarge it as I put other marks on the paper.
If upon a white canvas I set down some sensations of blue, of green, of red, each new
stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I have to paint an
interior : I have before me a cupboard ; it gives me a sensation of vivid red, and I put
down a red which satisfies me. A relation is established between this red and the white
of the canvas. Let me put a green near the red, and make the floor yellow ; and again
there will be relationships between the green or yellow and the white of the canvas
which will satisfy me. But these different tones mutually weaken one another. It is
necessary that the various marks I use be balanced so that they do not destroy each other.
To do this I must organize my ideas ; the relationship between the tones must be such
that it will sustain and not destroy them. A new combination of colours will succeed the
first and render the -totality of my representation. I am forced to transpose until finally
my picture may seem completely changed when, after successive modifications, the red
has succeeded the green as the dominant colour. I cannot copy nature in a servile way ;
I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the
relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colours, a
harmony analogous to that of a musical composition. 25
For me all is in the conception. I must therefore have a clear vision of the whole from
the beginning. I could mention a great sculptor26 who gives us some admirable pieces :
but for him a composition is merely a grouping of fragments, which results in a confusion
 2 Notes of a Painter, I908
of expression. Look instead at one of Cezanne's pictures : all is so well arranged that no
matter at what distance you stand or how many figures are represented you will always
be able to distinguish each figure clearly and to know which limb belongs to which body.
If there is order and clarity in the picture, it means that from the outset this same order
'
and clarity existed in the mind of the painter, or that the painter was conscious of their
necessity. Limbs may cross and intertwine, but in the eyes of the spectator they will
nevertheless remain attached to and help to articulate the right body : all confusion has
disappeared.

The chief function of colour should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down
my tones without a preconceived plan. If at first, and perhaps without my having been
conscious of it, one tone has particularly seduced or caught me, more often than not once
the picture is finished I will notice that I have respected this tone while I progressively
altered and transformed all the others. The expressive aspect of colours imposes itself
on me in a purely instinctive way. To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remem­
ber what colours suit this season, I will be inspired only by the sensation that the season
arouses in me : the icy purity of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as
the nuances of foliage. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm
like a continuation of summer, or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon-yellow trees that
give a chilly impression and already announce winter.
My choice of colours does not rest on any scientific theory ; it is based on observation,
on sensitivity, on felt experiences.27 Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like
Signac is preoccupied with complementary colours, and the theoretical knowledge of
them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down
colours which render my sensation. There is an impelling proportion of tones that may
lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have
achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep
on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relation­
ships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture with­
out having to repaint it entirely.
In reality, I think that the very theory of complementary colours is not absolute. In
studying the paintings of artists whose knowledge of colours depends upon instinct and
feeling, and on a constant analogy with their sensations, one could define certain laws of
colour and so broaden the limits of colour theory as it now defined.
I

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure. It is
that which best permits me to express my almost religious awe towards life. I do not insist
upon all the details of the face, on setting them down one-by-one with anatomical ex­
actitude. If I have an Italian model who at first appearance suggests nothing but a purely
animal existence, I nevertheless discover his essential qualities, I penetrate amid the lines
of the face those which suggest the deep gravity which persists in every human being.
A work of art must carry within itself its complete significance and impose that upon the
beholder even before he recognizes the subject matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at
Padua I do not trouble myself to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before
me, but I immediately understand the sentiment which emerges from it, for it is in the
lines, the composition, the colour. The titl� will only serve to confirm my impression. 28
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or
depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the business­
man as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind,
something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
Often a discussion arises as to the value of different processes, and their relationship
 2 Notes of a Painter, I908 39
t o different temperaments. A distinction i s made between painters who work directly
from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Personally, I think neither
of these methods must be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Both may be used in
turn by the same individual, either because he needs contact with objects in order to
receive sensations that will excite his creative faculty, or his sensations are already organ­
ized. In either case he will be able to arrive at that totality which constitutes a picture.
In any event I think that one can judge the vitality and power of an artist who, after
having received impressions directly from the spectacle of nature, is able to organize his
sensations to continue his work in the same frame of mind on different days, and to
develop these sensations ; this power proves he is sufficiently master of himself to subj ect
himself to discipli ne.29

(
The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself. If he
fears the banal he cannot avoid it by appearing strange, or going in for bizarre drawing
and eccentric colour. His means of expression must derive almost of necessity from his
temperament. He must have the humility of mind to believe that he has painted only
what he has seen. I like Chardin's way of expressing it : 'I apply colour until there is a
resemblance.' Or Cezanne's : 'I want to secure a likeness' , or Rodin's : ' Copy nature 1 '
Leonardo said : 'He who can copy can create.' Those who work i n a preconceived style,
deliberately turning their backs on nature, miss the truth. An artist must recognize, when
he is reasoning, that his picture is an artifice ; but when he is painting, he should feel
that he has copied nature. And even when he departs from nature, he must do it with the
conviction that it is only to interpret her more fully. 30
Some may say that other views on painting were expected from a painter, and that
I have only come out with platitudes. To this I shall reply that there are no new truths.
The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often
repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make
his own when he has grasped their deepest significance. If aviators had to explain to
us the research which led to their leaving earth and rising in the air, they would merely
confirm very elementary principles of physics neglected by less successful inventors.
· An artist always profits from information about himself, and I am glad to have learned
what is my weak point. M. Peladan in the Revue Hebdomadaire reproaches a certain
number of painters, amongst whom I think I should place myself, for calling thems elves
'Fauves' , and yet dressing like everyone else, so that they are no more noticeable than
the floor-walkers in a department store.3 1 Does genius count for so little? If it were only
a question of myself that would set M. Peladan's mind at ease, tomorrow I would call
myself Sar and dress like a necromancer. 32
In the same article this excellent writer claims that I do not paint honestly, and I
would be justifiably angry if he had not qualified his statement by saying, ' I mean
honestly with respect to the ideal and the rules.'33 The trouble is that he does not mention
where these rules are. I am willing to have them exist, but were it possible to learn them
what sublime artists we would have 1
Rules have no existence outside of individuals : otherwise a good professor would be as
great a genius as Racine. Any one of us is capable of repeating fine maxims, but fe\v can
also penetrate their meaning. I am ready to admit that from a study of the works of
Raphael or Titian a more complete set of rules can be drawn than from the works of
Manet or Renoir, but the rules followed by Manet and Renoir were those which suited
their temperaments and I prefer the most minor of their paintings to all the work of
those who are content to imitate the Venus of Urbino or the Madonna of the Goldfinch.
These latter are of no value to anyone, for whether we want to or not, we belong to our
time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions. All artists bear the
imprint of their time, but the great artists are those in whom this is most profoundly
 3 Statement on Photography, zgo8
marked. Our epoch for instance is better represented by Courbet than by Flandrin, by
Rodin better than by Fremiet. Whether we like it or not, however insistently we call
ourselves exiles, between our period and ourselves an indissoluble bond is established,
and M. Peladan himself cannot escape it. The aestheticians of the future may perhaps
use his books as evidence if they get it in their heads to prove that no one of our time
understood anything about the art of Leonardo da Vinci.

3
Statement on Photography ) I go8•

In 1 908 Alfred Stieglitz's magazine Camera Work solicited views on photography from several
painters. Although Matisse's statement may seem at first to relate directly to an aesthetic of
photography (' documentary' as opposed to 'contrived' or 'studio' ) , it is really concerned with
Matisse's views about penetrating nature, since he sees photography primarily as yet another
way of approaching the study of nature. 2 In this, as in many other instances, nature may be
equated with 'external reality'.

STATEMENT ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography can provide the most precious documents existing and no one can contest
its value from that point of view. If it is practised by a man of taste, the photograph will
have an appearance of art. But I believe that it is not of any importance in what style
they have been produced ; photographs will always be impressive because they show us
nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must
therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective
charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects. By trying to add to it
he may give the result the appearance of an echo of a different process . Photography
should register and give us documents. 3
 4
)
Sarah Stein s Notes ) r go8 1

Sarah Stein (Mrs. Michael Stein) was a close friend of Matisse and studied in his school, which
she helped to organize during 1 908. She took careful notes on Matisse's advice to the class and
to individuals within the class. These notes were first published by Alfred H. Barr, and are
reprinted here as edited by him.
The programme of study at Matisse's school was quite traditional, consisting of drawing and
painting from plaster casts and from the model, still-life, and modelling clay. At the height of
his interest in the school, Matisse came every Saturday to give criticism, the usual practice of
professors when he had himself been a student. The emphasis was on 'adhering to nature and
trying to portray it with exactness. In the beginning you must subject yourself totally to her
influence . . . . You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking a tight­
rope l' 2 In the approach to the model, there are also some striking analogies with Academic
drawing practice of the 1 89os.a Yet Matisse' s teaching also was tempered by his own breadth of
understanding, and was not moribund.
Matisse's advice to his students seems to have three basic aspects : advice on how to perceive
nature more fully, advice on how to go about constructing a picture, and general advice about
the purpose of the work of art, especially in relation to nature. In helping his students to
perceive more fully what was presented to their eyes, Matisse used both analytic and synthetic
methods. A good deal of his advice has to do with the analysis of form ; for example he speaks
of an Antique head as a ball. In some cases, as in his discussion of the analysis of the model, he
takes a functional approach : 'Remember the foot is a bridge, the pelvis fits into the thighs to
form an amphora.' He stresses not only visual analysis but also what might be called emphatic
analysis, as when he advises the student to assume the pose of the model himself, for the key of
the movement is where the strain comes. He is very much concerned with the poetry of the
vision of his students ; they must have true sensitivity to see the resemblance of a calf to a
beautiful vase form. Matisse evidently was concerned with imbuing his students with a poetry
of vision comparable to his own.
0 Matisse's advice on the construction of paintings is very similar to his own methods of
construction ; as in his own paintings, he stresses the importance of order, of colour and of
unity. This unity, he advises, should be above all a unity of colour : ' Construct by relations of
colour ; close and distant-equivalents of the relations that you see upon the model.' This idea
of 'equivalence' , which is so important to Matisse' s own paintings, he also stresses for students :
'You are representing the model, or any other subject, not copying it ; there can be no colour
relations between it and your picture ; it is the relation between the colours in your picture
which are the equivalent of the relation between the colours in your model that must be con­
sidered.'
In terms of the general aesthetic outlook that he tried to communicate to his students,
Matisse's comments are very revealing. He notes, for example, that while in the Antique, full ­
ness of form results in unity and repose of the spirit, in the moderns we often find a passionate
 4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I9o8
expression and realization of certain parts at the expense of others ; hence, a lack of unity,
consequent weakness, and a troubling of the spirit. This is not very far from the outlook
expressed in 'Notes of a Painter'. He remarks also that the great periods of art concern them­
selves with the essentials of form while decadent periods dwell on small detail (a prejudice no
doubt stemming from his implicit criticism of nineteenth-century Academic French painting),
and also advises his students to let the model awaken ideas and not simply to agree with a pre­
conceived theory or effect. As has been seen in 'Notes of a Painter', Matisse was at this time
himself very much concerned with avoiding formulas.
Matisse's advice to his students is remarkably close to his own aims, and within the context of
those aims his advice seems extremely sound. It is general enough to give the student sufficient
leeway to follow his own personality, and is in fact specifically aimed at not feeding the student
preconceived theories and ideas, a pedagogical attitude he may well have derived from
Gustave Moreau.

SARAH STEIN 'S NOTES

DRAWING

('' Study of Greek and Roman sculpture

The antique, above all, will help you to realize the fullness of form. I see this torso as a
single form first. Without this, none of your divisions, however characteristic, count.
In the antique, all the parts have been equally considered. The result is unity, and repose
of the spirit.
In the moderns, we often find a passionate expression and realization of certain parts
at the expense of others ; hence, a lack of unity, consequent weakness, and a troubling of
the spirit.
This helmet, which has its movement, covers these locks of hair, which have their
movement. Both were of equal importance to the artist and are perfectly realized. See it
also as a decorative motive, an ornament-the scrolls of the shoulders covered by the
circle of the head.
In the antique, the head is a ball upon which the features are delineated. These
eyebrows are like the wings of a butterfly preparing for flight.

Study of the mo del

Remember that a foot is a bridge. Consider these feet in the ensemble. When the model
has very slender legs they must show by their strength of construction that they can
support the body. You never doubt that the tiny legs of a sparrow can support its body.
This straight leg goes through the torso and meets the shoulder as it were at a right angle.
The other leg, on which the model is also standing, curves out and down like a flying
buttress of a cathedral, and does similar work. It is an academy rule that the shoulder
of the leg upon which the body mainly is resting is always lower than the other.4
Arms are like rolls of clay, but the forearms are also like cords, for they can be twisted.
These folded hands are lying there quietly like the hoop-handle of a basket that has been
gradually lowered upon its body to a place of rest.
This pelvis fits into the thighs and suggests an amphora. Fit your parts into one another
and build up your figure as a carpenter does a house. Everything must be constructed­
built up of parts that make a unit : a tree like a human body, a human body like a
4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I908 43
cathedraLS To one's work one must bring knowledge, much contemplation of the model
or other subject, and the imagination to enrich what one sees. Close your eyes and hold
the vision, and then do the work with your own sensibility. If it be a model assume the
pose of the model yourself; where the strain comes is the key of the movement.
You must not see the parts so prosaically that the resemblance of this calf to a beautiful
vase-form, one line covering the other as it were, does not impress you. Nor should the
fullness and olive-like quality of this extended upper arm escape you. I do not say that
you should not exaggerate, but I do say that your exaggeration should be in accordance
with the character of the model-not a meaningless exaggeration which only carries you
away from the particular expression that you are seeking to establish. 6
See from the first your proportions, and do not lose them. But proportions according
to correct measurement are after all but very little unless confirmed by sentiment, and
expressive of the particular physical character of the model. When the model is young,
make your model young. Note the essential characteristics of the model carefully ; they
must exist in the complete work, otherwise you have lost your concept on the way.
The mechanics of construction is the establishment of the oppositions which create
the equilibrium of the directions. It was in the decadent periods of art that the artist's
chief interest lay in developing the small forms and details. In all great periods the
essentials of form, the big masses and their relations, occupied him above all other
considerations-as in the antique. He did not elaborate until that was established. Not
that the antique does not show the sensibility of the artist which we sometimes attribute
only to the moderns ; it is there, but it is better controlled.
All things have their decided physical character-for instance a square and a rectangle.
But an undecided, indefinite form can express neither one. Therefore exaggerate accord­
ing to the definite character for expression. You may consider this Negro model as a
cathedral, built up of parts which form a solid, noble, towering construction-and as a
lobster, because of the shell-like, tense muscular parts which fit so accurately and
evidently into one another, with joints only large enough to hold their bones. But from
time to time it is very necessary for you to remember that he is a Negro and not lose him
and yourself in your construction.
We have agreed that forearms, like cords, can be twisted. In this case much of the
character of the pose is due to these forearms being tied tight in a knot, as it were, not
loosely interlaced. Notice how high upon the chest they lie ; this adds to the determination
and nervous strength of the pose. Don't hesitate to make his head round, and let it outline
itself against the background. It is round as a ball, and black.
One must always search for the desire of the line, where it wishes to enter or where to
die away. Also always be sure of its source ; this must be done from the mode1.7 To feel
a central line in the direction of the general movement of the body and build about that
is a great aid. Depressions and contours may hurt the volume. If an egg be conceived as
a form, a nick will not hurt it ; but if as a contour, it certainly will suffer. In the same
way an arm is always first of all a round form, whatever its shades of particular character.
Draw your large masses first. The lines between abdomen and thigh may have to be
exaggerated to give _decision to the form in an upright pose. The openings may be
serviceable as correctives. Remember, a line cannot exist alone ; it always brings a com­
panion along. Do remember that one line does nothing ; it is only in relation to another
that it creates a volume. And do make the two together.
Give the round form of the parts, as in sculpture. Look for their volume and fullness.
Their contours must do this. In speaking of a melon one uses both hands to express it
by a gesture, and so both lines defining a form must determine it. Drawing is like an
expressive gesture, but it has the advantage of permanency. A drawing is a sculpture,
but it has the advantage that it can be viewed closely enough for one to detect suggestions
44 4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I908
of form that must be much more definitely expressed in a sculpture which must carry
from a distance. 8
One must never forget the constructive lines, axes of shoulders and pelvis ; nor of legs,
arms, neck, and head. This building up of the form gives its essential expression. Particular
characteristics may always heighten the effect, but the construction must exist first.
No lines can go wild ; every line must have its function. This one carries the torso
up to the arm ; note how it does it. All the lines must close around a center ; otherwise
your drawing cannot exist as a unit, for these fleeing lines carry the attention away­
they do not arrest it.
With the circle of brows, shoulders, pelvis and feet one can almost entirely construct
one's drawing, certainly indicate its character.
It is important to include the whole of the model in your drawing, to decide upon the
place for the top of the head and base of the feet, and make your work remain within these
limits. The value of this experience in the further study of composition is quite evident.
Do remember that a curved line is more easily and securely established in its character
by contrast with the straight one which so often accompanies it. The same may be said
of the straight line. If you see all forms round they soon lose all character. The lines must
play in harmony and return, as in music. You may flourish about and embroider, but
you must return to your theme in order to establish the unity essential to a work of art.9
This fopt resting upon the model stand makes a line as sharp and straight as a cut.
Give this feature its importance. That slightly drooping bulge of flesh is just a trifle
that may be added, but the line alone counts in the character of the pose. Remember that
the foot encircles the lower leg and do not make it a silhouette, even in drawing the profile.
The leg fits into the body at the ankle[?] ,lO and the heel comes up around the ankle.
Ingres said, 'Never in drawing the head omit the ear.' If I do not insist upon this I do
remind you that the ear adds enormously to the character of the head, and that it is very
important to express it carefully and fully, not to suggest it with a dab. ll
A shaded drawing requires shading in the background to prevent its looking like a
silhouette cut out and pasted on white paper.

S CULPTURE
The joints, like wrists, ankles, knees and elbows must show that they can support the
limbs-especially when the limbs are supporting the body. And in cases of poses resting
upon a special limb, arm or leg, the joint is better when exaggerated than underexpressed.
Above all, one must be careful not to cut the limb at the joints, but to have the joints
an inherent part of the limb. The neck must be heavy enough to support the head (in
the case of a Negro statue where the head was large and the neck slender and the chin
was resting upon the hands, which gave additional support to the head).
The model must not be made to agree with a preconceived theory or effect. It must
impress you, awaken in you an emotion, which in turn you seek to express. You must
forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really
your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the
subject.
It can only help you to realize before beginning that this model, for instance, had a
large pelvis sloping up to rather narrow shoulders and down through the full thighs to
the lower legs-suggesting an egg-like form beautiful in volume. The hair of the model
describes a protecting curve and gives a repetition that is a completion.12
Your imagination is thus stimulated to help the plastic conception of the model before
you begin. This leg, but for the accident of the curve of the calf, would describe a longer,
slenderer ovoid form ; and this latter form must be insisted upon, as in the antiques, to
aid the unity of the figure.
 4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I908 45
Put in no holes that hurt the ensemble, as between thumb and fingers lying at the side.
Express by masses in relation to one another, and large sweeps of line in interrelation.
One must determine the characteristic form of the different parts of the body and the
direction of the contours which will give this form. In a man standing erect all the parts
must go in a direction to aid that sensation. The legs work up into the torso, which clasps
down over them. It must have a spinal column. One can divide one's work by opposing
lines (axes) which gives the direction of the parts and thus build up the body in a manner
that at once suggests its general character and movement.13
In addition to the sensations one derives from a drawing, a sculpture must invite us
to handle it as an object ; just so the sculptor must feel, in making it, the particular
demands for volume and mass. The smaller the bit of sculpture, the more the essentials
of form must exist.

PAINTING
When painting, first look long and well at your model or subject, and decide on your
general color scheme. This must prevail. In painting a landscape you choose it for certain
beauties-spots of color, suggestions of composition. Close your eyes and visualize the
picture ; then go to work, always keeping these characteristics the important features of
the picture. And you must at once indicate all that you would have in the complete work.
All must be considered in interrelation during the process-nothing can be added.
One must stop from time to time to consider the subject (model, landscape, etc.) in
its ensemble. What you are aiming for, above all, is unity.
Order above all, in color. Put three or four touches of color that you have understood,
upon the canvas ; add another, if you can-if you can't set this canvas aside and begin
aga1n.
Construct by relations of color, close and distant-equivalents of the relations that
l
you see upon the model.
You are representing the model, or any other subject, not copying it ; and there can
be no color relations between it and your picture ; it is the relation between the colors
in your picture which are the equivalent of the relation between the colors in your
model that must be considered.
I have always sought to copy the model ; often very important considerations have
prevented my doing so. In my studies I decided upon a background color and a general
color for the model. Naturally these were tempered by demands of atmosphere, harmony
of the background and model, and unity in the sculptural quality of the model.
Nature excites the imagination to representation. But one must add to this the spirit
of the landscape in order to help its pictorial quality. Your composition should indicate
the more or less entire character of these trees, even though the exact number you have
chosen would not accurately express the landscape.

Still life
In still life, painting consists in translating the relations of the objects of the subject
by an understanding of the different qualities of colors and their interrelations.
When the eyes beoome tired and the rapports seem all wrong, just look at an object.
'But this brass is yellow I' Frankly put a yellow ochre, for instance on a light spot, and
start out from there freshly again to reconcile the various parts.
__) To copy the objects in a still life is nothing ; one must render the emotion they awaken
in him. The emotion of the ensemble, the interrelation of the objects, the specific char­
acter of every object-modified by its relation to the others-all interlaced like a cord
or a serpent.
The tear-like quality of this slender, fat-bellied vase-the generous volume of this
 4 Sarah Stein's Notes, I9o8
copper-must touch you. A still life is as difficult as an antique and the proportions of
the various parts as important as the proportions of the head or the hands, for instance,
of the antique.

CRITICISM (remarks addressed to individual students)

This manner of yours is a system, a thing of the hand, not of the spirit. Your figure
seems bounded by wires. Surely Monet, who called all but the people who worked in
dots and commas wire-draughtsmen, would not approve of you-and this time he would
be right.
·

In this instance the dark young Italian model against a steel-gray muslin background
suggests in your palette rose against blue. Choose two points : for instance, the darkest
and lightest spot of the subject-in this case the model's black hair and the yellow straw
of the stool. Consider every additional stroke in addition to these.
This black skirt and white underskirt find their equivalent-in your scheme-in
ultramarine blue with dark cobalt violet (as black), and emerald green and white. Now
the model is a pearly, opalescent color all over. I should take vermilion and white for this
lower thigh, and for this calf-cooler but the same tone-garance and white. For this
prominence of the back of the forearm, cool but very bright, white tinged with emerald
green, which you do not see as any particular color now that it is placed.
Your black skirt and red blouse, on the model stand, become an emerald green (pure)
and vermilion-not because green is the complementary of red, but because it is suffici­
ently far away from red to give the required rapport. The hair must also be emerald
green, but this green appears quite different from the former.
You must make your color follow the form as your drawing does-therefore your
vermilion and white in this light should turn to garance and white in this cooler shadow.
For this leg is round, not broken as by a corner.
Thick paint does not give light ; you must have the proper color-combination. For
instance, do not attempt to strengthen your forms with high lights. It is better to make
the background in the proper relation to support them. You need red to make your blue
and yellow count. But put it where it helps, not hurts-in the background, perhaps.
In this sketch, commencing with the clash of the black hair, although your entire figure
is in gradation from it, you must close your harmony with another chord-say the line
of this foot.
There are many ways of painting. You seem to be falling between two stools, one
considering color as warm and cool, the other, seeking light through the opposition of
colors. Had you not better employ the former method alone? Then your blue background
will require a warmer shadow ; and this warm, black head against it, a warmer tone than
this dark blue you have chosen. Your model stand will take a warmer lighter tone ; it
looks like pinkish, creamy silk in relation to the greenish wallpaper.
Cezanne used blue to make his yellow tell, but he used it with the discrimination, as
he did in all other cases, that no one else has shown.
The N eo-Impressionists took different centers of light-for instance, a yellow and a
green-put blue around the yellow, red around the green, and graded the blue into the
red through purple, etc.
I express variety of illumination through an understanding of the differences in the
values of colors, alone and in relation. In this still life,· an understanding of cadmium
green and white, emerald green and white, and garance and white, give three different
tones which construct the various planes of the table-front, top, and the wall back of it.
There is no shadow under this high light ; this vase remains in the light, but the high
light and the light beneath it must be in the proper color relation.
 5
1
Estie nne : In terview with Ma tisse) 1 909

In April 1909 Charles Estienne published an interview with Matisse as part of a newspaper
series on modern art. This interview is of particular interest because it reflects some of Matisse's
immediate concerns at the time, as well as his stature ( 'leader of a school'), that led him to speak
of modern painting partly in terms of 'we'. Although Matisse dwells upon the general synthetic
aspect of modern painting in these terms, he changes to the first person singular when he begins
to elaborate the subtle but distinct definition of his own attitude.
Most of this elaboration parallels 'Notes of a Painter' , with only a few minor changes in
wording. The passages that he repeats are significant, however, in that they seem to sum up the
core of his theory at the time : the condensation of sensations which constitutes a painting.
This restatement of the ideas in 'Notes of a Painter' , less than four months after its publication,
gave Matisse the opportunity, in addressing himself to a larger if less sophisticated audience,
to underline the most essential aspects of his theory. And also to side-step the image of a
painting being like a good armchair, a phrase which he here omits from his repetition of that
passage from 'Notes of a Painter'.

INTERVIEW WITH MATISSE

It is with all impartiality that we institute here several interviews on the plastic arts and
their current development, and more directly on painting, for it is in this domain of art
that experiments seem the most daring and the most debatable.
A new spirit has begun to flow through all the arts during the past twenty years.
We have had Symbolism, after Naturalism, for poetry and literature ; we have lately
heard talk of 'music of the future' and this music has become, I believe, that of today ;
the revolutionary ferment is now in painting.
We are not setting out to state our preferences here. vVe admit and quite understand
that these new tendencies are provoking a resounding censure. Above all, \vhat we are
investigating, for the edification of the public, are the arguments, the motives, the vital
explanations.
To ask about these, - we went to M. Henri- Matisse, who is considered, one cannot ignore
it, the leader of a school, and whose works are among those which have aroused the
harshest criticism.
M. Henri-Matisse answered us with a readiness that well indicates that the motives
he gives us are his customary ones. Hence, he did not express them by random conversa­
tion, as one might imagine. This painter, of whom it is too easily said that he mocks the
world, has a thoughtful and curious conception of his art, which he has already stated, at
the inducement of M. Georges Desvallieres, in the Grand Revue follo\ving the last
Salon d'Automne.
 5 Estienne: Interview with Matisse, I909
'I related in Notes of a Painter', he said to me, 'several of my ideas ; but what I am going
to say to you will be more formal and more complete.'
First of all, M. Matisse harbours no resentment toward the public for its incompre­
hension : never, according to him, is the artist entirely understood by the majority ; nor
even by the mean. Is he even by his peers ? Formidable question ! The poet like the
musician, the sculptor like the painter, must undergo this almost total impossibility. But
the qu�li�y of the work of art operates little by little, without the knowledge of men,
and this Influence obliges them one day to attest the truth.2
'We are leaving the Realist movement,' said M. Henri-Matisse. 'It has amassed the
raw materials. They are there. We must now begin the enormous job of organization.
'What did the Realists do, and the Impressionists ? They copied nature. All their art
has its roots in truth, in exactitude of representation. It is a completely objective art, an
art of unfeeling-one might say of recording for the pleasure of it. And yet, what compli­
cations are behind this apparent simplicity ! Impressionist painting-and I know, having
come from there-teems with contradictory sensations, it is a state of agitation.
'We want something else. We work toward serenity through simplification of ideas
and of form. The ensemble is our only ideal. Details lessen the purity of the lines and
harm the emotional intensity ; we reject them.
'It is a question of learning-and perhaps relearning-a linear script ; then, probably
after us, will come the literature.'
(The reader should understand the word literature to mean a mode of pictorial
illustration.)
'The painter no longer has to preoccupy himself with details,' continues M. Henri­
Matisse. 'The photograph is there to render the multitude of details a hundred times better
and more quickly. Plastic form will present emotion as directly as possible and by the
simplest means.
'The object of painting is no longer narrative description, since that is in books.
'We have a higher conception of it.
'By it, the artist expresses his interior visions.
'I take from nature what I need, an expression sufficiently eloquent to suggest my
thoughts. I painstakingly combine all effects, balancing them in rendering and in colour,
and I don't attain this condensation, to which everything contributes, even the size of
the canvas, at the first shot. It is a long process of reflection and amalgamation. Suppose
I want to paint a woman's body : first of all I mirror her form in my mind, I imbue
it with grace and charm ; then I must give something more. I will condense the mean­
ing of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first
glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader
meaning, one more fully human. The charm will be less striking since it will no longer
be the sole quality of the painting, but it will not exist less for its being contained within
the general conception of the figure.'3
That is formal, and this is no less so :
'A picture is a slow elaboration. A first sitting notes down fresh, superficial sensations.
A few years ago I was sometimes satisfied with the result. But today if I were satisfied
with this now that I think I can see further, my picture would have a vagueness in it,
I should have recorded rapid, momentary sensations which cannot completely define
my feelings, and which I should barely recognize the next day. I want to reach that state
of condensation which makes a painting. I might be satisfied with a work done at one
sitting, but I would quickly tire of it ; therefore, I prefer to rework it so that later I may
recognize it as representative of my state of mind. There was a time when I never
left my paintings hanging on the wall because they reminded me of moments of
over-excitement and I did not like to see them when I had again become calm.
 5 Estienne : Interview with Matisse, I909 49
Nowadays I try to put serenity into my pictures and re-work them as long as I have not
succeeded. '4
Here Matisse sounds like Puvis de Chavannes ; for him painting is an appeal to reflec­
tion, to serenity. It should be restful, and this feeling should be reached by the simplest
possible means ; three colours for a large panel of the dance : azure for the sky ; pink for
the figures ; green for the hill where the Muses dance. 5
And how does he compose? I believe I understood it by an example he gave me :
'I have to decorate a staircase. It has three floors. I imagine a visitor coming in from
the outside. There is the first floor. One must summon up energy, give a feeling of light­
ness. My first panel represents the dance, that whirling round on top of the hill. On the
second floor one is now within the house ; in its silence I see a scene of music with en­
grossed participants ; finally, the third floor is completely calm and I paint a scene of
repose : some people reclining on the grass, chatting or daydreaming. I shall obtain this
by the simplest and most reduced means ; those which permit the painter pertinently to
express all of his interior vision. 6
'What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or
depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the
businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on
the mind, something which provides relaxation from fatigues and toil.' 7
This conception is logical and acceptable. To interpret this, the artist goes back
beyond the Renaissance to the image-makers of the Middle Ages, ingenuous as weU as
ingenious, and farther in the past, to Hindu and Persian art. Is he on the right path, or
does he err? Too many contingencies assail us on all sides to allow us these certainties.
The testimony of time, of the works, will outweigh our present speculations.

T . MacChesney:
Clara
A Talk with Matisse) 1 9 1 2 1
The stir which greeted the New York Armory Show of modem art (17 February to 1 5 March
191 3 ) is by now legendary. Matisse, who was well represented (by thirteen paintings, three
drawings and a sculpture), was vehemently attacked by the conservatives. The New York
Times, 23 February 191 3 , for example, said of him : 'We may as well say in the first place that
his pictures are ugly, that they are coarse, that they are narrow, that to us they are revolting in
their inhumanity' . And when the show moved to the Art Institute of Chicago, the art students
at the Institute held a protest meeting and burned in effigy Matisse's Nu blue (Figure x8).
A week before the New York show closed, the New York Times Magazine published the
following interview with Matisse, by the journalist Clara T. M ac Chesney. The actual interview
appears to have taken place during the summ er of 191 2. Despite the (often amusing) in­
accuracies and confusions in MacChesney's reportage, her awkward translations from French,
so 5 Clara T. MacChesney : A Talk with Matisse, I9I2
and her evident ignorance of art, the statements by Matisse appear to be authentic and fairly
accurate. This interview is of enormous interest, as it reveals Matisse quite consciously
addressing a lay audience (indeed an ignorant and antagonistic lay audience) ; and it also provides
a description of Matisse's working arrangements at this time.
Matisse was never an enfant terrible ; he was always very serious about his art and anxious to
be understood. Thus he is not daunted by the obtuseness of his int e rvie we r, and states quite
directly, if somewhat simply, the aims and problems of his art. It is interesting to note his stress
on technical competence (the answer to the tired old question of 'but can he draw?') and on his
extensive preparation and training as an artist.

A TALK WITH MATISSE

In speaking of the different post-Impressionists, it is always Matisse's name which
heads the list. At first it was a name which to many suggested the most violent extremes
in art ; it was spoken of with bated breath, and even horror, or with the most uproarious
ridicule. But time has converted many, even of our most conservative critics and art
lovers, to his point of view. One says : ' He is a recluse in revolt, a red radical, whose aim
is not to overturn pomps, but to escape from them. He discards traditions, and seeks
the elemental,' and 'he paints as a child might have painted in the dawn of art, seeing
only the essentials in form and color.'
Five of his canvases were placed before me by a Paris dealer last Summer, 2 and
arranged in chronological order. The first was an ordinary still life, painted in an ordinary
manner. The next two were landscapes, broader and looser in treatment, higher in key,
showing decidedly the influence of the Impressionists. The last two I studied long and
seriously, but I failed absolutely to discover what they expressed-still-life, landscapes,
or portraits.
Thus it was with keen interest that I sought this much-ridiculed man, whose work is
the common topic of many heated arguments today. Mter an hour's train ride and walk
on a hot June day, I found M. Matisse in a suburb southwest of Paris.a His home, the
ordinary French villa, or country house, two-storied, set in a large and simple garden
and inclosed [sic] by the usual high wall. A ring at the gate brought the gardener, who
led me to the studio, built at one side, among trees, leading up to which were beds of
flaming flowers. The studio, a good-sized square structure, was painted white, within and
without, and had immense windows, (both in the roof and at the side,) thus giving a sense
of out-of-doors and great heat.
A large and simple workroom it was, its walls and easels covered with his large, brilliant,
and extraordinary canvases. M. Matisse himself was a great surprise, for I found not a
long-haired, slovenly dressed, eccentric man, as I had imagined, but a fresh, healthy,
robust blond gentleman, who looked even more German than French, and whose
simple and unaffected cordiality put me directly at my ease. Two dogs lay at our feet,
and, as I recall that hour, my main recollection is of a glare of light, stifling heat, princi­
pally caused by the immense glass windows, open doors, showing glimpses of flowers
beyond, as brilliant and bright-hued as · the walls within ; and a white-bloused man
chasing away the flies which buzzed around us as I questioned him.
'I began at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. When I opened my studio, years after, for some
time I painted just like any one else. But things didn't go at all, and I was very unhappy.
Then, little by little, I began to paint as I felt. One cannot do successful work which
 6 Clara T. MacChesney: A Talk with Matisse, I9I2
has much feeling unless one sees the subject very simply, and one must do this in order
to express one's self as clearly as possible.'
Striving to understat:t d, and failing to admire, a huge, gaudy-hued canvas facing me, I
asked : 'Do you recognize harmony of color?'
Almost with indignation he replied : 'I certainly do think of harmony of color, and of
composition, too. Drawing is for me the art of being able to express myself with line.
When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is draw­
ing, and not emotion. A true artist cannot see color which is not harmonious. Otherwise
it is a mqyen, or recipe. An artist should express his feeling with the harmony or idea
or color which he possesses naturally. He should not copy the walls, or objects on a
table, but he should, above all, express a vision of color, the harmony of which corres­
ponds to his feeling. And, above all, one must be honest with one's self.'
'But just what is your theory on art?' I persisted.
'Well, take that table, for example,' pointing to one near by, on which stood a jar
of nasturtiums. 4 'I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon
·

me.'
After a pause full of intense thought on my part, I asked : 'But if one hasn't always
emotion. What then?'
'Do not paint,' he quickly answered. 'When I came in here to work this morning I
had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had
all the emotion I wanted.'
'What was your art training?' I asked.
'I studied in the schools mornings, and I copied at the Louvre in the afternoons. This
for ten years.'
'What did you copy?' I asked curiously.
'I made a careful copy of La Chasse ("The Hunt") by Carraccio [sic], which was
bought by the Government for the Hotel de Ville, at Grenoble ; and Narcisse, by
Poussin, which was also bought for the provinces. Chardin's large still-life of fish I
worked at for six years and a half, and then left it unfinished. In some cases I gave my
emotional impressions, or personal translations, of the pictures, and these', he said sadly,
'the French Government did not care to buy. It only wants a photographic copy.
'No, I never use pastels or water colors, and I only make studies from models, not
to use in a picture-mais pour me nourrir-to strengthen my knowledge ; and I never
work from a previous sketch or study, but from memory. I now draw with feeling, and
not anatomically. I know how to draw correctly, having studied form for so long.
'I always use a preliminary canvas the same size for a sketch as for a finished picture,
and I always begin with color. With large canvases this is more fatiguing, but more
logical. I may have the same sentiment I obtained in the first, but this lacks solidity, and
decorative sense. I never retouch a sketch : I take a new canvas the same size, as I may
change the composition somewhat. Bu� I always strive to give the same feeling, while
carrying it on further. A picture should, for me, always be decorative. While working I
(_, never try to think, only to feel.'
As he talked he poi_!!ted to two canvases of equal size. The sketch hung on the wall
at my left, and the finished canvas was on an easel before me. They represented nude
figures in action, boldly, flatly, and simply laid in in broad sweeps of vivid local color,
and I saw very little difference between the two.
'Do you teach?' I asked.
'Yes, I have a class of sixty pupils, and I make them draw accurately, as a student always
should do at the beginning. I do not encourage them to work as I do now.' 5
Yet I had heard he was not always successful in this respect.
'I like to model as much as to paint-1 have rio preference. If the search is the same
sz 6 Clara T. MacChesney : A Talk with Matisse, I9I2
when I tire of some medium,' then I turn to the other-and I often make pour me nourrir ; a
copy of an anatomical figure in clay.'
'Tell me,' I said, pointing to an extraordinary lumpy clay study of a nude woman
with limbs of fearful length, 'why-?'
He picked up a small Javanese statue with a head all out of proportion to the body.
'Is not that beautiful?'
'No,' I said boldly. 'I see no beauty when there is lack of proportion. To my mind no
sculpture has ever equaled that of the Greeks, unless it be Michael Angelo's.'
'But there you are, back to the classic, the formal,' he said triumphantly. 'We of to-day
are trying to express ourselves to-day-now-the twentieth century-and not to copy
what the Greeks saw and felt in art over two thousand years ago. The Greek sculptors
f always followed a set, fixed form, and never showed any sentiment. The very early
Greeks and the primitifs only worked from the basis of emotion, but this grew cold, and
disappeared in the following centuries. It makes no difference what are the proportions,
if there is feeling. And if the sculptor who modeled this makes me think only of a dwarf,
then he has failed to express the beauty which should overpower all lack of proportion,
and this is only done through or by means of his emotions.'
Yet I gazed unconvinced at the little figure of a dwarf from Java, for I failed to see
anything of beauty.
'Above all,' he said, struggling with the fly problem, 'the great thing is to express one's
self.'
I thought of a celebrated canvas Matisse once produced of blue tomatoes. 'Why blue?'
he was asked. 'Because I see them that way, and I cannot help it if no one else does,' he
replied.
'Besnard's work? It is full of feeling, but sans naivete. Monet is very big. Cezanne seeks
more the classic. Rafaelli I do not like at all.6 Goya, A. DUrer, Rembrandt, Corot,
Manet are my favorite masters.
'Yes, I often go to the Louvre,' he replied, in answer to my question, asked rather
perfunctorily.
'Whose work do I study the most? Chardin's,' he answered, to my great surprise.
'Why?' I asked curiously, for there is not a trace of that great man's manner in Matisse's
work.
'I go there to study his technique.'
Audible silence.
His palette, lying near by, was a large one, and so chaotic and disorderly were the vivid
colors on it, that a close resemblance could be traced to some of his pictures.
'I never mix much,' he said. 'I use small brushes and never more than twelve
colors.'
'Black?'
'Yes, I use it to cool the blue.'
I pondered on this statement a few moments before asking him if he had traveled
much.
'No, I've only made a trip or two to Germany, and lately to Tangiers in Morocco,
and I've never been to America.
'No ; I seldom paint portraits, and if I do only in a decorative manner. I can see them
in no other way.'
The few hanging on the wall were forceful, boldly, simply executed, and evidently
done in stress of great emotion. An eye, in one canvas, was placed on the right cheek,
and in another one-half of the face was drawn so unpleasantly to one side as to suggest
a paralytic stroke.
One's ideas of the man and of his work are entirely opposed to each other : the latter
 7 Interview with Jacques Guenne, I9Z5 53
abnormal to the last degree, and the man an ordinary, healthy individual, such as one
meets by the dozen every day. On this point Matisse showed some emotion.
'Oh, do tell the American people that I am a normal man ; that I am a devoted husband
and father, that I have three fine children, that I go to the theatre, ride horseback, have
a comfortable home, a fine garden that I love, flowers, etc., just like any man.'
As if to bear out this description of himself, he showed me the salon in his perfectly
normal house, to see a normal copy which he had made at the Louvre, and he bade me
good-bye and invited me to call again like a perfectly normal gentleman.
As I walked down to the station in the blazing sun in the throes of a brain-storm from
all I had seen and heard, Augustus John's opinion of Matisse stood out clear in my mind :
'He has a big idea, but he cannot yet express it.'
M. Matisse sells his canvases as fast as he can paint them, but, if the report is true,
speculators buy the majority. He certainly has the courage of his convictions ; his work is
constructive, and not destructive ; he has many followers, who, unlike him, are not
expressing themselves, but are imitating him. One critic maintains that his work acts
like a sedative to a tired brain, or as an easy chair to a weary toiler home from his day's
work. 7 But I am positive that I should not dare when weary, to sit for long in front of his
'Cathedrals at Rouen'.S
A facetious American asked : 'Are these ruins?' for none of the pillars were perpendicu·
Jar, but standing or falling at all angles to the horizon. She asked the reason of this
apparent intemperance of the pillars and walls and was told : 'Oh, we do not see as you
do ; we are perfectly free, and are bound by no rules, and we see as we please I'

7
Interview with Jacques Guenne, 1 9251

In 1925 Jacques Guenne published an interview with Matisse which was also incorporated
into his essay on Matisse in Portraits d'artistes. The greater part of this interview consists of
autobiographical reminiscences by Matisse which are mainly concerned with his formative
years. These reminiscences not only shed light upon Matisse's attitude to his early training­
a quarter of a century later-but also show his obsession with discipline and reliance on sen­
sations after nature. Furthermore, this interview contains one of Matisse's most striking
observations about the significance and influence of Cezanne upon his own work. Coming at a
time in Matisse's career when he himself was going through a crisis in his art, a transition
from the somewhat loose style of the Nice period to the more austere compositions of the
19JOS, it is interesting to see Matisse's renewed concern with cezanne.
54 7 Interview with Jacques Guenne, I925

INTERVIEW WITH JACQUES GUENNE

It was at Clamart, 2 where Matisse usually spends several months, that I met him.
'I was a lawyer's clerk at Saint-Quentin,' he said, 'but even then other people's quarrels
interested me much less than painting. One of my acquaintances, a friend of Bouguereau, 3
advised me to come to Paris and take lessons from a painter who had acquired such great
notoriety at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. I used to go to the atelier of Bouguereau. The
master taught relief in twenty lessons, the art of giving the human body noble academic
bearing and the best way to scumble the depths. He contemplated my easel. "You need to
learn perspective", he said. "Erasure should be done with a good clean rag, or better yet,
with a piece of amadou. You should seek advice from an older student."4
'Another time, he reproached me more crossly for "not knowing how to draw". Tired
of faithfully reproducing the contours of plaster casts, I went to Gabriel Ferrier5 who
taught from live models. I did my utmost to depict the emotion that the sight of the female
body gave me. The model had a pretty hand. I first painted the hand. How stupefied
and indignant the professor was ! Painting the hand before the model's face ! "But my
poor friend," he cried, "you will never finish your canvas by the end of the week."
Having barely sketched in the torso, he considered indeed that I would never have time
to "do the feet". And one should be ready to "do the feet" by Saturday, the day when the
professor came around to correct us. I abandoned that studio. 6 Sometimes I went to
Lille. I admired the works of Goya in the Museum. 7 I wanted to do something like that.
It seemed to me that Goya had understood life well. Nevertheless I went back to the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
'I had been advised to go to the "Antiques" where Gustave Moreau was teaching. s
"All you have to do," I was told, "is to rise when the professor walks by in order to be
accepted as one of his students." This time I had been better advised. What a charming
master he was ! He, at least, was capable of enthusiasm and even of being carried away.
One day he would affirm his admiration for Raphael, another, for Veronese. One morning
he arrived proclaiming that there was no greater master than Chardin. Moreau knew how
to distinguish and how to show us who were the greatest painters, whereas Bouguereau
invited us to admire Giulio Romano. 9
' From that time dates my first still life,lO you see it there, which I have preciously
saved. I used to visit the Louvre. But Moreau told us : "Don't be content with going
to the museum, go out into the streets." In effect it' s there that I learned to draw. I went
to the Petit Casino with Marquet who was my co-disciple.ll We were trying to draw the
silhouettes of passers-by, to discipline our line. We were forcing ourselves to discover
quickly what was characteristic in a gesture, in an attitude. Didn't Delacroix say : "One
should be able to draw a man falling from the sixth floor" ? ' 12
Did you go to Impressionist shows?
'No, I only knew their works when the Caillebotte collection opened. '13
Was Gustave Moreau aware of your efforts?
'Certainly. He told me : "You are going to simplify painting".'
Would that he had simplified his own!
' It was then that I made a copy of Chardin's La Raie.14 Soon I joined a painter named
Very15 and I left for Brittany with him. I then had only bistres and earth colours on my
palette, whereas Very had an Impressionist palette. Like him, I began to work from
nature. And soon I was seduced by the brilliance of pure colour. I returned from my
trip with a passion for rainbow colours whereas Very returned to Paris with a love
for bitumen l Naturally colleagues and collectors marvelled at his new style.
 7 Interview with Jacques Guenne, I925 55
in the tra ns­
'Then I did a Desserte. 16 And already I was not transposing any longer
parent tones of the Louvre.'
And what did Gustave Moreau think of that canvas?
'Moreau showed the same indulgence toward me as toward Marquet and Rouault. To
the professors who discovered what was already revolutionary in this attempt, he re­
sponded : " Let it be, his decanters are solidly on the table and I could hang my hat on
their stoppers. That's what is essential." I exhibited this work at the Nationale.1 7 It was
the time when the public was generally terrified of germs. One had never seen so many
cases of typhoid. The public found germs at the bottom of my decanters ! 18 However, I
had been raised to the level of Associate. What a fine civil service career opened before
me ! I deserve no praise, I assure you, for not having followed it. To tell the truth, it's
my modest condition which I have to thank for my success. In effect, painting, even
academic, was a poor provider at that time. I was going to be forced to take up another
profession. I decided to take a year off, 1 9 avoid all hindrances, and paint the way I wanted
to. I worked only for myself. I was saved. Soon the love of materials for their own sake
came to me like a revelation. I felt a passion for colour developing within me.
'At that moment the big Mohammedan exhibition was mounted.20 And with what
pleasure I also discovered Japanese woodcuts ! What a lesson in purity, harmony, I
received ! To tell the truth, these woodcuts were mediocre reproductions and yet I did not
experience the same emotion when I saw the originals. Those no longer brought with
them the newness of a revelation. 2 1
'Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the
expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and
regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion
that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same
(j thing in several ways. 'Exactitude is not truth' , Delacroix liked to say. Notice that the
classics went on re-doing the same painting and always differently. Mter a certain time,
Cezanne always painted the same canvas of the Baigneuses. Although the master of Aix
ceaselessly redid the same painting, don't we come upon a new Cezanne with the greatest
curiosity? Apropos of this, I am very surprised that anyone can wonder whether the
lesson of the painter of the Maison du pendu and the Joueurs de cartes is good or bad. H
you only knew the moral strength, the encouragement that his remarkable example gave
me all my life !22 In moments of doubt, when I was still searching for myself, frightened
sometimes by my discoveries, I thought : " If Cezanne is right, I am right" ; because I
knew that Cezanne had made no mistake. There are, you see, constructional laws in the
work of Cezanne which are useful to a young painter. He had, among his great virtues,
this merit of wanting the tones to be forces in a painting, giving the highest mission to
his painting.
'We shouldn't be surprised that Cezanne hesitated so long and so constantly. For my
part, each time I stand before my canvas, it seems that I am painting for the first time.
There were so many possibilities in Cezanne that, more than anyone else, he had to
organize his brain. Cezanne, you see, is a sort of god of painting. Dangerous, his in­
fluence ? So what? Too bad for those without the strength to survive it. Not to be strong
enough to withstand an influence without weakening is proof of impotence. I will repeat
what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire : For my part, I have never avoided the influence
of others, I would have considered it cowardice and lack of sincerity toward myself. I believe
that the artist's personality affirms itself by the struggle he has survived. One would have
to be very foolish not to notice the direction in which others work. I am amazed that some
people can be so lacking in anxiety as to imagine that they have grasped the truth of their
art on the first try. I have accepted influences but I think I have always known how to
dominate them.'
 7 lnter'DielO with Jacquu Guenne, I925
Matisse turned toward· the wall where his latest works were hanging. And since I
indicated two of them which differed only by the means of expression and the lighting :
'Yes,' he told me, 'I copy nature and I make myself even put the time of day in the
painting. This one was painted in the morning, that one at the end of the afternoon ; one
with a model, the other without. I often told my students when I had a school : The ideal
would be to have a studio with three floors. One would do a first study after the model on
the first floor. From the second, one would come down more rarely. On the third, one
would have learned to do without the model.'
Can you tell me what reasons led you to open the school and then to close it?
'I thought it would be good for young artists to avoid the road I travelled myself. I
thus took the initiative of opening a school in a convent on the rue de Sevres, which I
then moved near the Sacre Creur, in a building where the Lycee Buffon now stands.23
Many students appeared. I forced myself to correct each one, taking into account the
spirit in which his efforts were conceived. I especially took pains to inculcate in them a
sense of tradition. Needless to say, many of my students were disappointed to see that a
master with a reputation for being revolutionary could have repeated the words of
Courbet to them : I have simply 'Wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my
own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition. 24
'The effort I made to penetrate the thinking of each one tired me out. I reached the
point where I thought a student was heading in the wrong direction and he told me (revenge
of my masters), "That's the way I think." The saddest part was that they could not con­
ceive that I was depressed to see them "doing Matisse". Then I understood that I had to
choose between being a painter and a teacher. I soon closed my school.'
When you started out what were the material conditions of life for a painter?
'We didn't have enough to buy a beer. Marquet lived in such misery that one day
I was obliged to reclaim the twenty francs which a collector owed him because he needed
the money so badly. I was personally obliged to work with Marquet on the decoration
of the ceiling of the Grand-Palais.25 Marquet did not have enough money to buy colours,
especially the cadmiums which were expensive. Consequently he painted in greys and
perhaps this economic condition favoured his style. At one point I thought of setting up
a company of collectors run for my profit, like Van Gogh had proposed. One of my
cousins agreed to be party to it on the condition that I do two "views" of his property.
Hunger was threatening us. And we looked at what others were doing and decided to do
the same in order to please the public. We couldn't. So much the better for us ! The
collectors said : "We've got our eye on you", which meant that, in a few years, they would
take the risk of paying a hundred francs for one of our paintings.'
Didn't you know the shop of Pere Tanguy?26
'That shop in front of which people used to meet to make fun of Cezanne and Van
Gogh? No ! But I knew old Druet,27 then a wine merchant on the place de l'Alma. Rodin
ate there and made Druet take photos. Then Druet installed himself on the rue Matignon
where he sold the nco-Impressionists. He had a genius for making collectors enthusiastic,
and thus performed a great service for painters. Ambroise Vollard28 did a bigger favour
in taking the initiative in having canvases photographed.29 This had considerable im­
portance because without it others surely would have "finished" all the Cezannes, like
they used to add trees to all the Corots. Berthe Weill also helped painters a lot. "Bring me
a canvas," she wrote us sometimes, " I have a buyer." And in fact it sometimes happened
that a buyer introduced by her offered us twenty francs for a canvas, which was an honour­
able fee at the time. 30
'For my part, I have never regretted this poverty. I was very embarrassed when my
canvases began to get big prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but
masterpieces 1'
Nature morte aux livres 1 890.

/!lu.f-w u? rl "<�.,
.. ..

'" IlL Ill ' .

11Qltf! "(.C l, ( U. H
.. •

g'
�.. -

2 Ltfe study I 89 I .

-
3 Nature morte apres de Heem 1 8 93 .
 �,��;:$�,I
' �A!h-'
,·

4 Rochers : Belle-lie 1 896.

5 La desserte I 897.
 •

H.tf\d·,� i,) �
6
7 La malade 1 8 99.
 8 Buffet et table 1 899.

9 Cezanne : Trois baigneuses

1 879-82 .
 IO Nu debout I 900.

II Notre-Dame : fin d'apres-midi I 902.

 "" -

:: ;--� �� �,._: i�
"
.�
 I4 Fenetre ouverte, Collioure I 90 5 .

� I2 Nature morte au purro, I 1 904 .

� I3 Luxe, calme et volupte I 904.

 16 Portrait a Ia raie verte 1 905 .

..... 15 La guitariste 1 90 3 .
 /

17 Bonheur de vivre 1 905 .

 .
Les JOUeurs de boules 1 908.

20 IIarmonie rouge
1 908-9.
21 La danse 1 909 .

22 La musique 1 9 1 0.
23 La famille du peintre I9II .
 24 La fenetre bleue I9I I.

ii

25 Cezanne : L e ,ase bleu 1 88 3-87 .

 8
State ments to Teria de ) 1 929-3 0 1
[On Fauvis m and Expre ssion through
Colour ; On Travel ]
In 1929, before Matisse's Tahitian voyage, and again in 1 930, a few months after it, Matisse's
friend the critic Teriade recorded some statements by the artist. These two statements also
formed the basis for a later statement to Teriade, 'Matisse Speaks' (Text 39, below).
In the first statement, Matisse explains the difference between nco-Impressionism and
Fauvism, noting that the former is an essentially mechanical method of painting, and that the
theoretical aspect of such painters as Seurat did not, in the last analysis, count nearly so
much as the human value, a line of thought quite in keeping with his earlier di ctum that
rules have no meaning outside of individuals. It is significant that Matisse recalls the artistic
and moral victory which Fauvism represented to him, since it suggests the new crisis Matisse
felt in his art at this time, which is reflected in such works as Figure decorative sur fond
ornemental of 1927, Femme au turban of 1 929 (Figure 33) , and Le dos, IV (Figure 37) of
1929-30, all of which indicate his desire to achieve a renewed simplicity in his works. The
parallel between this 1929 crisis and the earlier Fauve crisis is striking ; both have to do
with a calculated aesthetic and social risk (cf. the interview with Jacqu�s Guenne, Text 7
above), and both are concerned with moving from observation of actual light and detail to
construction with colour 'without differentiation of texture'. This statement also shows
Matisse's retrospective state of mind at the time, his lack of interest in contemporary move­
ments and his preoccupation with finding a fresh way to move. In 1 929, no less than in 1905,
Matisse was indeed going once again-from the ordered interiors of the Nice period (kept
by country aunts)-back into the jungle.
The statement made after Matisse came back from his trip to Tahiti shows just how pro �
found was the unrest which moved him to make the voyage in the first place, and some of the
effects which his travels had on him. One of the most interesting aspects of this statement is
Matisse's discussion of the tensions which provoked him to work, and their absence in Tahiti
and presence in New York. This desire to regain equilibrium in the face of tension seems to
have been one of the most important psychological impulses behind his art.

STATEMENTS TO TERIADE [On Fauvism and Expression

through Colour]
[Matisse, about to leave Paris, speaks to Teriade :] 'I went to bed a little late last night.
Let's speak to the point, because we have scarcely an hour. I am leaving right away for
Nice. Paris tires me in winter-the noises, the movement, the events and fashions that one
has to follow. When you are young, of course, it's all very good. You have to begin by
ss 8 Statements to Teriade, I929-30
entering the fray, adventuring in the bush. 2 But for me now, silence and isolation are
useful. Only superficial painters need fear them. As for the movements and exhibitions I
. '
have almost nothing to learn from them, and I don't want to let my thought stray from
my work in progress. Look, during these few days that I spent in Paris, I went to see the
boat show the first day, and the second also, and every day since. Even today, I don't want
to leave Paris without having given it a last glance. I adore boating. Look at the calluses I
have on my hands.' And Matisse showed us his bronzed palms which bore the only sign of
the sun in the grey room.
'How do you feel about the Fauve movement judged from the distance of today?' This
question, asked a little bluntly, resounded too profoundly in Matisse for him to be able
to answer it immediately, directly. Thus he began by going back to the sources, to the neo­
lmpressionist period where his true work as a painter became evident, and I was given an
admirable lesson on colour, on the means by which the coloured surface of the painting
was divided according to Divisionist theories, on the reconstruction of white light,
Chevreul's colour wheel, diffusion, the breaking up of shadow by light, etc. This brought
the painter to speak of himself and of his situation at that time.
'I showed Signac and Cross my first picture done according to these principles. The
latter, noting that I had achieved contrasts as strong as the dominants, told me : "That's
good, but you won't stay with it long".3 Quite so.
'Neo-Impressionism, or rather that part called Divisionism, was the first systematization
of the means of Impressionism ; but a purely physical systematization ; an often mechanical
means corresponding only to a physical emotion. The breaking up of colour led to the
breaking up of form, of contour. Result : a jumpy surface. There is only a retinal sensation,
but it destroys the calm of the surface and of the contour. Objects are differentiated only
by the luminosity given them. Everything is treated in the same way. Ultimately, there
is only a tactile vitality comparable to the "vibrato" of the violin or voice. As Seurat's
canvases become greyer with time, they lose whatever formulary aspect there was in the
grouping of the colours and retain only their true values, those human values in painting
which are today more profound than ever. 4
'I didn't stay on this course but started painting in planes, seeking the quality of the
picture by an accord of all the :Bat colours. I tried to replace the "vibrato" by a more ex­
pressive and more direct accord, an accord whose simplicity and honesty would have given
me quieter surfaces.
'Fauvism overthrew the tyranny of Divisionism. One can't live in a house too well kept,
a house kept by country aunts. 5 One has to go off into the jungle to find simpler ways
which won't stifle the spirit. The influence of Gauguin and Van Gogh were felt then, too.
Here are the ideas of that time : Construction by coloured surfaces. Search for intensity
of colour, subject matter being unimportant. Reaction against the diffusion of local
tone in light. Light is not suppressed, but is expressed by a harmony of intensely coloured
surfaces. My picture, La musique [Figure 22] was done with a fine blue for the sky, the
bluest of blues (the surface was coloured to saturation, that is to the point where the blue,
the idea of absolute blue, was entirely evident), green for the trees and violent vermilion
for the figures. With those three colours I had my luminous harmony, and also purity
of colour tone. To be noted : the colour was proportioned to the form. Form was modified,
according to the reaction of the adjacent areas of colour. For expression comes from the
coloured surface which the spectator perceives as a whole.'
And Matisse continues : 'The painter releases his emotion by painting ; but not without
his conception having passed through a certain analytic state. The analysis happens within
the painter. When the synthesis is immediate, it is schematic, without density, and the
expression suffers.
'Fauvism did not content itself with the physical arrangement of the picture, as did
6o 8 Statements to Teriade, I929-30
the sky in front of me ; that is to say, the simplest thing in the world. This is to make it
understood that the unity realized in my picture, however complex it may be, is not diffi­
cult for me to obtain, because it comes to me naturally. I think only of rendering my
emotion. Very often, the difficulty for an artist is that he doesn't realize the quality of his
emotion and that his reason leads this emotion astray. He should use his reason only for
control.'

[On Travel]
[Teraide has asked Matisse about the value that travel has for the painter.] 'If I may,'
Matisse says, 'I should like to answer by an example taken from my work, which will put
these questions into a tangible context.
'In my Nice studio, before my departure for Tahiti, I had worked several months on a
painting without finishing it.lO During my trip, even while strongly impressed by what
I was seeing every day, I often thought of the work I had left unfinished. I might even say
that I thought of it constantly. Returning to Nice for a month this summer, I went back
to the painting and worked on it every day. Then I left again for America. And during the
crossing I realized what I had to do-that is, the weakness in the construction of my
painting and its possible resolution. I am anxious to go back to it today.
'This proves perhaps that my work is the binary of the life of my brain. Perhaps it is
also the idee fixe of a foolish old world traveller who upon his return looks for a tobacco
pouch he had mislaid before leaving.
'When you have worked for a long time in the same milieu, it is useful at a given moment
to stop the usual mental routine and take a voyage which will let parts of the mind rest
while other parts have free rein-especially those parts repressed by the will. This stopping
permits a withdrawal and consequently an examination of the past. You begin again with
more certainty when the preoccupation of the first part of the trip, not having been des­
troyed by the numerous impressions of the new world you are plunged into, takes
possession of the mind again.
'The mind of a man who is still developing can be intoxicated by places like Tahiti
because his pleasures are confused (that is to say that when he has felt the voluptuous
roundness of a Tahitian woman, he imagines that the sky is clearer). But when a man is
formed, organized, with an ordered brain, he no longer makes these confusions and better
knows the source of his euphoria, his expansion.
' Consequently, he doesn't risk interrupting the course of his own d¢velopment. It is
thus for the painter. A voyage made at the time when the mind is alre�dy formed has a
usefulness different from that of a voyage made by a young manll_if you will grant
that the artist can attain his complete development only on the soil where he is born. 1 2
'This is clearly applicable to artists for whom imagination plays an important role. As
for the realists, if you take the word "realism" in its narrow, obj ective sense, they can
express themselves anywhere as long as their interior life does not change.
'Having worked forty years in European light and space, I always dreamed of other pro­
portions which might be found in the other hemisphere. I was always conscious of
another space in which the objects of my reveries evolved. I was seeking something other
than real space. Whence my curiosity for the other hemisphere, or a place where things
could happen differently. (I might add, moreover, that I did not find it in Oceania.)
'In art, what is most important is the relationship between things. The attempts to
possess the light and space in which I lived gave me the desire to see myself with a different
space and light which would allow me to grasp more profoundly the space and light in
which I do live-if only to become more conscious of them.
 61
'

8 Statements to Teriade, I929-30

'That i s why, when I was i n Tahiti, I collected my thoughts to produce visions of
Provence, in order to contrast them strongly with those of the Oceanic landscape.'
Matisse concluded : 'Most painters require direct contact with objects in order to feel
that they exist, and they can only reproduce them under strictly physical conditions. They
look for an exterior light to illuminate them internally. Whereas the artist or the poet
possesses an interior light which transforms objects to make a new world of them­
sensitive, organized, a living world which is in itself an infallible sign of the Divinity, a
reflection of Divinity.
'That is how you can explain the role of the reality created by art as opposed to objective
reality-by its non-material essence.'
Here are some remarks by Matisse about Tahiti : 13
'Nature there is sumptuous, but not exalting, a familiar apartment-like sumptuousness,
practically without surprises. You don't have an immediate reaction which makes you
need to unwind by working.
'The light is lovely, but on a small scale, on trees which are not large and seem rather
like house plants.
'I realized there that I had no pictorial reaction whatsoever, and that there was nothing
to do but languish in the thick, cool shadows of the island mountains, or else at the "Lotus",
the "Lido", or the "Lafayette", fashionable night-clubs no doubt open so that the Euro­
peans will lose neither their inspiration nor the Dionysian habits of the Metropole.
'You are struck there by this ambiance which consists of doing nothing. Laziness is
stronger than everything else. That is what lies behind the amiable amorality in the customs
of the islanders, an amorality which becomes quite demoralizing after a short time. The
Tahitians are like children. They have no sense of anything being prohibited, nor any
notion of good and evil. Steal a bicycle? What for? Where would you go with it? Eventually,
after riding around, it would have to be put back where it came from. Take the next fellow's
wife ? Nothing wrong with that. And if you are white, it's an honour for the family and its
future descendants.
'The Tahitian girls retain their wild and uncultivated nature despite the delicate
Parisian styles they wear. They go to a bar, they drink cocktails, and their only reading
material is the seasonal catalogues from the Paris department stores.
'It is also true that everything there comes from far away, and very late. L' Intran
[sigeant] you read three months late. The newsreels at films are often four years behind
the times. Thus this past summer I was able to admire the sumptuous reception of Ama­
noullah by the King of England, which, if it wasn't a burning current event, was at least
ironically irreverent.'
And Gauguin?
' Gauguin left as a rebel. That's what kept him in this ambiance which liquifies you, as is
said there. His combative character, his sense of being crucified, preserved him from the
general torpor. His wounded vanity kept him awake.
'There is no memory of him there. Except, on the part of the people who knew him, a
regret that his paintings are so expensive nowadays. There is also a tiny "rue Gauguin"
just next to the Oceanic Phosphates Company, but the director of this company had neve!
noticed it.
'Then there is his son who lives in Punaauia. Everyone calls him Gauguin. He has his
father's heavy eyelids and hooked nose. A superb man in his thirties with powerful arms.
He spends his nights engaged in peches miraculeuses. Peculiar sign : he speaks no French.
This is quite exceptional in Tahiti. Contrary to his father, his gentle character makes him
very popular.
'In imitation of Gauguin, other painters live there and paint the beauties of the island
with a heavy hand. They are generally encouraged by the inhabitants who thus hope to
62 8 Statements to Terlade, I929-30
gain their turn . They all adniire nature, but only at sunset : Sunset over Moorea. They
paint nothing but that all their lives.
' It's true that the evening there is magnificent. Before the flamboyant sunset, the sky is
blond, like honey. Then it turns blue with an infinite softness.
' On the other hand, at 6 o'clock in the morning, it is beautiful, too beautiful, ferociously
beautiful. Weather so brilliant, so bright that you would think it was already noon. Then, I
assure you, it is frightening. It is alarming to have the day begin with a dazzling sun
that will not change until sunset. It is as if the light would be immobilized forever. It is as
if life were frozen in a magnificent stance.
'Before I left, everyone said to me : "How lucky you are ! " I answered : "I would love to
already be on my way back.' ' Now I am 1'

'The first time that I saw America,' Matisse says, 'I mean New York, at 7 o'clock in the
evening, this gold and black block in the night, reflected in the water, I was in complete
ecstacy. Someone near me on the boat said : It's a spangled dress, which helped me to arrive
at my own image. New York seemed to me like a gold nugget.14
'Later, on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, I was truly electrified, and I thought : Is it really
worth the trouble to go so far (I was crossing America then to go to Tahiti) when I feel so
full of energy here.
'The proportions of the street and the height of the buildings give a sensation of space.
One breathes better there than in narrow old streets. One has an impression of amplitude
in which the order gives you a feeling of security. You can think very comfortably in a New
York street, which has become practically impossible in our Parisian muddle.
'Obviously, I am not speaking of the side-streets, but rather of that American spirit
which seems to be realized more and more freely in the heart of a city like New York.
'The skyscrapers are not at all what you would imagine from photographs. The sky
begins after the tenth storey, because the stonework is already eaten up by the light. The
light and its reflections take the materiality from the building. Seen from the street, the
skyscraper gives us the sensation of a gradation of tones from the base to the top. The
gradation of a tone which evaporates in the sky, taking on the softness of the celestial
matter with which it mixes, gives the passer-by a feeling of lightness which is completely
unexpected by the European visitor. This lightening, which corresponds. to a feeling of
release, is quite beneficial in counterbalancing the overwhelming hyperactivity of the
city.
'The modern buildings, mostly white, are often traversed from base to top with great
brilliant aluminium mouldings which render the proportions comprehensible at a glance,
without distorting them, like a mirror of water. Thus we can associate this size with that
which is already familiar to us, and the skyscraper fits into our scheme of palpable
objects, with human proportions. This no doubt enlarges our space.
'At the Musee de Cluny, for example, you are confined by walls whose proportions were
necessary in the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance chateau, one already breathes more
freely. And so on. In the neighbourhood of a skyscraper there is a clear feeling of liberty
through the possession of a larger space.
'The space that I sought in Tahiti and did not find there, I found in New York.
'This is self-evident when you contemplate the city from the thirteenth or fourteenth
floor of the Plaza Hotel for example, where you see Central Park before you, and, on each
side, the skyscrapers of the grand avenues.- It is a prodigious vision, but not inhuman like
that of the high Swiss mountains, for example.
'As for Broadway at night, which is so greatly praised, it has no lasting interest. Th�
Eiffel Tower illuminated is a much finer object. The Americans themselves admit
it.
8 Statements to Terlade, I929-30
'On the other hand, when one sees New York from the river at the end of the day, all
these great buildings of different heights are coloured differently and present a ravishing
spectacle in the Indian Summer sky. Until the end of �ovember, th� re is � ve !J pure, non­
material light, a crystalline light, as opposed to the hght of Oceania wh1ch 1s pulpy and
mellow like that of the Touraine, and which seems to caress what it touches.
'it is an exceedingly pictorial light, like the light of the Italian primitives.'
Is there an American pictorial climate?
'Very much so, but one which has not been exploited yet. When the Americans have
travelled sufficiently across the old world to perceive their own richness, they will be able
to see their own country for what it is.
'And I am not only talking about the American physical climate, but the moral atmos­
phere itself. This tension, the constant dynamism, can be transformed, in the artist, into
artistic activity by provoking a beneficial reaction in him.'
How did the Americans come to our modern painting?
'Americans are interested in modern painting because of its immediate translation of
feeling. It is more direct than previous painting. The materials used lose less of their natural
side. It has much more to do with lines and colours in movement than with reproduction of
a given object or person. Through it, Americans communicate more freely amongst
themselves. It is more in rapport with the activity of their spirit. It does not tie them to a
kind of identification of the conditions of the material life of the objects represented.
'When they are tired, their minds are not confronted by a "void of action", but they
confront modern paintings and find, on another level, their own activity.
'Thus they relax.
'That is what I said twenty-five years ago in La Grande Revue : Painting should be a
calming influence for the mind tired by the working day of the contemporary man.
' One of the most striking things in America is the Barnes collection, 15 which is exhibited
in a spirit very beneficial for the formation of American artists. There the old master
paintings are put beside the modern ones, a Douanier Rousseau next to a Primitive, and
this bringing together helps students understand a lot of things that the academies don't
teach.
' This collection presents the paintings in complete frankness, which is not frequent in
America. The Barnes Foundation will doubtless manage to destroy the artificial and dis­
reputable presentation of the other collections, where the pictures are hard to see­
displayed hypocritically in the mysterious light of a temple or cathedral. According
to the current American aesthetic, this presentation seeks to introduce a certain supposedly
favourable mystery between the spectator and the work, but it is in the end only a great
misunderstanding.
'In any case, the vogue for modern painting in America is certainly a preparation for a
flowering of American art.
'Moreover, in other domains, the expression of the American energy is making itself
felt, as in the cinema or in architecture, where they have given up imitating the Loire
chateaux, without regret. Although some supreme vestiges still remain, little pieces sur­
viving on the twenty-sixth floor of a building in the form of a hat, or on Wall Street, the
cornices which crown a ouilding create disturbing black bars which are disquieting to the
passers-by.
' It will probably be said that I am flattering the Americans, just as they said a few years
ago that I had grown a beard to please the Russians.16 But there is every evidence, for
someone with some awareness, that the new buildings are more satisfying to the mind than
the poor assemblages of our diverse styles which they constructed in the past. There
are still some examples of that on Fifth Avenue. Thus it is easy to compare.
'The great quality of modern America is in not clinging to its acquisitions. Over there,
 9 Courthion : Meeting with Matisse, I93I
love of risk makes one destroy the results of the day with the hope that the next day will
provide better.17 America has the form and the spirit of a great range of experiences, which,
for the artist, must be extremely agreeable.'
And the Carnegie prize?18
'The purpose of the Carnegie is to show in America what is happening in European
painting, and that without a feeling of judgement, without preference to one tendency
rather than another. But what is slightly troubling is that the jury is constituted of artists
whose tendencies are so irremediably different that the result has no significance.
'The European part of the jury is composed of three members : a Frenchman (always
chosen from amongst the painters with the most advanced ideas), an Englishman (always a
member of the Royal Academy in London), and a third person picked from one of the
other European countries. This year, it was an Austrian. It is noteworthy that this third
member should be, for preference, without marked leanings, the "middling painter" par
excellence, obviously to establish the desired equilibrium.
'This year the first prize was given to Picasso. The second to an American, Brook. The
third to Dufresne.'

9
1
Courthion : Meeting with Matisse, 1 93 1

In this 1 93 1 interview with Pierre Courthion, Matisse manages to make some significant
points in spite of the apparent obtuseness of his interviewer. Fresh from his visit to Tahiti, he
mentions the meditation which the South Seas aroused in him and the way in which he had
used the time to store impressions for later work. This anticipates the method of working that
he would develop more fully in 'the next decade, and is an experience to which he would
frequently allude.
This interview also give good evidence of Matisse's awareness of the tradition in which he is
working and his relationship to it.

MEETING WITH MATISSE

Matisse thinks slowly before speaking, and expresses himself with a striking precision.
He has blue eyes, agate-coloured, curiously attentive behind his tortoise-shell glasses.
Dressed in sports clothes, his greying hair brushed back carelessly, he is , seated in front
of me with his legs crossed but his back very straight. He surrounds himself only with
things that are necessary to him, putting out of his way everything that could distract
him. He has only one canvas on the wall, the one he is working on at present which is
9 Courthion : Meeting with Matisse, I93I
held up by drawing pins. When I tell him his painting reminds me of that of Velasquez
he stops me : 'When I saw his work in Madrid, to my eyes it was like ice l Velasquez isn't
my painter : Goya, rather, or El Greco. '2
Matisse likes that which is ablaze. Nevertheless, I expand on my comparison and he
accepts it, saying : 'Perhaps, but you must distinguish between conception and result. The
conception of pure painting, in Velasquez' work, doesn't give a result that satisfies me.'
'Delacroix, then,' I said. 'Although you don't grant the same importance to the imagina­
tion, to the subject.'
'You see,' continued Matisse, 'we never realize sufficiently clearly that the old masters
we admire would have produced very different works if they had lived in another century
than their own. Delacroix in 1 9 30 would not have been inspired by the same themes that
occupied his mind in 1 830.'
I reminded Matisse that in 1 908 he wrote : 'What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity
and serenity, devoid �f troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for
every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a
soothing, calming influence, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation
from physical fatigue. '3
'It's true there is Chardin,' I added, 'but apart from these few relationships none of
which is really direct, you are really so individualistic a painter that you are "without a
path".'
'It depends on what you mean by that. Do you mean without being influenced and
without having any influence on the future ?'
'By no means : I mean that, for someone who tries to associate you with a tradition or
a master, apart from the Mediterranean aspect which is your "climate", and the French
ethos, which has rubbed off on you, you are an exception, and a rare, a very rare artist.'
'I can't judge that. I don't know about that : but what's so astonishing about not under­
standing? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't
understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting. It is other
people who find these treasures in it, one by one, and the richer a painting is in surprises
of this sort, in treasures, the greater its author. Each century seeks to nourish itself in
works of art, and each century needs a particular kind of nourishment.'
We started talking about the South Seas Islands and Matisse told me about his recent
trip, recalling Tahiti,4 the small coral islands, the multi-coloured fish, the broad, flat tones
of the countryside. While visiting these islands, Matisse observed ; he did not work with a
paintbrush in his hand. To open his eyes ! I believe that is the secret of a man like Matisse.
Matisse has widespread knowledge on just about everything. He never seems to be at
a loss. I talked to him about his copies, done at the Louvre when he was young, some of
which he found in storage in the museum, where they had lain hidden for a long time,
since his difficult years.
'I owe my knowledge of the Louvre to Gustave Moreau : one didn't go there any more.
He took us there, and taught us to see and to question the old masters.'
'I saw your copies in your studio on boulevard Montparnasse. Can you tell me the order
in which they were donel'
'I started with David De Heim's La desserte.s Then there was La raie,6 that I tried to
paint schematically-Cezanne was the last. 7
'Your copy of La raie is the first work in which one can recognize your own style. It is
clearly Chardin as seen by Matisse. Your Christ mort after Philippe de Champaigne, s
seemed duller to me.'
'That's not surprising. I first had made a free copy of it ; then, in the hope of a sale, I
repainted it differently. I also made copies of Baldassare Castiglione,9 and of La tempete
by Ruysdael.'
 IO

Statem ent to Teriade ) 1 9 3 3 1

[ On Creativity]
In 1933 Matisse again made a statement to Teriade. Once again he professes his faith in· the
study of nature and in the enrichment of the self in order to achieve expression. He repeats,
more clearly, his earlier statement ( Text 3 , above) that photography may be used to study
nature.

STATEMENT TO TERIADE [On Creativity]

Photography has greatly disturbed the imagination, because one has seen things devoid of
feeling. When I wanted to get rid of all influences which prevented me from seeing nature
from my own personal view, I copied photographs.2
We are encumbered by the sensibilities of the artists who have preceded us. Photo­
graphy can rid us of previous imaginations. Photography has very clearly determined the
distinction between painting as a translation of feelings, and descriptive painting. Des­
criptive painting has become useless .
The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously
with a certain richness. .
On the other hand, the unconscious enrichment of the artist is accomplished by all he
sees and translates pictorially without thinking about it.
An acacia on Vesubie,a its movement, its svelte grace, led me perhaps to conceive the
body of a dancing woman.
I never think, when looking at one of my canvases, of the sources of emotion which were
able to motivate a certain face, object or movement I see there.
The reverie of a man who has travelled is richer than that of a man who has never
travelled. The daydreams of a cultivated mind and the daydreams of an uncultivated one
have nothing in common but a certain state of passivity.
One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. To prepare one's work is first to
nourish one's feelings by studies which have a certain analogy with the picture, and it is
through this that the choice of elements can be made. It is these studies which permit the
painter to free his unconscious mind.
The harmony of all the elements of the picture which have a part in the unity of feeling
encouraged by working, imposes a spontaneous translation on the mind. It is this which
one can call the spontaneous translation of feeling, which comes not from a simple thing
but from a complex thing, and which is simplified by the purification of the subject and of
the mind of whoever translated it.
One does not put one's house in order by getting rid of what one does not have, because
that only creates a void, and a void is neither order nor purity.
 I I

Let ters to Alexan dre Rom m) 1 9 3 41

In 1 934 Matisse wrote several letters to the Soviet art critic Alexandre Romm, who was
writing a book on him, 2 and who had solicited information directly from the artist. Matisse's
answers to Romm were the considered statements of an artist to his public, rather than per­
sonal letters, as is attested to by the content of the letters themselves and by Matisse's state­
ment (20 June 1 93 5 ) to the Director of the Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow : ' I
have not written o n painting since the War, a s I did before i n the Grande Revue, except to
Mr. Romm' . 3
The letters are devoted mostly to discussion of Matisse's most recent works, especially the
Barnes Murals (Figure 36) on which these letters remain his most important statements and
formed the basis for several other statements, 4 and the Danse and Musique panels (Figures
21 and 22) that he had done for Shchukin in 1 909-1 0, and which had been confiscated by the

State for the Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow. Some of Matisse's stubbornness
and precision may also be seen in these letters.

LETTERS TO ALEXANDRE ROMM

Sir, 1 9 January 1934
[The letter starts with topical matters and suggests illustrations for Romm's book.]
From these last years (1 9 3 1 -2 and 3), I am sending you the photo of an important work
which I have just done for the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia) ; it is a panel of 13 metres
by 3 ·50 metres, placed above three entirely glazed doors six metres in height. The photo
of the ensemble with the doors, made from different photographs assembled together, will
give you an idea of it. The painting acts as a pediment to these three doors-like the
elevated part of a cathedral porch-a pediment placed in shadow and yet required, in
continuing the large mural surface broken by the three great luminous bays, to maintain
itself in all its luminosity ; consequently its plastic eloquence (a surface in shadow juxta­
posed against a strongly lit bay without destroying the continuity of the surface) is the
result of modern achievements regarding the properties of colour. Perspective, as you can
see for yourself, reduces the painted part, since it is in reality 3 · so metres tall , while the
doors are 6. I have added to these photos another of a view drawn by an architect, which
gives the true proportions.
Apart from the fact that this work is the most important I have done these past three
years, the subject too, analogous to one of my important works in Moscow (La danse),
will convey to you an interesting relationship between these two works. These panels are
painted in flat colours. The areas between the doors are continued in the decoration of the
black surfaces and give a unity of surface from the floor to the top of the vault : 6 m + 3 m. so
= 9 m.so, which, together with the pendentives which press down on these black surfaces,

gives the illusion of a monumental support for the vault.

?
T e other colours : rose, blue, and the nudes of a uniform pearl grey, form the ·whole
mustcal harmony of the work.
68 II Letters to Alexandre Romm, I934
Their frank contrasts, their decided relationships, give an equivalent of the hardness of
the stone, and of the sharpness of the ribs of the vault, and give the work a grand mural
quality-a very important point since this panel is placed in the upper part of the large
gallery of the Foundation, which is filled with easel paintings-it was logical clearly to
differentiate my work of architectural painting.
I will indicate on the back of the photos the colours of the different sections. In spite
of all these explanations, I think it will be impossible for you to get a clear enough idea of
the work to be able to establish a close enough comparison with La danse in Moscow, for
the points of view are totally different. The Moscow panel still proceeds from the rules
governing an easel painting (that is to say, a work which can hang anywhere), which is
because I was unable to imagine these panels in place, only knowing the staircase where
they were to hang from having gone up it a few times without knowing that I would
have paintings there-it was not then a question of decorating it.
The Merion panel was made especially for the place. In isolation I only consider it as an
architectural fragment. It is really immovable, so much so that I forsee that these photos
will be only of little interest to you in spite of my explanations.
You will find two or three photos representing two different versions of this same dance.
That is because following an error in measurement of the two pendentives, which I had
made 50 em instead of 1 metre wide at the base, I had to start again when my first panel
was finished after a year of work. 5 I enclose with my letter this first version. The second
is not a simple copy of the first ; for, because these different pendentives required me to
compose with architectural masses more than twice the size, I had to change my composi­
tion. I even produced a work with a different spirit : the first is aggressive, the second
Dionysiac ; the colours, which are the same, are nonetheless changed ; as the quantities
being different, their quality also changes : the colours applied freely show that it is thew
quantitative relation that produces their quality.
Since I am talking to you in such detail about by work, I should tell you that I did
another large work of sixty etchings to illustrate the Poesies de Mallarme.6
[Matisse lists the etching reproductions enclosed.]
I close hoping that you will excuse all this writing if it doesn't interest you. I live here
in solitude and when I have the occasion to pour forth, I cannot resist.
Please accept, Monsieur, with my thanks for all the trouble that you have gone to for
me, my very best wishes.
Henri Matisse

P .S. I couldn't procure other reproductions of etchings-these ones are rather soiled, but
the balance and the proportion in relation to the page are scrupulously exact, for these
two elements are essential.

14 February 1 9 34
Dear Mr. Romm,
You tell me in your letter of 3 February that my Merion panel is a logical follow-up of the
Moscow Danse, but that you see there a distinct difference : the human element is less
pronounced-and this induces me to answer you that the object of the two works was not
the same ; the problem was different.
In architectural painting, which is the c�e in lV[erion, it seems to me that the human
element has to be tempered, if not excluded. I, who let myself always be guided by my
instinct (so much so that it manages to overcome my reason), had to avoid it, for it led me
away from my architectural problem each time it appeared on my canvas. The expression
of this painting should be associated with the severity of a volume of whitewashed stone,
and an equally white, bare vault. Further, the spectator should not be arrested by this
II Letters to Alexandre Romm, I934 69

human character with which he would identify, and which by stopping him there would
keep him apart from the great, harmonious, living and animated association of the archi­
tecture and the painting.
Didn't Raphael and Michelangelo, despite the abstraction resulting from all the rich­
ness of mind that they expended on their murals, weigh down their walls with the ex­
pression of this humanity, which constantly separates us from the ensemble, notably in
the Last Judgement? This human sentiment is possible in a picture-a picture is like a
book-its interest does not overwhelm the spectator who must go in front of it ; the place
it will hang is not fixed in advance. It can change places without essentially modifying its
place. The painter, then, has more freedom to enrich it.
Architectural painting depends absolutely on the place that has to receive it, and which
it animates with a new life. Once it is placed there, it cannot be separated. It must give the
space enclosed by the architecture the atmosphere of a wide and beautiful glade filled
with sunlight, which encloses the spectator in a feeling of release in its rich profusion. In
this case, it is the spectator who becomes the human element of the work.
You also say : 'It seems to me that the Merion panels should produce an effect analogous
to stained-glass windows in the semi-darkness of a nave.' Yes, with the difference that my
wall is penetrated by light at the foot, while in the nave it comes from above. My painted
surface is quite opaque, and does not give any illusion of the transparence of a stained-glass
window ; rather it reflects light.
I should like to add that the glazed arches are wider than the solid parts, but that my
vertical plan still takes precedence over all else. I will even add that by the action of my
lines and my painted surfaces, I have raised the arches of the vault, which were very
oppressive and gave a crushing feeling.
You point out to me the difference between the Moscow Danse and the Merion panel
(reminding you of the Bonheur de vivre) and you wonder if the different character of the
colouring is not the cause.
On this subject, I should tell you that the first panel made for Merion (which because
of an accident in measurement had to be redone) and the final one are painted with exactly
the same colours, the same manner of painting and that, nonetheless, they have a different
character. The first decoration is a warlike dance and has a little of the frenzy of the Moscow
panel. The feeling alone turned the same constructive elements into a different expression,
by proportioning them differently-as in music, the seven notes, more or less altered, and
the same tones express by their different combinations-an extraordinary variety of
expression. That is all.
You may, as you ask, make use of passages of this letter and of the preceding one if you
consider it worthwhile. I hope to have expressed myself clearly enough for that.
I congratulate the directors of the Russian B. [eaux] A.[rts] on their excellent idea to have
public momuments decorated by their painters ; that is where the great problem is, at
present.
Please accept my thanks for the great interest that you take in my work, and also the
expression of my highest regard.
Henri Matisse
P. S. I looked with interest at the book of embroideries that you sent me. I had already
seen this work in Moscow in the National Museum of Art formed by the brother of Serge
Ivanovitch Stschoukine ; the reproductions in this book are very well done.
A friend brought me from Moscow, several years ago, a colour reproduction of an
.
espagnole, 7 1n the Stschoukine collection. Could you tell me, if it is no trouble, whether
there were other colour reproductions made of my works in Moscow?
 II Letters to Alexandre Romm, I934
1 7 March 1 9 34
Dear Mr. Romm :
I said of a picture : its interest does not overwhelm the spectator who must go in front of
it. It is an image. Like the book on the shelf of a bookcase, only showing the few words of
�ts title, it needs, to give up its riches, the action of the reader who must take it up, open
tt, and shut himself away with it-similarly the picture enclosed in its frame and forming
with other paintings an ensemble on the wall of an apartment or a museum, cannot be
penetrated unless the attention of the viewer is concentrated especially on it. In both
cases, to be appreciated, the object must be isolated from its milieu (contrary to archi­
tectural painting). It is this which made me write that the spectator must go 'in front of' ;
I should have written 'in search of' to be more precise.
[The letter concludes with topical matters.]
Henri Matisse

October 1 9 34
Dear Sir,
[The letter begins with topical matters.]
Regarding the information that you asked me for on my manner of painting-intense
study of the model and rapid execution of the picture afterwards ; this is quite right, but
again the method of work depends very much on temperament. Delacroix said that after
making all the studies that one feels are needed for a picture, it was necessary to buckle
down to it exclaiming : 'And now never mind about mistakes !' That is to say that it is
necessary to let instinct speak. Regarding the transparency of colours, it is also a sort of
instinct which guides your hand. When I undertook the Moscow Danse and Musique, I
had decided to put colours on flat and without shading. s I knew that my musical harmony
was represented by a green and a blue (representing the relation of the green pines to the
blue sky of the Cote d'Azur) completed by a tone for the flesh of the figures. What seemed
essential was the surface quantity of the colours. It seemed that these colours, applied by
no matter what medium-fresco, gouache, watercolour, coloured material-would give
the spirit of my composition. I was quite astonished, when I saw the decorations in
Moscow, to see that I had, in applying my colours, played a little game with the brush in
varying the thickness of the colour so that the white of the canvas acted more or less
transparently and threw off a quite precious effect of moire silk.
To use the transparency of colours, to avoid mixing them, which renders them dull,
use glazes, etc. (this is your own phrase). This is governed by the same principle. You
can superimpose one colour on another and employ it more or less thickly. Your taste and
your instinct will tell you if the result is good. The two colours should act as one-the
second should not have the look of a coloured varnish, in other words the colour modified
by another should not look glassy. The painter who best used slightly thinned paint and
glazes is Renoir-he painted with liquid : oil and turpentine (I suppose i poppy seed oil
and l turpentine) quite fresh and not syrupy, oxidized by the air ; for in this case the
painting never dries ; I knew of a Renoir of the Cagnes period, a figure of a woman repre­
senting a spring, which was still not dry twenty years after its execution. 9
· Since I am speaking of the Moscow decoration, let me tell you that in the panel of
Musique, the owner had a little red painted on the second personage, a young flutist with
crossed legs. He had a little red painted to hide the sex which was, however, indicated
quite discreetly, it was there to finish the torso.lO All that is needed is for a restorer to take
a little liquid solvent like mineral spirits benzine, and rub this place a moment until the
hidden lines appear.
 12
1
On Mode rnism and Tradition ) 1 9 3 5

Although Matisse had given some interviews between 1 908 and 193 5 , his own published
writing within that period consisted only of a relatively unimportant autobiographical note. 2
In May of 1 93 5 Matisse contributed to a series of articles in The Studio in which artists and
critics wrote on the art of the time. In this article, he reminisces about his early training,
especially the time he spent copying in the Louvre, and about his relationship to his contem­
poraries. He notes that while most of the latter were interested in the Impressionists and post­
Impressionists, he himself spent his time copying in the Louvre and submitting himself to the
influence of such masters as Raphael, Poussin, and Chardin, because he wanted to see beyond
the Impressionists' subtle gradations of tone : 'In short, I wanted to understand myself'. This
emphasis upon the finding of oneself is a reiteration, here in autobiographical form, of
Matisse's concept of painting as expression through the medium of the self.
Matisse in 1 93 5 is just as concerned with his theory of the picture as a total harmony (not
unlike a musical composition) in which the configuration of form and space carries the expres­
sion, as he was in 'Notes of a Painter' of 1908. His image of the chess-board is particularly
revealing and sheds light on his choice of subject matter. The constant repetition of similar
-and sometimes the same-objects and situations in his painting may be seen to have the
constancy of a chess-board, while the different configurations of form in which the situations
are embodied may be compared to the different moves which make the appearance of the
board change during the course of play. As the intentions of the players remain constant, so it
might be said that Matisse's intentions also remained constant, despite his changes in style.
The reasoning behind Matisse's synthesis of objects is succinctly stated here : significance is
found not in copying nature but in the relation of the object to the artist's personality and to
'his power to arrange his sensations and emotions'.
Just as 'Notes of a Painter' showed Matisse's relationship to tradition, so here, he states
that there has been no break in 'the continuity of artistic progress from the early to- the pre­
sent day painters'. Matisse obviously sees himself as part of a long and rich tradition in which
'only plastic form has a true value', and in which 'a large part of the beauty of a picture arises
from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium' , 3 what Roger Fry called
'The dual nature of painting, where we are forced to recognize at one and the same moment, a
diversely cnloured surface and a three-dimensional world . . . . ' 4 This struggle with the limita­
tions of the medium obsessed Matisse throughout his career.
In this essay Matisse once again discusses his continuity with the traditions of European
painting, states his belief in painting as expression, and acknowledges his preference for
bright, clear colour. Although he alludes to colour, line and subject matter, he once again
avoids a specific discussion of space and the illusion of space and of the relationship between
painting and drawing.
 12 On Modernism and Tradition, I935

ON MODERN ISM AND TRADITI ON

I t is undeniable that, during the last fifty years, every artistic effort o f importance has
been made in Paris. Elsewhere, artists are content to follow where others have led, but in
Paris there is the enterprise and the courage necessary to all creative work which has
made this city an artistic centre.
When I first began to paint, we did not disagree with our superiors and advanced our
opinions slowly and cautiously. The Impressionists were the acknowledged leaders and
the post-Impressionists followed in their footsteps. I didn't. We young painters strolled
down the rue Laffitte looking at the galleries in which their pictures were on view, and
as we worked we thought of them. As for me, having left the Beaux-Arts, I spent my time
in the Louvre copying and submitting myself to the influence of such undoubted masters
as Raphael, Poussin, Chardin and the Flemish. I felt that the methods of the Impressionists
were not for me. I wanted to see beyond their subtle gradations of tone and continual
experiments. In short, I wanted to understand myself. Coming out of the Louvre, crossing
the Pont des Arts, I saw other subjects for my art.
'Well, what are you looking for?' Gustave Moreau, my master, asked me, one day.
'Something that is not in the Louvre,' I answered, 'but is there', pointing to the barges
on the Seine.
'And do you think that the masters of the Louvre didn't see that?' he replied. In point
of fact what I saw at the Louvre did not affect me directly. There I felt as though I were
in a library containing works of the past and I wanted to create something out of my own
experience, so I began to work alone. s
It was then that I met a tall, thin young man, who has since put on quite a respectable
amount of flesh ; this was Derain. 6 We lived together for some time at Collioure, where we
worked unremittingly, urged by the· same incentive. The methods of painting employed by
our elders were not adequate to the true representation of our sensations, so we had to
seek new methods. And, after all, this urge is felt by every generation. At that time, it is
true, there was more scope than there is to-day, and tradition was rather out of favour by
reason of having been so long respected.
The simplification of form to its fundamental geometrical shapes, as interpreted by
Seurat, was the great innovation of that day. This new technique made a great impression
on me. Painting had at last been reduced to a scientific formula ; it was the secession from
the empiricism of the preceding eras. I was so much intrigued by this extraordinary
method that I studied post-Impressionism, but actually I knew very well that achieve­
ment by these. means was limited by too great adherence to strictly logical rules. Those
around me knew of this feeling. Standing in front of a canvas that I had just finished,
Cros [sic]7 said to me : 'You won't stay with us long.'
In the post-Impressionist picture, the subject is thrown into relief by a contrasting series
of planes which always remains secondary. For me, the subject of a picture and its back­
ground have the same value, or, to put it more clearly, there is no principal feature, only
the pattern is important. The picture is formed by the combination of surfaces, differently
coloured, which results in the creation of an 'expression'. In the same way that in a musical
harmony each note is a part of the whole, so I wished each colour to have a contributory
value. A picture is the co-ordination of controlled rhythms, and it is thus that one can
change a surface which appears red-green-blue-black for one which appears white-blue­
red-green ; it is the same picture, the same feeling presented differently, but the rhythms
are changed. The difference between the two canvases is that of two aspects of a chess­
board in the course of a game of chess.
The appearance of the board is continually changing in the course of play, but the
intentions of the players who move the pawns remain constant.
 13 Statements to Teriade, I936 73

I decided then to discard verisimilitude. It did not interest me to copy an object. Why
.
r should I paint the outside of an apple, however exactly? What possible interest could
there by in copying an object which nature provides in unl.imited quantities and which
one can always conceive more beautiful? What is significant is the relation of the object
to the artist, to his personality, and his power to arrange his .sensations and emotions.
I have a great love for bright, clear, pure colour, and I am always surprised to sec
lovely colours unnecessarily muddied and dimmed.
A great modern attainment is to have found the secret of expression by colour, to
which has been added, with what is called Fauvisme and the movements which have
followed it, expression by design ; contour, lines and their direction. In the main, tradi­
tion was carried forward by new mediums of expression and augmented as far as was
possible in this direction.
It would be wrong to think that there has been a break in the continuity of artistic
progress from the early to the present-day painters. In abandoning tradition the artist
would have but a fleeting success, and his name would soon be forgotten.
To-day, it seems to me that we live in a period of fermentation, which promises to
produce important and durable works. But, if I am not mistaken, only plastic form has a
true value, and I have always believed that a large part of the beauty of a picture arises
from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium. s
One last comment on the name of that school of painting known as 'Fauvisme', a word
which was found so intriguing and which became the subject of many more or less apt
witticisms. The phrase originated with the art critic Louis Vauxcelles who, on coming
into one of the rooms of the Autumn Salon, where, among the canvases of that generation,
a statue was on view executed by the sculptor Marque in the style of the Italian Renais­
sance, declared 'Look, Donatello among the beasts.' 9 This shows that one must not
attach more than a relative importance to the qualifying characteristics which distinguish
such and such a school, and which, in spite of their convenience, limit the life of a move­
ment and militate against individual recognition.

13
Statements to Teriade, 1 9 3 61
[The Purity of the Means]
In 1936 Matisse made two short statements to Teriade, which are particularly relevant to his
own development at this point. From around 1929 to about 1 933, Matisse had been under­
going a revision of his own values, as evidenced in his work and in his statements. The first
statement to Teriade is the boldest and the most straightforward appraisal of this change.
He is particularly concerned with a return to essentials, having felt perhaps that during the
Nice period his paintings had become a little too complicated, relaxed, and low key, too much
involved with the fleeting effects of nature, not synthetic enough. Thus he calls for 'beautiful
74 13 Statements to Teriade, I936
blues, reds, yellows-matter to stir the sensual depths in men. This is the starting point of
Fauvism : the courage to return to the purity of the means.' Matisse here is obviously referring
to the boldness of his own imagery in the mid 1 930s. Thus he can state : ' In my last paintings
I have united the acquisitions of the last twenty years to my essential core, to my very essence.'
The twenty-year period he refers to is that between 1 9 1 6 and 1 936, and thus it seems that
during the Nice period Matisse had indeed been regathering his forces, through the analysis
of visual effects, in order to strike out even more boldly.
The second statement, which concerns relationships, anticipates Matisse's later exposition
of his portrait painting method (Text 44, below), and bears witness to Matisse's consistency
of method. It also provides a specific description of the fluid relationship Matisse maintained
with his pictures while working on them.

STATEMENTS TO TERIADE [The Purity of the Means]

When the means of expression have become so refined, so attenuated that their power of
expression wears thin, it is necessary to return to the essential principles which made
human language. They are, after all, the principles which 'go back to the source', which
relive, which give us life. Pictures which have become refinements, subtle gradations,
dissolutions without energy, call for beautiful blues, reds, yellows-matter to stir the
sensual depths in men.2 This is the starting point of Fauvism : the courage to return to the
purity of the means.
Our senses have an age of development which does not come from the immediate
surroundings, but from a moment in civilization. We are born with the sensibility of a
given period of civilization. And that counts far more than all we can learn about a period.
The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual, but also from an
accumulated strength, the civilization which precedes us. One can't do just anything.
A talented artist cannot do just as he likes. If he used only his talents, he would not exist.
We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.
In my latest paintings, I have united the acquisitions of the last twenty years to my
essential core, to my very essence.

The reaction of each stage is as important as the subject. For this reaction comes from
me and not from the subject. It is from the basis of my· interpretation that I continually
react until my work comes into harmony with me. Like someone writing a sentence,
rewrites it, makes new discoveries . . . At each stage, I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the
next sitting, if I find a weakness in the whole, I find my way back into the picture by
means of the weakness-! re-enter through the breach-and reconceive the whole. Thus
everything becomes fluid again and as each element is only one of the component forces
(as in an orchestration), the whole can be changed in appearance but the feeling still
remains the same. A black could very well replace a blue, since basically the expression
derives from the relationships. a One is not bound to a blue, to a green or to a red. You
can change the relationships by modifying the quantity of the components without chang­
ing their nature. That is, the painting will still be composed of blue, yellow and green,
in altered quantities. Or you can retain the· relationships which form the expression of a
picture, replacing a blue with a black, as in an orchestra a trumpet may be replaced by an
oboe.4
. . . At the final stage the painter finds himself freed and his emotion exists complete in
his work. He himself, in any case, is relieved of it.5
 On Cezan ne's ( Trois ba igneuses' , 1 9 3 61

In 1 936 Matisse decided to give his Cezanne Trois baigneuses (Figure 9) to the Museum of the
City of Paris at the Petit Palais. He had purchased the painting from Vollard in 1 899, and had
kept it through intense financial difficulties (see Text 1 8, below) . 2 His letter to Raymond
Escholier, Director of the Museum, is a moving testament to his regard for Cezanne.

ON CEZANNE 'S TROIS BAIGNE USES

Nice, 1 0 November 1 93 6

Yesterday I consigned to your shipper Cezanne's Baigneuses. I saw the picture carefully
packed and it was supposed to leave that very evening for the Petit Palais.
Allow me to tell you that this picture is of the first importance in the work of Cezanne
because it is a very solid, very complete realization of a composition that he carefully
studied in several canvases, which, now in important collections, are only the studies that
culminated in the present work. .
In the thirty-seven years I have owned this canvas, I have come to know it quite well,
I hope, though not entirely ; it has sustained me morally in the critical moments of my
venture as an artist ; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance ; for this reason,
allow me to request that it be placed so that it may be seen to its best advantage. For this
it needs both light and perspective. It is rich in colour and surface, and seen at a distance
it is possible to appreciate the sweep of its lines and the exceptional sobriety of its re­
lationships.
I know that I do not have to tell you this, but nevertheless I think it is my duty to do
so ; please accept these remarks as the excusable testimony of my admiration for this
work which has grown increasingly greater ever since I have owned it.
Allow me to thank you for the care th'at you will give it, for I hand it over to you with
complete confidence • • • •

Henri Matisse
 Divagations ) 1 9 3 71

In the late 1 93 0s Matisse was moved to write two essays which are concerned primarily with
drawing. 'Divagations' is the first of these. Although the early critical battles were past,
political events had caused a new wave of reaction against much of modern painting, and
Matisse's art was especially prone to criticism not only in Nazi Germany, where his art was
considered 'decadent' , but also in Russia where his art was criticized for its 'bourgeois
aestheticism'. In addition, in the depth of the depression in America there was a tendency
to distrust the opulence and aloofness of Matisse's painting from social events.2 In this period
Matisse was not only very much involved with drawing but was also quite aware of the appeal
of his drawings even · to persons who were not particularly enthusiastic about his painting. a
In 'Divagations', Matisse reflects at length on the inscription at the Ecole Nationale des
Beaux-Arts of a saying of lngres which reads, 'Drawing is the probity of art' . He uses this
quotation as a springboard for his own reflections upon drawing and the teaching of drawing ;
it also serves to vent his spleen against the Academicians, whom he felt misunderstood 'these
facile words of lngres, constantly repeated by p ompous ignoramuses' . In reflecting upon the
importance which Ingres and Leonardo (for both of whom Matisse had a great deal of respect)
assigned to drawing, Matisse discusses the role of the artist as teacher.
Perhaps with some desire to justify the brevity of his own career as a teacher, Matisse
regrets the sight of 'genuine artists devoting a p ortion of their efforts to the aid of those who
cannot find their way alone ! ' 4 Finally, he comes back to an attitude which underlies all of
his writings : 'He who really has something to say is driven to it by his emotion which induces
him to carry out his work in relation to his own qualities.' Thus, while Matisse identifies
himself with the 'classical tradition' of painters, he expresses the attitude that if rules are
made they must be broken, that while intensive training and endless study are necessary to the
development of the artist, the artist should pro ceed from · his own instincts rather than by
formulae. Matisse believed great art to be the product not of a didactic system, but of the
contact between an individual sensibility and nature. Great art makes its own rules.

DIVAGATIONS
'Drawing is the probity of art. ' Many years ago I used to find myself frequently standing
perplexed before this statement, graven above the signature of Ingres on the marble of the
little monument which is dedicated to him i_n the vestibule of the drawing class called the
'Cours Yvon' at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
What exactly does this inscription mean? I readily agree that it is necessary first of all
to draw, but what I do not understand is the word ' probity'. Can you hear words of this
sort spoken by Corot, Delacroix, Van Gogh, Renoir or Cezanne ? And yet I am not annoyed
when Hokusai is called 'the old man mad about drawing'.
 15 Divagations, I937 77

Are these facile words of Ingres, constantly repeated by pompous ignoramuses, to be

linked with those contained in Leonardo da Vinci's manuscript recommending that lines
of composition be sought in the cracks of old walls or indicating coarse tricks for giving
expression to the likeness of young girls?5
I am of the opinion that Ingres and Leonardo, believing themselves obliged to teach
their art, could only enter into communion with their pupils by giving them handy rules :
either to hold them to their work through the patient execution of a literal drawing of the
object to be represented (I think of the tailor who, having botc�ed the cut and hang of his
suit, tries to get out of the scrape by fastening it to the body of the customer by means of
numerous alterations which bind his victim and paralyse his movements), or to remedy
the poverty of their imagination through mechanical means of composition.
Similarly style, which is the result of the necessities of a given period and is determined
by exigencies independent of the artist's will, cannot be taught.
Besides, I understood nothing of the drawing instruction given in this Cours Yvon,
where, more than forty years ago, I was 'corrected' by Gerome, Bouguereau, Joseph
Blanc, Bonnat, Lenepveu, etc., exacting but imprecise teachers ; nor, with the passage of
time, has any of this instruction come back to me. But would I have understood any more
had these masters been genuine? I don't believe so. I once had the good fortune to receive
Rodin's advice on the subject of my drawings, which had been shown him by a friend.
Yet the advice he gave in no wise suited me, and on this occasion Rodin merely showed
his petty side.a He could not do otherwise. For the best of what the old masters possess ,
that which is their raison d'etre, is beyond their grasp. Having no understanding of it, they
cannot teach it.
An atelier of students reminds me of Bruegel's Parable of the Blind in which the
teacher would be the first blind man who is leading the others.
Michel Breal7 used to say, 'A professor is a man who teaches what he doesn't know'
(quoted by his son Auguste).
How distressing it is to see genuine artists devoting a portion of their efforts to the aid
of those who cannot find their way alone. They merely succeed in whittling out so many
white canes which will permit men whose activity might be better employed to grope
their way until they have done a useless piece of work.
He who really has something to say is driven to it by the emotion which makes him
carry out his work, in relation to his own qualities.
0 Renoir was consequently right when he said, 'The man who has turned his canvas to the
wall for three months, and still cannot discover what is lacking in it has no need to go on
painting.'
 16
Monthe rlant: Listening to Matisse , 1 93 81

In 1 93 8, the writer Henry de Montherlant published an interview with Matisse. Although

this short piece is actually more of an essay than an interview and the reader is in fact listening
more to Montherlant than to Matisse, it is reproduced here because of the insight that it gives
into Matisse's attitude toward his immediate surroundings as the raw materials of his art.

LISTENING TO MATISSE
Each winter, for the last two years, I have often seen Henri Matisse in Nice. He had been
asked to illustrate a limited edition of La Rose de Sable. Mter a long hesitation, he finally
decided against it : 'It's a book in which everything has been said. There isn't room for
anything in the margins.' He had a copy of A tala on the table, which he pointed to : 'That
has no need to be completed either.' 2
Who was it that said : 'I like women who have a past and men who have a future' ?
I like men who have a past and women who have a future. I like men who have lived a full
life and accomplished much, and children who haven't as yet, but who are full of in­
spiration and promise. People of my own age are less interesting. I always feel as though
I know more than they do. Barres, who during his last agonizing five minutes of life must
have been desolate at missing the pleasures of old age, spoke profoundly of the first signs
of the twilight. a No one better understood Hugo's poems of old age, Dieu, la fin de Satan,
unknown to the public.
Last winter, having caught influenza, Matisse thought he was going to die. It is im­
portant for a man, at least once in his life, to have believed he is about to die : paren­
thetically, this is one of the gifts war gives to man. I find it hard to believe that a creator
of Matisse's calibre should have so early this ' Moment of Oversight', with which
D' Annunzio reproaches Barres (the word, by the way, is Goethe's, apropos of whom I
know not ; we know that D' Annunzio was light-fingered). But finally he took himself for
lost, and such an idea is fruitful. While convalescing, he said several interesting things
which pleased me, some of which I will relate here.
' I thought I was about to die. I was sure of it. It's not fair. I did all that I could not to
get sick, but to no avail. No, it just isn't fair.'
'Didn't your work and your memories prevent you from suffering? It always seemed to
me that the artist, when faced with death, should be secretly smiling like the man whose
safe is being robbed and knows that it is empty. What is valuable is elsewhere.'
'Yes, but I should have liked to finish.' ·

'I should have liked to finish.' How well said ! Constructed works. During the months I
spent in Algiers, I could see from my window a tall block of flats being built. During the
construction I wrote the eight hundred pages of La Rose de Sable. The house was taking
form at the same time as my work. This parallel touched me. I said to myself: 'Yes, it's
 16 Montherlant : L'istening to Matisse, I938 79

just the same thing. This certainly is not mere chance.' And I remember having written
fifteen years ago in Olympiques : 'If I die too soon, my work will have no roof. '
Matisse continued : 'I had formed in my mind a hierarchy of misfortunes, and I had
found that the greatest misfortune for me would be to recover from my illness only to
find that I had lost all will to work.'
His apartment contains a large aviary, full of birds both rare and common. rfhe first
time I saw him last winter, he led me immediately to the aviary and gave a long disserta­
tion on the birds. He spoke so long I began to worry : I remembered Goethe showing his
medals to tiresome visitors, because he didn't have anything else to say to them. But I soon
began to understand Matisse's child-like passion for his birds. He spoke of each like a real
expert ; some of his ideas went a bit beyond the realm of science, as when he said that
European birds are brighter and more intelligent than those of exotic countries.
' Sometimes when I bought one of these birds I found it really very expensive . . . but
when I thought I was done for, I said to my wife, see how right I was to buy these birds
0 for my enjoyment ! You must always do what gives you pleasure.'
These were profound words, beyond their seeming ingenuousness. So much more pro­
found than those idiots who say to you indignantly : ' So, you think that man is born for
happiness?' These stupid Westerners ! 'What have I done ? I lived, I made myself happy, '
wrote Gallieni to Lyautey (and I believe that Lyautey would ha,ve written the same thing).4
You really have to be a stupid Westerner not to experience a certain grandeur before such
men who are reaching old age and, having accomplished their work, say : 'An d then, I made
myself happy.' For there is also the greatness of wisdom which is none other than that of
intelligence.
Sometimes Matisse and I don't agree. As when he tells me he suffers from criticism,
but praise does not give him pleasure (I'm just the opposite) ; or that it is the truth of an
artist that remains, not his legend ; I don't see why posterity should be less frivolous than
the contemporary world : the truth of the artist remains, but illu�nated-and sometimes
in the wrong light-by his legend. Or when he says that, like most of the artists I have
met, he prefers working under uncomfortable conditions, and on works created with
great difficulty, to work which 'escapes from you, when it has barely been expressed, like
a bird which flies off forever as soon as the cage is open'. I, on the other hand, prefer those
of my works that sprang into existence with an ease that was almost magic, because
though I love my work, I prefer life to it, and the work that gave me trouble inspires a
kind of grudge in me : it has taken too much time from my private life, which is more
.
unportant to me. . . . 5
Matisse often told me that the best thing the old masters have, their raison d'etre, is
beyond them, that they are not able to teach it and that they waste their time by trying. But
they are able to teach, without meaning to, by informal conversation, about their work or
their life. 6 And they can talk to their colleagues who practise a different art from theirs.
Stendhal showed us Michelangelo going to the Coliseum to find inspiration for the
Basilica of Saint Peter's : 'A theatre gives ideas for a church.' There is unity in creation,
and the writer learns from the painter as the cupola of Saint Peter's perhaps learned from
the pagan circus. _
Notes of a Painter on his Drawing, 1 9 3 9 1

In 1 939, Matisse was persuaded to write a defence of his drawing for an issue of Le Point
devoted to him and his work.
In 'Notes of a painter on his Drawing', he once again makes reference to his own education,
which he felt made him cognizant of the different means of expression inherent in colour and
drawing, and discusses how he studied the old masters to find how they dealt with volume,
line, contrasts and harmonies ; and how he tried to synthesise his awareness of their work
with his own observations from nature. Here he states quite explicitly his version of the
method of classical training : to absorb the lessons of the masters and then having done so, to
'forget' those lessons in order to arrive at a means of personal expression.
Matisse's description of his own working method when drawing is very revealing ; he not
only describes his attitude toward the act of drawing, but also describes aspects of his attitude
toward picture-making on the whole. In this essay Matisse also makes some important
observations about the nature of his subject matter, and expresses views on space and line
which were not found in his earlier writings. Discussing his interiors, he notes that his models
are never to be conceived of as just ' dummies', and that while their expression is not always
articulated by the portrayal of human attitudes, it is by the total ensemble of his picture, by the
creation of what he calls 'plastic signs' [szgnes plastiques]. This sublimation of expression into
the total ensemble of the painting is a clarification of the expression of similar values in 'Notes
of a Painter' , and an important aspect of Matisse's method.
In this essay Matisse also discusses the creation of space, noting that his final line drawings
always have a luminous space, and that the objects which constitute them have positions in
different planes in space : 'in perspective, but in a p_erspective of sentiment, in suggested per­
spective'. This notion of luminous space is a generalized equivalent of the ambiguous, intan­
gible space that may also be seen in his painting, and is most important to an understanding of
his work.
Matisse felt that the human side of painting is the result of a mysterious, expressive quality
which, if the painter himself is possessed of a good sensibility, comes through in the final
painting. Thus it need not be overtly stated in the subject matter ; the painter -should instead
construct his painting according to what he perceives, and the force of this expression will be
evident as a by-product of the painter's own depth of humanity ; not as something apart from
or only presented by form, but rather as feeling which is embodied into the very fibre of form
itself: 'My plastic signs probably express their souls . . . . '
17 Notes of a Painter on his Drawing, I939 81

NOTES OF A PAINTE R ON HIS DRAWING

My education taught me an awareness of the different means of expression inherent in
colour and drawing. My classical education naturally led me to study the old masters, and
to assimilate them as much as possible while considering such things as volume, the
arabesque, value contrasts and harmony, and to relate my reflections to my work from
nature ; until the day when I took stock of myself and realized that for me it was necessary
to forget the methods of the old masters, or rather to comprehend them in a completely
personal manner. Isn't this the rule of all artists of classical training? Next came the
recognition and influence of the arts of the Orient.

My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotion. The simplifica­
tion of the mediur.a allows that. At the same time, these drawings are more complete than
they may appear to some people who confuse them with a sketch. They generate light ;
seen on a dull day or in indirect light they contain, in addition to the quality and sensitivity
of line, light and value differences which quite clearly correspond to colour. These
qualities are also evident to many in full light. They derive from the fact that the drawings
are always preceded by studies made in a less rigorous medium than pure line, such as
charcoal or stump drawing, which enables me to consider simultaneously the character
of the model, the human expression, the quality of surrounding light, atmosphere and all
that can only be expressed by drawing. And only when I feel drained by the effort, which
may go on for several sessions, can I with a clear mind and without hesitation, give free
rein to my pen. Then I feel clearly that my emotion is expressed in plastic writing. Once
my emotive line has modelled the light of my white paper without destroying its precious
whiteness, I can neither add nor take anything away. The page is written ; no correction
is possible. If it is not adequate, there is no alternative than to begin again, as if it were an
acrobatic feat.2 It contains, amalgamated according to my possibilities of synthesis, the
different points of view that I could more or less assimilate by my preliminary study.a
The jewels or the arabesques never overwhelm my drawings from the model, because
these jewels and arabesques form part of my orchestration. 4 Well placed, they suggest the
form or the value accents necessary to the composition of the drawing. Here I recall a
doctor who said to me : 'When one looks at your drawings, one is astonished to see how well
you know anatomy.' For him, my drawings, in which movement was expressed by a
logical rhythm of lines, suggested the play of muscles in action.

It is in order to liberate grace and character that I study so intently before making a pen
drawing. I never impose violence on myself; to the contrary, I am like the dancer or
tightrope walker who begins his day with several hours of different limbering exercises so
that every part of his body obeys him, when in front of his public he wants to give ex­
pression to his emotions by a succession of slow or fast dance movements, or by an
elegant pirouette.
(As regards perspective : my final line drawings always have their own luminous space,
and the objects of which - they are composed are on different planes ; thus, in perspective,
but in a perspective offeeling, in suggested perspective.)

I have never considered drawing as an exercise of particular dexterity, rather as princi­

pally a means of expressing intimate feelings and describing states of mind, but a means
deliberately simplified so as to give simplicity and spontaneity to the expression which
should speak without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator. s
My models, human figures, are never just ' extras' in an interior. They are the principal
theme in my work. I depend entirely on my model, whom I observe at liberty, and then I
82 18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
decide on the pose which best' suits her nature. When I take a new model, I intuit the pose
that will best suit her from her un-selfconscious attitudes of repose, and then I become
the slave of that pose. I often keep those girls several years, until my interest is exhausted.
My plastic signs probably express their souls (a word I dislike), which interests me sub­
consciously, or what else is there? Their forms are not always perfect, but they are always
expressive. The emotional interest aroused in me by them does not appear particularly
in the representation of their bodies, but often rather in the lines or the special values
distributed over the whole canvas or paper, which form its complete orchestration, its
architecture. But not everyone perceives this. It is perhaps sublimated sensual pleasure,
which may not yet be perceived by everyone.

Someone called me :6 'This charmer who takes pleasure in charming monsters'. I never
thought of my creations as charmed or charming monsters. I replied to someone who
said I didn't see women as I · represented them : 'If I met such women in the street, I
should run away in terror.' Above all, I do not create a woman, I make a picture.

In spite of the absence of shadows or half-tones expressed by hatching, I do not renounce

the play of values or modulations. I modulate with variations in the weight of line, and
above all with the areas it delimits on the white paper. I modify the different parts of the
white paper without touching them, but by their relationships. This can be clearly seen
in the drawings of Rembrandt, Turner, and of colourists in general. 7
To sum up, I work without a theory. I am conscious only of the forces I use, and I am
driven on by an idea which I really only grasp as it grows with the picture. As Chardin
used to say, ' I add (or I take away, because I scrape out a lot) until it looks right.'
Making a picture would seem as logical as building a house, if one worked on sound
principles. One should not bother about the human side. Either one has it or one hasn't.
If one has, it colours the work in spite of everything.

Carco : Conversation with Matisse) 1 94 1 1

Francis Carco's recollection of his conversation with Matisse is an interesting document for its
attention to the small details of Matisse's working day and for the insights it offers into Matisse's
sometimes sentimental recollection of the past. Like Montherlant's interview, Carco's essay
suffers from a certain slanting of details and in parts there is obviously as much of Carco pre-
·

sent as there is of Matisse.

18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I

CONVERSATION WITH MATISS E

In Nice in 1 94 1 , I ran into Matisse under the arcades of the Place Massena. AB usual he
was looking well. He looked completely at peace with himself that day. Everything about
him exuded harmony and honesty. His neat appearance, the brightness of his look, the assur­
ance of his features and an undefinable air of youth and serenity struck me immediately.
'Come see me,' he said, 'I've been working hard.'
That gave me enormous pleasure : it was so reassuring that at least one great artist re­
fused to admit all was lost. Who else was thinking about painting then? He must have
been the only one, and that seemed to be a good omen, because if each of us, in his own
sphere, accomplished his allotted task, the machine could get going again and pull us out
of the rut bad driving had put us in. The example, co ming from such an exalted source,
could only be the more inspiring. Matisse brought no vanity whatsoever to the situation.
He had taken up his paint brushes again like others their pen, their tools, and with the
help of his love for work, one could believe that the great miracle we had all been waiting
for through the humiliating days before the Armistice, was finally coming to pass.
That was not the first time that the painter had, so to speak, forced this to come about.
Thanks to this faith in work, Matisse, who once struggled to ensure his material needs,
had ended up by being hired by the Jambon studio where, in spite of his glasses and
beard, he worked like a labourer.2 His seriousness and courtesy have always stood him
well, in all sorts of situations. At }ambon's everyone called him 'doctor'. And later, in
Montmartre, the 'belle Fernande' a was to write of him as 'the archetypal master'.
His parents were grain merchants in the north ; he arrived in Paris as a young man to
study pharmacy, adds Gertrude Stein. 'He had set himself to copy the Poussins in the
Louvre and became a painter scarcely without bothering about the consent of his family,
who nevertheless continued to give him a small monthly allowance. At first he had a little
success. And he got married. • • • Then he had begun to come under the influence of
Cezanne and then of Negro sculpture. From all this sprang the Matisse of the Femme au
chapeau.' 4
That painting is the portrait of Mme Matisse and I remember the curious impression
it made on me. I had not yet developed a taste for modern art. The discussions that it
provoked at Max Jacob's on the rue Ravignan between Guillaume Apollinaire and
Picasso, or at Frede's in the long boisterous nights of the 'Lapin Agile', had not yet
convinced me. 5 Picasso never exhibited, on principle, and showed his works only to a
small circle of the initiated few, so one had to be satisfied with the doctrinaire aphorisms
which he tinged with humour to seduce his audience. Everything gravitated around these
specifications. And I was wondering if Picasso, in spite of his amazing powers of per­
suasion, didn't enjoy mystifying us more than painting, when the famous Femme au
chapeau taught me more in an instant than all these paradoxes.
At last I was able to appreciate what my friends meant by a 'portrait'. Nothing about it
was physically human. One had the impression that the artist had been more concerned
with his own personality than with that of the model. I didn't know Mme Matisse at all
but, according to Gertrude Stein, who bought the work without understanding why 'it
enraged everyone', she was a 'big woman with a long face and a big, obstinate, hanging
mouth'.6 Not a very flattering description, but I must agree that it corresponded pretty
well to my own impression. However, this extraordinary work, whose lines might have
been drawn on a wall in charcoal and yet were in balance with the cold tones which one
would think had been applied with a stencil-this work had such a clear and deliberate air
of premeditation that more than thirty years later I have not forgotten it.
'I painted this portrait at Issy-les-Mou lineaux', Matisse told me. ' I went there in 1 907
when I left the Couvent des Invalides .' 7• • •
 18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
A few years later, a trip to Morocco decided the direction of his talent. The painter
returned to Paris and settled there on the quai Saint-Michel, in his old lodgings where he
had so many times in the past descended the stairs early in the morning to take the bus
'La Villette-Saint-Sulpice' to }ambon's to earn his and his family's livelihood at twenty­
five sous an hour.
' It was hard work, but I had no choice. }ambon, who had obtained the commission for
the decoration of the Trans-Siberian exposition at the Grand-Palais for the Expo, had
taken us on, Marquet and myself, to paint the garlands. We \vorked bent double. We were
all crimped up. What a job I I had never known more complete degradation. Among our
companions, the sharp ones got themselves fired after two weeks so they could collect
compensation money. There were cafe waiters, delivery boys, a whole team of " !-don't­
give-a-damn" types whom the boss kept under his eye. Unfortunately the boss didn't
like my looks. One day I was whistling and right away he called me : "Hey there doctor,
my word, you're having a good time ! " I was so disgusted that I retorted : "That's . not
what I'm here for ! " Quick as a flash, that did it ; I got my pay and the sack. I had to go
and get signed on somewhere else.'
'But in the evening when you went home to the quai Saint-Michel, you had the consola-
tion of admiring Cezanne's picture hanging in your studio?' s
' Of course' , replied the painter, 'I could have sold it . . . but I stood fast.'
His face lit up with a smile.
'You must always stand fast, at all costs . • . • '
'Yes,' I said. 'When you can.'
'Whether you can or not, you hold on : that's the essential. When you're out of will
power you call on stubbornness, that's the trick. For big things as well as small, that
suffices, almost always. I used to be always late. One evening I went to meet Marquet . • •
and I waited. I cooled my heels for more than twenty minutes : no Marquet ! The next
day naturally, as soon as I saw him, I stopped him. "What !" he replied. "I waited for you
too, but after fifteen minutes I left. " You know Marquet? He can't lie. Well, I told
myself, since I always find a way to be late, I should one day be able to end up being on
time ! '
' Did you succeed?'
'And how ! I even poison everyone's existence with it, because by wanting to correct
this fault, which is basically a female one, I have fallen into the opposite extreme : I arrive
too early.'
What is striking about Matisse when one knows him slightly, is the extreme interest he
shows, in conversation, about trivia as well as important matters. Under a nonchalant
exterior, one feels his keenness to pierce the secret of things. Approximations don't
attract him. The habit of reflection, of logic, of analysis, leads him to formulate each one
of his thoughts or his impressions with all the clarity and rigour one could wish for.

Having taken up his invitation I was received in the big room on the left which he uses for
a studio. Arranged in several rows, one above the other, a series of drawings executed after
an initial study covered the walls. You could read there, as in an open book, the succession
of states and abbreviations by which the study was transformed into an arabesque and
passed from volume to line, with the most subtle and sparse of scripts.
'That's what I call the cinema of my sensibility,' he told me right away. 'When my study
is done, or rather my point of departure is established, then I let my pen run where it
wills. There are all the steps which, from the form to the rhythm, permit me to watch my
own reactions. I enjoy that : I don't know where I am going. I rely on my subconscious
self and the proof of this is that if I am disturbed during the process I can no longer
find the thread of it again.'
18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I Bs
Mter a while he said : 'Basically I enjoy everything : I am never bored.' Then inviting me
with a nod : 'Come,' he added, 'You will see how I am organized.'
A second room, also on the left, had two cages full of birds. Bengalis, cardinals, Japanese
warblers fluttered the bright colours of their feathers, which the long black tail feathers of
the widow-birds made even more brilliant. Fetishes and negro masks gave the room an
exotic look ; but since it only served as an antechamber to a conservatory where philo­
dendra from Tahiti spread their huge leaves, we crossed it fairly quickly and found our­
selves in a sort of jungle, which an ingenious sprinkling system maintained in its green
and tropical state. On a marble platform gourds and giant pumpkins composed, with
Chinese statuettes, an ensemble of contrasts where the disproportion of the different
elements permitted the artist to give free rein to his fantasy.
'Here we are in what I call my "farm",' Matisse informed me. 'I potter here several
hours a day, for these plants are a frightful bother to keep up. You have no idea I But as I
take care of them, I learn their types, their weight, their flexibility, and that helps me in
my drawings.'
'In short, your return to the earth.'
'Yes, of course • • why not?' 9 And looking at me over his glasses, he said : 'Do you
•

understand now why I am never bored? For over fifty years I have not stopped working
for an instant. From nine o'clock to noon, first sitting. I have lunch. Then I have a little
nap and take up my brushes again at two in the afternoon until the evening. You won't
believe me. On Sundays, I have to tell all sorts of tales to the models. I promise them that
it's the last time I will ever beg them to come and pose on that day. Naturally I pay them
double. Finally, when I sense that they are not convinced, I promise them a day off
during the week. "But Monsieur Matisse," one of them answered me, "this has been
going on for months and I have never had one afternoon off." Poor things I They don't
understand. Nevertheless I can't sacrifice my Sundays for them merely because they
have boyfriends. Put yourself in my place : when I was living in the Hotel de Ia Medi­
terranee, the Battle of the FlowerslO was almost a torture for me. All that music, the
floats and the laughter on the Promenade I They were no longer with me, so I installed
them by the window and painted them from behind. What could I do? I don't know
how to improvise. In order for things to click I must recover the idea I had the previous
day.'
We returned to the studio. Matisse was speaking of his work and, recounting the
thousand little difficulties he was running up against, he paused at times to scrutinize me
and see if I was taking in what he said, then he continued explaining his methods in his
rather hollow voice and that took me back to the time when we both had lived in the
HOtel de Ia Mediterranee by the sea. We had occupied neighbouring rooms. One morning
Matisse had come into my room.
'Well,' he had asked me in the same velvety voice as he approached the bed. 'What's
wrong? Sick?'
I had the Bu. Matisse took my pulse, and I understood from his serious air why his
colleagues at Jambon's had called him the doctor.
'That's annoying,' he said. 'Yesterday I began a canvas at Cimiez and the car is waiting
for me. But that's notliing. Just a minute.'
He left the room and returned with several of his works, a hammer and some nails. In
an instant the nails were in the wall, the pictures hung. Matisse gathered the folds of his
cape around his shoulders.
'I'm offl' he said. 'See you this evening. I'll come and see how you are. Stay in bed :
don't do anything foolish. My paintings will keep you company.'
I reminded him of this incident.
'A good old hotel, I must say l' he murmured. 'And what lovely Italian ceilings ! What
86 18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
tiles ! They were wrong to pull the building down. I stayed there four years for the .
pleasure of painting nudes and figures in an old rococo salon. Do you remember the way
the light came through the shutters ? It came from below like footlights. Everything was
fake, absurd, terrific, delicious. . . . '
w� sat down.
'I was saying' he continued, offering me a cigarette, 'that each day I need to recover my
idea of the previous day. Even in the early days I was like that and I envied my comrades
who could work anywhere. At Montmartre, Debray, the proprietor of the Moulin de la
Galette,11 used to invite all the painters to come and scribble at his place. Van Dongen12
was prodigious. He ran around after the dancers and drew them at the same time. Natur­
ally I took advantage of the invitation too, but all I managed to do was learn the tune of
the farandole, 13 which everyone used to roar out as soon as the orchestra played it :

Let's pray to God for those who're nearly broke !

Let's pray to God for those who've not a bean !

'Do you remember it? And later this tune helped me when I began my painting of La
danse which is in the Barnes Collection in New York.14 I whistled it as I painted. I
almost danced.' A youthful expression passed across his face. 'Those were good times ! '
He must have read i n my eyes that like him I had tasted the pleasures o f those 'good
old days' and that I had no occasion to regret them either, because he continued : 'I mean
that we had painting in our blood then, that we would have fought for it. It's extra­
ordinary, I was kicked out wherever I went and to use a model I was reduced to taking
evening courses, in a Paris city school on the rue Etienne-Marcel. I slaved all day for my
subsistence and was exhausted. My wife for her part had opened a little hat shop. But,
however tired I was in the evening, nothing could have stopped me from getting to the rue
Etienne-Marcel to work. One met strange fellows in that school. My neighbour, a sculptor,
complained because he couldn't dig up a commission. Each evening he asked if we might
not know a prominent man who had no statue in Paris. I looked with him : we boned up on
a dictionary of famous men and finally discovered that Buffon15 fell into this category. My
sculptor, whom I took for an artist, leapt off to the Museum. He got round the Director
who supported his request and got it accepted. Everything was going well. The fellow did
a maquette, exhibited it at the Salon and, by way of thanking me for having helped him
in his research, offered to take me on as an assistant. Sculpture has always fascinated me.
So I said to myself, in all good faith, that if I used the maquette as inspiration, I could do
something. Ah Ia Ia 1 The fellow thought I was going mad because, having listened to my
suggestions, he said to me : "My dear fellow, out of the question 1 It's a matter of squaring
the project up for enlargement. Otherwise I'll be out of pocket for it ! " '
'Poor Buffon I'
'Yes. Rather. Luckily after a long search I also finished running t o earth the Academy
where Carriere corrected the work of students.16 It was on the rue de Rennes in a court­
yard where a blockmaker's is now. Jean Puy, Derain, Laprade, Chabaud all belonged to
this Academy.17 Chabaud, as he always used to, sweated away alone in his corner. The
others used to show each other their sketches. Laprade's astounded everyone. "Be
careful ! there's the thaw !"18 I said looking at one of them. Laprade never forgave me for
it. And yet, that is what it was, joking apart. As for the scribbling of those who were
inspired by the patron's advice, that was really discouraging. You remember the remark
Forain made in front of a canvas of children by Carriere : " Someone was smoking in that
room !" I couldn't stop myself saying : "The stove is smoking. Open the windows !" 19
That wasn't really nasty. But once again I was kicked out. It was at that time that I
became connected with Derain. He was on the eve of departure for Commercy to do his
three years in the army and already he was painting magnificently. We had got to know each
18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
other in the Louvre where his copies bewildered the patrols and visitors. Old Derain
didn't get upset. When he came to join me at Collioure where I was spending the summer
with my wife's family, he knew more about it than anyone. We worked together at
Collioure, then exhibited the works which Vauxcelles baptized "the Fauves ". '
'What a scandal ! ' Matisse rubbed his hands together. ' Frankly, i t was admirable. "fhe
name Fauves was perfectly suited to our feelings. Then, in 1 905, I spent several months
in Saint-Tropez where as yet only Signac and old Pegurier,20 who was born in the region,
were living. Cross lived at Le Lavandou. The others came later. Renoir, however, had
settled at Cagnes and Lebasque at Le Cannet. 2 1 An agreeable painter, Lebasque. Marquet
joined him in the Midi.'
' But Marquet was much more your friend than his.'
'Yes, true, but he got along very well with Lebasque. He was the most pleasant of the
group, and got along wel l with everyone. At Marseilles, he had entrees into the strangest
circles. For example, in the Bouterie quarter, the girls used to shout out as soon as they
saw him passing by : "There goes the pintre " .' 2 2
Matisse was off. He felt such pleasure in recounting these anecdotes that I would have
been rude to interrupt him. Like all loners, who first by shyness and then by defiance,
stick to a certain subject but suddenly abandon themselves to memories of their old
escapades, he went on speaking of Marquet with such warmth that he forgot all about
painting. He put such enthusiasm into his friendship for the 'pintre' that you could feel
how much he must have been captivated by him. They knew each other for a long time.
They had worked, struggled and been successful together.
'At the time of the Expo, as they used to call the 1 900 one, it was Marquet,' went on my
interlocutor, 'who had the idea of finding a job which would allow us to live. We got a
dozen addresses of decorators' studios out of the Bottin.23 Marquet would apply for us to
the boss. From street to street, we ended by being hired by }ambon, at the ends of the
earth, near the Buttes-Chaumont. Marquet lived on the quai de la Tournelle and I on the
quai Saint-Michel where we painted impressions of the Seine, each from our window.24
I began by exhibiting at Vollard's who sold my first pictures to Olivier Sainsere. Then,
one fine day, Vollard was convinced : for a thousand francs, he took five works from me
among which were three large dessertes which were not too bad. Then, at the amusing
little Mlle Weill's place, Hue of the Depeche de Toulouse bought one of twenty of my
works for a hundred francs on Albert Sarraut's account.25 At that time Mme Odilon
Redon was offering the works of her husband for absurdly low pt.:ices. Druet had a bistro
on the Place de l'Alma. Shortly after, he set himself up in the rue Duphot, and, since the
Independents were organizing their exhibitions in the City greenhouses, Signac and Luce
went to eat at his place. Rodin, who worked at a mason's in the rue de l'Universite,
crossed the river with them. Druet, besides his bistro, was interested in photography. He
had set up a lighting system that delighted Rodin. Finally Druet opened an art gallery on
the rue Matignon, and the first exhibition of nco-Impressionists took place.
'Druet was a strange man. For fear that the artists would spend the money earned from
the sale of their works too quickly, he gave it to them in small instalments which never
exceeded two hundred�nd fifty francs. The photography business he had started made
more money than the pictures and one had to wait for better days. Moline, who was a
dealer on the rue Laffitte, had a nco-Impressionist show in his turn, but it had no
success.'
Matisse nodded : 'Yes, those were the good old days, anyway ! ' he went on reflectively.
Perhaps he was remembering the long and splendid career in which, from the quai
Saint-Michel to the Couvent des lnvalides, then at Issy-les-Moulineaux, to Morocco, to
l'Estaque, to Marseilles and from the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Nice, to the Villa des Alli es,
to the old Hotel de la Mediterranee, to his apartment on the rue Charles-Felix, and the
88 18 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
one he now lives in at Cimiez, he had 'stood fast' . 'Frank Harris26 (who had bravely
fought for Oscar Wilde in London on his release from prison) had given him several
rooms in the building on the rue Charles-Felix, and Matisse had hung the paintings of
Cezanne and Gauguin there : the first, if we are to believe Gertrude Stein, bought with his
wife's dowry and the second with her engagement ring.27 Harris, who loved painting,
parted with these rooms out of admiration for Matisse, of whom he spoke as the most
extraordinary Frenchman he had ever known, and I couldn't tell if the epithet did not
hide some bitterness, so different were the two men. Twenty years later, Harris settled at
Cimiez.
'Is it to be near Matisse?' I had asked him with irony.
Harris just smiled, then, since he had no real reason to exist without a noble cause, gave
me a reading from his play on Joan of Arc. And Maeterlinck, 28 who didn't like him very
much, concluded : 'Naturally ! Like all self-respecting Englishmen, he couldn't resist the
pleasure of martyring her twice.'

Evening fell. 'You see,' murmured Matisse suddenly, 'when I think of the problems of the
past, I wonder if they didn't stimulate in us the energy to conquer them. Life is short.
Without problems, it would go by too quickly, and we would have made no progress.
Thus' he said, putting a still-life under a good light, 'I needed three months to finish this
work. Once I would have hesitated less.'
The painting is composed of a Persian vase and big shells from Oceania, arranged on
a plane better defined by a simple opposition of tones than is clear at first glance.29 In
itself, each element was of little interest. It's their radiation, their harmony of values
which gives this work its richness, its power of orchestration.
'Isn't everything in the values?'
I almost quoted him the classic remark of Fromentin :30 'A colour does not exist in
itself since it is, as one knows, modified by the influence of a neighbouring colour. Its
quality comes from its surroundings.' But Matisse got in ahead of me.
'Because one value on the right was out of place,' he said, 'everything got screwed up
in my picture. Who would have thought it so important?'
This time I managed to get my quotation in, and I continued it, 'But "if from a Vero­
nese, a Titian or a Rubens, you were to remove this perfect rapport of colour values, you
would be left with no harmony in the colouring, no strength, delicacy, or rarity".'
The painter looked at me with approval. 'People have taken years', he grumbled, 'to
realize just that. And yet it's right under your nose. When it's a matter of a friend's work,
you see it right away : but in your own, you hesitate, stammer, because you can't reason
any more : you have to feel.'
'You have to love.'
'Exactly ! Basically it's as easy as pie. But we still don't have an overabundance of
faculties to succeed where others fail.'
I suppressed the compliment which was on the tip of my tongue for fear that he would
take it as trite flattery, since, even in the light of his works, Matisse has always been so
straightforward that he avoids the particular for much wider issues. It's not that h : e's
modest. He loves painting too much to make little of himself. He is also too much aware
of his talent to be dazzled by words. This strength comes from his way of life, away from
rascals and cheats. He knows his limitations. Derain too has this same strength which is so
rare a quality in most painters. But Derain goes out a lot and becomes infatuated with all
sorts of people. I have met him several times in society where, in spite of his finesse, he
would let himself fall into an agreement for a portrait which he later had no desire to
paint. His frank temperament, his friendly, generous nature would often p�t him in
absurd situations if he didn't cut it all suddenly short and disappear from Pans.
x8 Carco : Conversation with Matisse, I94I
'He's not a Fauve, he's a saint l' a Russian princess once remarked of him. Eight days
later she rectified her statement, 'Or rather, an eel.'
And yet, when Zborowski died, Derain offered his widow several pictures in order to
help her financially. 31 Madame Zborowska did not forget it. 'And do you know?' she
confessed without false shame, 'he was the only one.'

A question that I had promised myself to ask Matisse in the course of our interview was
now troubling me. I wanted to ask how he could live in such isolation and still maintain
such prestige in the eyes of his colleagues and collectors. Work is not the only thing ;
emulation also enters significantly into the life of an artist. Picasso, whom one runs into
in the most humble galleries where youths hang their pictures, could have served as a
pretext. He has always carefully kept himself up to date with contemporary develop­
ments and, time-consuming as this may often be, it maintains, in one who practises it, an
intellectual curiosity which is of great importance.
Clemenceau, from the time I held the modest position of art critic on L' Homme Libre,
had had this same greed for learning.
'When you leave the paper,' he said, catching me one evening between two doors, 'do
you go back to Montmartre ?'
'Yes, Monsieur le President.'
'And in Montmartre, who will you go and see?'
'Poets and painters.'
'Which painters?'
I mentioned Picasso, Valadon, Utrillo, Modigliani. The 'Tiger' wrote down their
names in a notebook.
'And the poets ?'
'Guillaume Apollinaire, Salmon, Max Jacob, Jean Pellerin.'
'And they are talented?'
'They are more than talented.'
'Ah l' snorted Clemenceau. 'Even if you are wrong, one must have faith. Never forget
it ! '
How t o make Matisse realize that real youth consists i n preserving this flame which
still burned in the 'Tiger' at seventy-three years of age? Especially how to talk to him of
Picasso? He would have told me that Picasso only haunted the galleries to improve all the
prices. The old enmity which had only increased between them since Cubism might have
disturbed the end of our conversation. In vain I told myself that with the passing of time
and with his success Matisse probably no longer maintained the least bitterness toward his
old rival ; I was not at all sure of it. Gertrude Stein, who had introduced them to each
other, affirms that they 'became friends but that they were also enemies'. 3 2
Such incompatibility of temperament doesn't change easily. Besides it was not for me
to get involved in the situation. And, though I wouldn't have minded hearing from Matisse
himself what he thought of Picasso, or rather of this intellectual curiosity which he never
ceases to manifest toward his art, I had no chance of finding out. The impression that I
had just received in fro!!t of the still-life which cost him three months of thought and
effort had plunged me into a deep perplexity. I wanted to tell its author that certain re­
search sometimes goes too far, that it by-passes its object, and through it one ends up
with 'an unknown masterpiece' about which Balzac reached his conclusions a long time
ago. 33 But I restrained my desire.
Nevertheless, I told myself, the question is not without importance and if one but thinks
about it, one might well wonder if artists don't go wrong in emphasizing difficulty alone.
It is not a problem which will be solved by a handful of scholars. All art appeals first to
the senses rather than to the soul. It is through the senses that art moves the masses just
 19 On Transformations, I942
as much as it seduces the elite, and when one sees Picasso start from abstraction to reach
the same contradictions as Matisse-but by a diametrically opposite route-one is tempted
to fear that they will no longer be followed. There are limits that must not be passed.
Beyond their boundaries, there is no longer, in effect, painter, poet or composer, but an
artist in the supreme sense of the word ; the artist in the pure state, given over without
defence to the vertigo of the summit, of the Absolute.
'You were going to say?' enquired Matisse, who noticed my agitation.
I had nothing to say : his canvas spoke for me.

On Transformations) 1 942 1

This excerpt from a letter from Matisse to his son Pierre, one of two published in First Papers
on Surrealism, gives a nice insight into Matisse's attitude toward his finished work in relation
to his personality. The work Matisse refers to is probably Nature morte rouge au magnolia
(Figure 41) in which he had painted a green marble table red. ( See Text 43 , below. )

ON TRANSFORMATI ONS
When I attain unity, whatever it is that I do not destroy of myself which is still of interest
-1 am told that it is transformed, sublimated-! am not absolutely certain. I do not find
myself there immediately, the painting is not a mirror reflecting what I experienced while
creating it, but a powerful object, strong and expressive, which is as novel for me as for
anyone else. When I paint a green marble table and finally have to make it red-I am
not entirely satisfied, I need several months to recognize that I created a new object just
as good as what I was unable to do and which will be replaced by another of the same
type when the original which I did not paint as it looked in nature will have disappeared­
the eternal question of the objective and the subjective.
 20
MatisseJs Radio Inter view:
First Broadcast) 1 9 4 21

Early i n 1 942 Matisse gave two interviews broadcast over the radio, transcripts o f which were
sent to Pierre Matisse in New York in a letter dated 1 3 March 1 9 42 . 2 The first is ge n eral in
scope, the second an attack on the French academic Beaux-Arts system in which 1\tlatisse
suggested that the Prix de Rome be replaced by 'travelling scholarships' ( not included here) .
The first broadcast contains interesting answers to some fundamental questions, including
an important statement of the function of the window motif in Matisse's works.

MATI SSE'S RADIO INTERVIEW

As you know it is the painters who, by creating images, allow the objects and scenes of
nature to be seen. Without them we could distinguish objects only by their different
functions of utility or comfort. Each generation brings its new, characteristic represen­
tation.
Since the earliest times (from the cave artists to the modern painters), artists have
enriched the common plastic vocabulary and each generation of man has seen through
the eyes of the artists of the preceding generation.
Thus in my youth the colouring of chromos or the illustrations in popular books, which
generally represented acceptable taste, was made against a bituminous background, be­
cause their creators were influenced by the painters of the preceding generation : notably
those of the Romantic schoot
Then the colouring of the chromos brightened and the colours of the Impressionist
palette succeeded the harmonies of bistre.
Finally, after the rediscovery of the emotional and decorative properties of line and
colour by modern artists, we have seen our department stores invaded by materials
decorated in medleys of colour, without moderation, without meaning.
Then came the tonal scale of Marie Laurencin's palette, softly graduated, at the same
time as the angular and linear decorations of the Cubist painters. These odd medleys of
colour and these lines -were very irritating to those who knew what was going on and
to the artists who had to employ these different means for the development of their
form.
Finally all the eccentricities of commercial art were accepted (an extraordinary thing) ;
the public was very flexible and the salesman would take them in by saying, when showing
the goods : 'This is modern' .
Today the exaggerations have quieted down, and the colours remain gay ; nothing new
asserts itself, however. This gaiety, which is a little relief for the pleasure of the eyes, is
due to the vision of modern painters.
92 20 Matisse's Radio Interview : First Broadcast, I942
Why do you paint, M. Matisse?
Why, to translate my emotions, the feelings, and the reactions of my sensibility into
colour and design, which neither the most perfect camera, even in colour, nor the cinema,
can do.
From the point of view of entertainment and amusement the cinema has great advant­
ages over painted pictures which each represent only a single view. In the cinema a simple
landscape documentary contains many different landscapes. People who like seascapes,
if their first consideration is not to find the spirit of the painter, can find complete satis­
faction in front of the true representations of the calm or tragically rough sea which the
cinema gives them, and someone who likes representations can have a collection of films
representing views of the entire world, while a lover of paintings has but a few canvases,
especially if they are of good quality.
As for portrait painters, they are outdone by good photographers, especially those who
use anthropometry, who make complete likenesses. For a true lover who wants to keep the
memory of one who has been the joy of his life will prefer a good photograph which will
better aid his memory than the interpretation of the departed's face by an artist, even a
celebrated artist.

What then of the artists? Of what use are they?

They are useful because they can augment colour and design through the richness of
their imagination intensified by their emotion and their reflection on the beauties of
nature, just as poets or musicians do.
Consequently we need only those painters who have the gift to translate their intimate
feelings into colour and design.
I used to say to my young students : 'You want to be a painter? First of all you must
cut out your tongue because your decision has taken away from you the right to express
yourself with anything but your brush.'

To express yourself, how do you go about it?

A study in depth permits my mind to take possession of the subject of my contemplation
and to identify myself with it in the ultimate execution of the canvas. The most elementary
means suffice : some colours employed without mixing, other than with white or black, in
order not to disturb their purity and their brilliance. It is only through their relationship
that I express myself. As for drawing, I follow my inner feelings as closely as possible.
Thus all the intellectual [savante] part of my work is secondary and very little evident.

When do you consider a work to be finished?

When it represents my emotion very precisely and when I feel that there is nothing more
to be added. And once finished, the work stands on its own and the important thing is the
next one which absorbs all my interest.

Do you forget your works?

Never. Although working every day for fifty years I have painted quite a few. Whenever
someone speaks of one of my pictures, even an old one, in calling to mind some of its
features, without being able to remember the year _I did it, I see very precisely the state
of mind I was in when I made it and all its colours, as well as its place in tny total work.

Do you worry about the future of your works?

Since I am convinced that an artist can have no greater enemies than his bad paintings, I
do not release a painting or a drawing until I have given it every possible effort ; and if
after that it still has life, I am happy as to the impression that it will make on the minds
of those who see it.
 21 Conversations with Aragon, I943 93

Remember that the advantage that painting has over the theatre is that future generations
may repair the injustice of the generation in which the painting first appeared, while in
the theatre, if a play does not have immediate success it is buried for a very long time. The
theatre, as Debussy said, doesn't allow glorious failures.

What do you remember of your teachers?

One only among them counts for me : Gustave Moreau who turned out, among numerow
students, some real artists.
The great quality of Gustave Moreau was that he considered that the minds of young
students were about to undergo continued development throughout their lives, and that
he did not push them to satisfy the different scholastic tests which, even when artists
have succeeded in the greatest competitions, leave them, around thirty, with warped minds,
and an extremely limited sensibility and means ; so that if they are not wealthy, they can
only look for marriage to a well-to-do woman to help them follow their path in the world.

Where does the charm of your paintings of open windows come from?
Probably from the fact that for me the space is one unity from the horizon right to the
interior of my work room, and that the boat which is going past exists in the same space
as the familiar objects around me ; and the wall with the window does not create two
different worlds. This is, probably, where the charm of these windows, which have quite
naturally interested me, comes from.

Why does Nice hold you?

Because in order to paint my pictures I need to remain for several days in the same state
of mind, and I do not find this in any atmosphere but that of the Cote d' Azur.3
The northern lands, Paris in particular, once they have developed the mind of the artist
through the intensity of their collective life and the richness of their museums, offer too
unstable an atmosphere for work as I understand it.
Further, the richness and. the silver clarity of the light of Nice, especially during the
beautiful month of January, seems to me unique and indispensable to the mind of the
plastic artist, especially if he is a painter.

21
Conversa tions with Aragon) 1 943 1
[ On Signs]
In 1 943 Matisse's friend, the poet and critic Louis Aragon, introduced the portfolio Henri
Matisse dessins: themes et variations with an essay 'Matisse-en-France'. This lyrical essay
makes constant reference to Matisse's thought, and contains many direct quotations. Because
of Aragon's great feeling for Matisse and his work, he was able to convey a very good deal
of the spirit of Matisse's actual manner of speech, and also to draw Matisse out on some very
94 21 Conversations with Aragon, I943
important subjects. The following extract is one of Matisse's most revealing statements on the
nature of the pictorial signs which he synthesized from his awareness of objects.
Matisse's discussion of how new plastic signs eventually become part of the common
plastic language is an interesting parallel to his similar, but distinctly less articulate comments
to Charles Estienne (Text 5, above) almost thirty-five years earlier. The very concept of
plastic signs is interesting, since Matisse had arrived at this pictorial concept around 1 908, but
moved away from it during the Nice period. Beginning in the late 1 930s, with the 'sign'
aspect of his imagery becoming increasingly apparent as he began to abandon working
directly from nature, Matisse seems to have developed a rather explicit theoretical basis for a
feature of his art that he had already employed for almost three decades.

CO NVE RSATIONS vVITH ARAGON [On Signs]

' To imitate the Chinese •' 1\Iatisse says. Here follows the painter's confession, which was
• •

not made all at once. I should like to retain the essence of it, I'm afraid of breaking its
branches. If he admits that he laboured for long years in quest of a theme, or rather of a
formula, a sign for each thing, this can be connected v..i.th that other admission, the most
disturbing one : ' I have b een working at my craft for a long time, and it's just as if up till
now I had only been learning things, elaborating my means of expression.'
Once again, what amazing modesty, what scrupulous conscientiousness he shows : that
immense lifelong labour, those fifty years of work were merely the preparation of his
craft. What is he trying to do ? Matisse continues :
'I have shown you, haven't I, the drawings I have been doin g lately, learning to
represent a tree, or trees ? As if I'd never seen or drawn a tree. I can see one from my
window. I have to learn, patiently, how the mass of the tree is made, then the tree itself,
the trunk, the branches, the leaves. First the symmetrical way the branches are disposed
on a single plane. Then the way they turn and cross in front of the trunk • • • Don't
misunderstand me : I don't mean that, seeing the tree through my window, I work at
copying it. The tree is also the sum total of its effects upon me. There's no question of my
drawing a tree that I see. I have before me an obj ect that affects my mind not o nly as a
tree but also in relation to all sorts of other feelings . . . I shan't get free of my emotion by
copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language,
but only after identifying myself with it. I have to create an obj ect which resembles the
tree. The sign for the tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the
tree : those painters, for instance, who learned to represent foliage by drawing 33 , 33 , 33 ,
just as a doctor who's sounding you makes you repeat 99 . . . This is only the residuum of
the expression of other artists. These others have invented their own sign • . . to reproduce
that means reproducing something dead, the last stage of their own emotion . . . '
As he spoke to me I was thinking of Matisse's followers, of all those v..·ho imitate him
clumsily or too cleverly, but who can see only his superficial gestures : they think they are
starting from his signs, but they are in fact bound to fail because one can imitate a man's
voice but not his emotion.
' • . . and the residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

For instance : Claude Lorrain and Poussin have ways of their own of drawing the leaves
of a tree, they have invented their own way of expressing those leaves. So cleverly that
people say they have drawn their trees leaf by leaf. It's just a manner of speaking : in fact
they may have represented fifty leaves out of a total two thousand. But the way they place
the sign that represents a leaf multiplies the leaves in the spectator's mind so that he sees
2I Conversations with Aragon , I943 95

two thousand of them They had their personal language. Other people have learned
• . •

of my
that language since then, so that I have to find signs that are related to the quality
own invention. These will be new plastic signs which in their turn will be absorbed into
.
the common language, if what I say by their means has any importance for other people . . '
And very quickly Matisse adds a truth, his own truth, which sums it all up : .
'The importance of an artist is to be measured by the number of new stgns he has
introduced into the language of art • . . '

The Confession continued

It was after confiding this concept of signs that he made a remark which takes us a
long way from the trees : 'It's just as if I were someone who is preparing to tackle large­
scale composition.'
'I don't understand . . . '
Those blue eyes. Matisse stretches out his arms, holding his hands in a curious position
with the wrists half bent and the fingers slightly turned in as though illustrating a fore­
shortened effect, which was to be the subject of his next sentence. 'Look, look . . . why
do they say Delacroix never painted hands . . . that he only painted claws . . . like this?
Because Delacroix composed his paintings on the grand scale. He had to finish off, at a
certain place, the movement, the line, the curve, the arabesque that ran through his
picture. He carried it to the end of his figure's arm and there he bent it over, he finished
it off with a sign, don't you see? A sign ! Always the same sign, the hand, made in the same
way, not a particular hand but his hand, the claw . . . The painter who composes on the
grand scale, carried away by the movement of his picture, cannot stop over details, paint
each detail as if it were a portrait, portray a different hand each time . . . '
'You said that you were going to that it's just as if you . . . '
. • •

'As if I were going to tackle large-scale composition : it's odd, isn't it? As if I had all my
life ahead of me, or rather a whole other life . . . I don't know, but the quest for signs-1
felt absolutely obliged to go on searching for signs in preparation for a new development
in my life as painter• .Perhaps after all I have an unconscious belief in a future life
. . • •

some paradise where I shall paint frescoes . . . '

There's more laughter than ever in those blue eyes. On another occasion Matisse starts
off once more from the Chinese artist with the transparent and delicate heart to consider
signs. This time his own hand describes not the claws in a Delacroix but a Burmese hand
. . . 'You know those Burmese statues with very long, flexible arms, rather like this . . . and
ending in a hand that looks like a flower at the end of its stalk ' That's the Burnese sign­
• • .

for-a-hand. The sign may have a religious, priestly, liturgical character or simply an artistic
one. Each thing has its own sign. This marks the artist's progress in the knowledge and
expression of the world, a saving of time, the briefest possible indication of the character
of a thing. The sign. 'There are two sorts of artist,' Matisse says, 'some who on each
occasion paint the portrait of a hand, a new hand each time, Corot for instance, and the
others who paint the sign-for-a-hand, like Delacroix. With signs you can compose freely
and ornamentally . . . '
Thereupon he returns to his own example, the mouth shaped like a 3 . He draws the
series of hieroglyphs based on a specific model, whose mouth has a slightly pouting lower
lip, both lips being fleshy and pressed close together : I see the figure 3 gradually appearing
under his hand as a profile of t4at mouth, although it is seen from the front. 'Why a 3
�nd not �n 8 ? Because the mind can always imagine a line cutting the two parts of the 8
1n the mtddle, whereas the 3 has to remain a whole ' On reflection, he adds : 'There's
. . •

also th� fact that I have grown used to seeing objects in a certain light, like all the painters
�
o my tlme . so in the 3 of the mouth there's one part in shadow and the other, the part that
.
dtsappears, 1s swallowed up by the light.'
 22
Henri-Matisse at Home) 1 9 441

Marguette Bouvier's account of her visit to Matisse at Vence in October 1 944 offers a candid
glimpse of Matisse at home, when, weakened, he was forced to work in bed. The sense of his
work room, the kinds of objects with which he surrounded himself, and especially his dis­
cussion of his student, offer interesting insights into Matisse's attitude toward his own art and
also into his pedagogical outlook.

HENRI-MATISSE AT HOME

Vence . . . October I944·

The pigeon caressed by Matisse flies from the foot of the bed to settle on the edge of the
chair. It is a rare species, completely white ; a cloud of powder makes a halo around it
whenever it beats its wings.
Henri-Matisse has a passion for birds. He considers a birdcage as indispensable as a
bed in a bedroom, and he collects hummingbirds, mirabilis, bengalis, and guittes or
blue budgerigars. Congolese tapestries hang on the walls, panther skins, Persian rugs • • •

Matisse and his legend reign over this unreal world.

Since 1 91 8 the painter has lived in Nice. The evacuation measures before the American
landings made it necessary for him to move to Vence. This was not an easy move because
he brought his shells and Chinese porcelain, his moucharaby2 and his marble tables and
all the strange objects with which he loves to surround himself. Thus he reconstructed,
in his villa Le Reve, this Matisse-atmosphere which he needs in order to live.
How many times I have surprised him in bed, a sweater over his pyjamas, a board
across his knees while he worked. He would be drawing, jotting illustration projects in
the margins of Ronsard or Charles d' Orleans. In the room conceived for working while in
bed, everything was easily reached without moving. Within arm's reach a revolving book­
case with dictionaries and classics. In the drawers an assortment of pencils, carefully
arranged, erasers, paper and naturally the telephone on his bedside table. No one could
be less bohemian than this artist who requires and studies his comforts like a grand
bourgeois.
Matisse doesn't like to anticipate things. He has collected around his bed everything
which pleases him. He has remade a world of his own taste in his bedroom.
Entering this room is a constant joy for me. Beyond the painter is the n1an, the man of
a surprising intelligence and a dynamism which age has not touched.
On the wall facing him, under his eye, Matisse always hangs the paintings he is wor�ing
on. Today there are seven paintings : a woman in a Russian blouse, a theme he has treated
several times, still-lifes, and in the centre the portrait of a girl seated at a table between
two bouquets of flowers. a As I was looking at this very red, very blue, very striking canvas,
Matisse said to me : 'That's my little student who was the model. 4 Come tomorrow morn·
22 Henri-Matisse at Home, I944 97
ing when I give her her lesson. We will go together to where she is working, you will meet
her.'
The next day he was waiting for me, wearing light gloves and holding a cane. Matisse
was already known for his elegance among his peers, when at the beginning of the century,
unknown and rich mainly in hope, he bought his first car on credit.
We left together, scaling the rocky path side by side, and soon came to the girl. She
looked like a child of sixteen, though she was nineteen. Her easel was set up in front of an
olive tree with three trunks which she was drawing.
Matisse took some charcoal and immediately underlined with a heavy line the essential
parts, the architecture of the tree :
'One can always exaggerate in the direction of truth,' he said.
The girl felt no shyness at being corrected by Matisse. The whole thing seemed simple
to her. She said to him :
'That is difficult to express. There are two movements. What bothers me is that stump.'
'Why don't you eliminate it?'
The question was a trap but the girl took care not to fall in.
'Because that would upset the balance.'
'You see the empty spaces,' replied the master, 'they are very meaningful, it's they
which will provide your balance.'
All of Matisse was in that conversation. In three minutes, with clarity and without a
single superfluous word, he transmitted the essential principles of his drawing to his
student ; to exaggerate the truth and to study at length the importance of voids.
As we continued our walk, Matisse told me how this student came to him out of the
blue.
'She lives near by, four kilometers from my villa. One fine day she decided to come to
see me and arrived without ceremony at the house. My secretary wasn't in. She found her
way in and without any preamble asked me :
' "I brought you some drawings, do you want to see them?"
' "What • • • what • • • " I was stunned by such audacity. " First of all who are you ? Who
sent you ?"
' "No one, but I have some drawings to show you."
' "Whose drawings ?"
' "My drawings."
' "But I am not interested Why didn't you telephone? Why didn't you have yourself
. . • •

announced?"
' She persisted with a child's pout :
' ' 'Excuse me, sir, this will only take two minutes. You only have to tell me if they are
bad or good." '
One can easily imagine the uneasiness of this little unknown girl, come to show her
works to one of the greatest Jiving painters, whom chance had given her as a neighbour.
' "But where after all are your famous drawings ?"
' "On the road yes on the road, I left them in front of the gate in my cart."
• • •

'This kid had loaded_ two large framed pencil drawings, and carted them from home to
ask my opinion.
'I let myself be moved, I examined them and said what I thought. She continued :
' "Do you think I could sell them? for how much?" • • •

' "I have no idea. There you are going a little far. A minute ago it was only a matter of
telling you what I thought of them Now you want a valuation.". • • •

'She was so insistent that I kept the drawings to show them. The next day I gave her an
address where she sold several of them. Since, she has come to pose for me. Each day she
works near my windows and I give her advice.'
 23 The Role and Modalities of Colour, I945
He concluded :
'With her, it happened by itself. But you know, I accept no students • • I made an
•

exception for this child with the intention of leaving her to fate as soon as I had shown her
the principles which can help her. For the moment I am going to put her on the double
buckle diet.'
'Double buckle? What do you mean?'
'It's very simple, you'll understand in a moment. Mter dividing the paper up and down
with a vertical line and crosswise with a horizontal line, she has to draw the lines of the
tree in relation to these two fundamental directions.
'In other words, the branches of the tree composed of oblique lines must always be
drawn in relation to these two principal directions.
'In a drawing representing an object or a tree, a line or a curve must not be just any
line or any curve, they must be architecturally constructed so that the whole forms a stable
combination.' 5

A walk with Matisse is a real botany lesson.

He knows all sorts of things about the growth of fruit, the nature of the soil, which have
nothing to do with painting. To say that he is interested in such diverse subjects reminds
me that he plays no games. Matisse, at seventy-four years of age, has never touched a game
of cards or chess or draughts. When, after too sustained an effort or during a convalescence,
someone suggested that he play something for amusement, he refused, saying like Degas,
'And what if it bores me to distract myself?'

23
The Role and Modalities of Colour, 1 9451

In Gaston Diehl published a series of quotations and reflections by Matisse noted in the
1 945,
course of 'recent conversations' . For the most part, these comments are general in nature.
Allusion is made to Matisse's experience with the Japanese crepe paper paintings, to the
musical quality of colour, and to the Russian ballets of Bakst. As might be expected, Matisse
makes a special note of the role of empathy in the creation of works of art and expresses his
almost religious attitude toward artistic creation.
23 The Role and Modalities of Colour, I945 99

THE ROLE AND MODALI TIES OF COLOUR

To say that colour has once again become expressive is to write its history. For a long time
colour was only the complement of drawing. Raphael, Mantegna, or DUrer, like all
Renaissance painters, constructed with drawing first and then added colour.
On the other hand, the Italian primitives and especially the Orientals, had made colour
a means of expression. It was with some reason that lngres was called an 'unknown
Chinese in Paris', since he was the first to use bold colours, limiting them without distort­
ing them.2
From Delacroix to Van Gogh and especially Gauguin, through the Impressionists, who
cleared the way, and Cezanne, who gives a definitive impulse and introduces coloured
volumes, one can follow this rehabilitation of the role of colour, and the restitution of its
emotive power.

Colours have a beauty of their own which must be preserved, as one strives to preserve
tonal quality in music. It is a question of organization and construction which is sensitive
to maintaining this beautiful freshness of colour.
There was no lack of examples. We had not only painters, but also popular art and
Japanese crepons which could be bought at the time.3 Thus, Fauvism for me was proof
of the means of expression : to place side by side, assembled in an expressive and structural
way, a blue, a red, a green. It was the result of a necessity within me, not a voluntary
attitude arrived at by deduction or reasoning ; it was something that only painting can do.

What counts most with colours are relationships. Thanks to them and them alone a draw­
ing can be intensely coloured without there being any need for actual colour.
No doubt there are a thousand different ways of working with colour. But when one
composes with it, like a musician with harmonies, it is simply a question of emphasizing
the differences.
Certainly music and colour have nothing in common, but they follow parallel paths.
Seven notes, with slight modifications are all that is needed to write any score. Why
wouldn't it be the same for plastic art?

Colour is never a question of quantity, but of choice.

At the beginning, the Russian Ballet, particularly Scheherazade by Bakst, overflo·wed
with colour. 4 Profusion without moderation. One might have said that it was splashed
about from a bucket. The result was gay because of the material itself, not as the result of
any organization. However the ballets facilitated the employment of new means of
expression through which they themselves greatly benefited.
An avalanche of colour has no force. Colour attains its full expression only when it is
organized, when it corresponds to the emotional intensity of the artist.
With a drawing, even if it is done with only one line, an infinite number of nuances
can be given to each part that the line encloses. Proportion plays a fundamental role.

It is not possible to separate drawing and colour. Since colour is never applied haphazardly,
from the moment there are limits, and especially proportions, there is a division. It is here
that the creativity and personality of the artist intervene.
Drawing also counts a great deal. It is the expression of one who possesses objects.
When you understand an object thoroughly, you are able to encompass it with a con­
tour that defines it entirely. Ingres said that the drawing is like a basket : you cannot
remove a cane without making a hole.
100 23 The Role and Modalities of Colour, I945
Everything, even colour, can only be a creation. I first of all describe my feelings before
arriving at the object. It is necessary then to recreate everything, the object as well as the
colour.
When the means employed by painters are taken up by fashion and by big department
stores, they immediately lose their significance. They no longer command any power over
the mind. Their influence only modifies the appearance of things ; only the · nuances are
changed.

Colour helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really
exists, that in the artist's brain.
Each age brings with it its own light, its particular feeling for space, as a definite need.
Our civilization, even for those who have never been up in an aeroplane, has led to a new
understanding of the sky, of the expanse of space. Today there is a demand for the total
possession of this space.
Awakened and supported by the divine, all elements will find themselves in nature.
Isn't the Creator himself nature?

Called forth and nourished by matter, recreated by the mind, colour can translate the
essence of each thing and at the same time respond to the intensity of emotional shock.
But drawing and colour are only a suggestion. By illusion, they must provoke a feeling of
the property of things in the spectator, in so far as the artist can intuit this feeling, suggest
it in his work and get it across to the viewer. An old Chinese proverb says : 'When you
draw a tree, you must feel yourself gradually growing with it.'

Colour, above all, and perhaps even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.
Liberation is the freeing of conventions, old methods being pushed aside by the con­
tributions of the new generation. As drawing and colour are means of expression, they are
modified.
Hence the strangeness of new means of expression, because they refer to other matters
than those which interested preceding generations.

Colour, then, is magnificence and eye-catching. Isn't it precisely the privilege of the artist
to render precious, to ennoble the most humble subject?
 24
1
Observation s on Painting, 1 945

This essay, which is concerned with the development of young painters in telation to the past,
stresses the importance of study of the masters for a young painter, and also the block that the
past can sometimes be to the young artist.
Matisse suggests that the young painter can free himself from the spell of his immediate
predecessors by seeking out kindred spirits and by finding new sources of inspiration in the
work of other civilizations. This describes in part Matisse's own career. In formulating advice
for young painters, he seems (as in his earlier statements) to generalize directly from his own
experience. He repeats that great painting is a product of the synthesis between study of the
past and study of nature. In this way the painter can acquire the perception and enthusiasm
for hard work which will enable him, through that self-knowledge which seems to have been
for Matisse the single most important requisite, to produce significant art.

OB SERVATIONS ON PAINTING

I can still hear old Pissarro exclaiming at the 'Independants', in front of a very fine still-life
by Cezanne2 representing a cut crystal water carafe in the style of Napoleon III, in a
harmony of blue : 'It's like an Ingres'.
When my surprise passed, I found, and I still find, that he was right. Yet Cezanne
spoke exclusively of Delacroix and of Poussin.s

Certain painters of my generation frequented the masters of the Louvre, to whom they were
led by Gustave Moreau, before they became aware of the Impressionists. It was only
later that they began to go to the rue Laffitte or even more important, to Durand-Ruel's
to see the celebrated View of Toledo and the Road to Calvary by El Greco, as well as some
Goya portraits and David and Saul by Rembrandt.

It is remarkable that Cezanne, like Gustave Moreau, spoke of the masters of the Louvre.
At the time he was painting the portrait of Vollard, Cezanne spent his afternoons drawing
at the Louvre. In the evenings, on his way home, he would pass through the rue Laffitte,
and say to Vollard : 'I -think that tomorrow' s sitting will be a good one, for I'm pleased
with what I did this afternoon in the Louvre.' These visits to the Louvre_ helped him to
detach himself from his morning's work, for the artist always needs such a break in order
to judge and to be in control of his work of the previous day.4

At Durand-Ruel's I saw two very beautiful still-lifes by Cezanne, biscuits and milk
bottles and fruit in deep blue. My attention was drawn to them by old Durand to whom I
was showing some still-lifes I had painted. 'Look at these Cezannes that I cannot sell' he
said, 'you should rather paint interiors with figures like this one or that.'
102 24 Observations on Painting, I945
Then as now the path of painting seemed completely blocked to the younger generations ;
the Impressionists attracted all the attention.
Van Gogh and Gauguin were ignored. A wall had to be knocked down in order to get
through.

The different currents in modern painting remind me of Ingres and Delacroix who seemed
so completely apart in their time, so much so that their disciples would have fought in
their defence if they had so desired. Yet today it is easy to see the similarities between
them.
Both expressed themselves through the arabesque and through colour. Ingres, because
of his almost compartmentalized and distinct colour, was called 'a Chinese lost in Paris'.5
They forged the same links in the chain. Today only nuances prevent us from confusing
them with each other.
Later it will seem as if Gauguin and Van Gogh also lived at the same time : arabesques
and colour. The influence of Gauguin seems to have been more direct than that of Van
Gogh. Gauguin himself seems to come straight out of Ingres.

The young painter who cannot free himself from the influence of the preceding generation
is bound to be swallowed up.
In order to protect himself from the spell of the work of his immediate predecessors
whom he admires, he can search for new sources of inspiration in the production of
diverse civilizations, according to his own affinities. Cezanne drew inspiration from
Poussin. (To redo Poussin from nature.)
If he is sensitive, no painter can lose the contribution of the preceding generation
because it is part of him, despite himself. Yet it is necessary for him to disengage himself
in order to produce in his own turn something new and freshly inspired.
' Challenge the influential master,' said Cezanne.6

A young painter should realize that he does not have to invent everything, but that he
should above all get things straight in his mind by reconciling the different points of view
expressed in the beautiful works by which he is affected, and at the same time by directly
questioning nature.
Mter he has become acquainted with his means of expression, the painter should ask
himself, 'What do I want?' and proceed in his researches, both simple and complex, to
try to find it.
If he can preserve his sincerity toward his deeper sentiment without trickery or without
being too lenient with himself, his curiosity will not desert him and he will therefore have
in his old age the same ardour for hard work and the necessity to learn that he had when
young.
What could be better !
 25
Interview with Degand) 1 9 4 5 1

Early in the summer of 1 945 Matisse came north to Paris for the first time since 1 940. At the
1 945 Salon d'Automne he was honoured by a retrospective of thirty-seven works, most of
them done during the War. Leon Degand took the occasion to interview Matisse in his studio
on the boulevard Montparnasse, and the resulting text provides interesting insights into
Matisse's thought on several matters. At the time of Degand's visit Matisse had on hand a
series of 'work-in-progress' photographs of the Leda p anel that he had recently ?nished, �
and reference is made to them.

INTERVIEW \VITH DEGAND

[Degand arrives at Matisse's boulevard Montparnasse studio and finds Matisse in bed.
They discuss the Salon d'Automne. Degand then leads Matisse to discuss spontaneity . ]
' Spontaneity is not what I am looking for. Thus Le reve [Figure 40] took me six months
of work. The Nature morte rouge au magnolia [Figure 41] also took six months • [He
• •

shows Degand photographs of the Leda panel.]

'Undoubtedly it is necessary to paint as one sings, without constraint. The acrobat
executes his number with ease and an apparent facility. Let's not lose sight of the long
preparatory work which permitted him to attain this result. It is the same with painting.
The possession of the means should pass from the conscious to the unconscious through
the work, and it is then that one is able to give the impression of spontaneity.
'Painting requires organization by very conscious, very concerted means, as in the other
arts . Organization of forces-colours are forces-as in music, organization of tones. But
let's not confuse painting and music. Their actions are only parallel. One wouldn't kno\v
how to translate Beethoven's symphonies into painting.

'I played the violin when I was young [that is, until he was fifty years old, his secretary
says]. I wanted to acquire too rich a technique, and I killed my feeling. Now I prefer to
listen to others. '
[The conversation returns to spontaneity.]
'I work from feeling.-1 have my conception in my head, and I want to realize it. I can,
very often, reconceive it• [They return to the Leda photographs.] But I know where I
. •

want it to end up. The photos taken in the course of the execution of the work permit
me to know if the last conception conforms more to the ideal than the preceding ones ;
whether I am advancing or regressing.'
[The interview starts.]
DEGAND Aren't you afraid this technique of research will destroy your inspiration ?
MATISSE No, I have within me something to express, through plastic means. I work as
long as that is still inside me.
104 25 Interview with Degand, I945
DEGAND This apparent spontaneity which you manage to retain in your paintings in
spite of this constant work, was taken for facility by certain artists. They tried to find a
moral there.
MATISSE I am not obliged to put railings around me everywhere I pass . • At any
• •

rate, when one expresses a feeling, it is nothing as long as one has not found its perfect
form.
DEGAND That demands a great consciousness of one's feeling.
MATISSE Above all, it demands sincerity. I want to keep myself always in a high state
of sincerity ; for it is impossible to deflect inspiration.
DEGAND This sincerity assumes lucidity as well?
MATISSE It is advisable first of all to acquire the habit of not lying, neither to others
nor to yourself. That is where we have the drama of many artists today. They tell them­
selves : I am going to make concessions to the public and, when I have made enough
money, I will work for myself. From that moment, they are lost. They behave like these
women who propose to walk the streets until they have a sum of money, then marry.
'Virtue is like a match : it can only be used once', wrote Pagnol in Marius. It is the same foli
painters.
Watch out, then, for concessions. And don't let yourself be impressed when someone
says to you : 'What a beautiful painting. And you have rubbed out part of it !' What
counts is not the quantity of canvases that one has done, but the organization of one's
brain, the order that one puts into the mind, in view of the achievement of what one has
conceived.
[Degand and Matisse look again at the Leda photographs. At a given moment Matisse
thought the work finished. Two days later, he modified it for the better. The feeling had
not been exactly expressed by the architecture of the composition.]
MATISSE This feeling is independent of a change in colour. If a green is replaced by a
red, the look of a painting can change, but not its feeling. Colours are forces, I said. They
must be organized with a view to creating an expressive ensemble. The same as in orches­
tration ; you give one part to an instrument which can also be assumed by another to
reinforce the effect.

DEGAND Shouldn't one worry about excess of feeling?

MATISSE Feeling is self-contained. You don't say to yourself: Look, today I am going
to manufacture some feeling. No, it is a matter of something more authentic, more pro­
found. Feeling is an enemy only 'vhen one doesn't know how to express it. And it is
necessary to express it entirely. If you don't want to go to the limit, you only get approxim­
ations. An artist is an explorer. He should begin by seeking himself, seeing himself act;
then, not restraining himself, and above all, not being easily satisfied.
In no case should the client be an obstacle to the pursuit of this purpose. Also watch
out for the influence of wives. The priest and the doctor should never marry, so as not to
risk letting temporal considerations come before their professions ; the same goes foli
the artist.
DEGAND To sum up, you advise a sort of religious celibacy.
MATISSE Yes. There is everything to fear from the woman who plagues you by
warning you of dangers or the losses you may sustain. It is also indispensable for the
artist to reduce his existence to the minimum. Maillot understood that. 'I can live on a
pickled herring a day,' he said. Simplify life. Don't admit anything useless.
DEGAND I can admire this constant care to not let anything distract one's line of action,
even the smallest details of life, this abhorrence of wasted time.
MATISSE In a car, one shouldn't go faster than five kilometres an hour. Otherwise you
no longer have a sense of the trees. And for a long trip, rather the train than a car. When I
25 Interview with Degand, I945 I OS

get into the train at Nice, I have all the leisure of thinking, of daydreami ng, of being by
myself until Paris.
DEGAND Will Matisse tell me what he thinks of our contemporaries? What artists will
he name? I run up against complete refusal.
MATISSE Just because I don't agree with my neighbour doesn't mean that he's wrong.
To each his own path.
DEGAND The ritual question : what projects?
MATISSE God knows. God guides my hand. Certainly he doesn't speak into my ear,
but I trust in Him.
DEGAND For several years certain people, even some of the best, have been worrying
that our period doesn't have a style of its own. They think they have discovered, in this
claimed absence of style, a sign of decadence. What says one of the men who has had the
most decisive influence on the style of his time?
MATISSE They can't see the style of their time. They make me think of the man who
wanted to paint a mountain. The more he climbed, the less he saw it. One will see later,
all the paintings of our period will have the same style. In spite of everything, Ingres and
Delacroix are of the same period. The same for the eighteenth century. Style springs
necessarily from the epoch. Undoubtedly there are styleless periods. But our period has a
style that will be clearly marked. Liberty of artistic expression, which is the rule today, will
not stop this. This freedom, granted, will only be valid if it is applied in the sense of a tradi­
tion. Tradition does not mean habit. At any rate, it is not because we no longer dress as one
did under Louis XIV or in 1 900 that we have no style. We have things to say, and we say
them according to the means forged by our epoch. Raphael today wouldn't paint as he did.
DEGAND A current obsession is wanting a French art, as if French art was not neces­
sarily the product of French artists.
MATISSE Obviously. Moderation is the characteristic of French art. It is found
everywhere in France. In places that seem the most cosmopolitan one finds France.
Someone said to me not long ago when I was abroad : 'How lucky you are to return to Paris
where everything is so beautiful and so fine.' I responded : 'In returning to my home I
am going to pass by the avenue de I' Opera ; I don't see what it can have that is particularly
French ; it seems to me that this character of the street is everywhere.' He insisted : 'Don't
fool yourself; you will only notice it by leaving here.' This foreigner was right. In this
avenue which appeared to have grown up a little haphazardly, all was well-placed. The
shop signs were not too large and flashy and I could breathe an air of tranquillity there
with which I was quite satisfied.
But the French are not aware of their surroundings, for the same reason that you don't
think about the jacket you're wearing when it gives you ease of movement.
DEGAND What do you think of the 'human element' which so completely occupies
certain of our contemporaries?
MATISSE These preoccupations are foreign to painting. When I had students I told
them : you must begin by cutting off your tongue, for, starting today, you should express
yourself only through plastic means. You must be what you are, and cultivate this. Don't
wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
The human element, what is it, after all? It is the faculty that certain beings have to
identify with their setting, with the people around them, the flowers that they see, the
landscapes in which they live. The colours of a picture, like the phrases of a symphony,
don't need anecdote to give the spectator or the listener the feeling that the artist is a
sensitive or generous being • • •

DEGAND People have still not given up reproaching your art for being highly decorative,
meaning that in the pejorative sense of superficial.
106 26 Black is a Colour, I946
MATISSE Delacroix said : We are not understood, we are acknowledged. The decorative
for a work of art is an extremely precious thing. It is an essential quality. It does not
detract to say that the paintings of an artist are decorative. All the French primitives are
decorative.
The characteristic of modern art is to participate in our life. A painting in an interior
spreads joy around it by the colours, which calms us. The colours obviously are not
assembled haphazardly, but in an expressive way. A painting on a wall should be like a
bouqet of flowers in an interior. These flowers are an expression, tender or passionate. Or,
the pleasure simply comes to us from a yellow or red surface, which accounts for the more
tender expression of the flowers, like roses, violets, daisies, compared with the bright
and purely decorative orange of marigolds.
DEGAND There is a Matissian atmosphere which emanates from the man as well as the
work, an atmosphere of fine and sensual intellectuality, serene and grave, devoid however
of vain austerity. There is nothing profane or irrelevant.

26
Black is a Colour, 1 9461

O n the occasion o f a n exhibition at the Gallery Maeght i n December 1 946, the title o f which
was 'Black is a Colour', Matisse made remarks on this theme which were recorded by M.
Maeght. Matisse's use of black as a colour is particularly interesting, since in one way or
another it is to be found throughout his paintings, even in the late cut gouaches, where it
finds full expression in such late compositions as Tristesse du roi. Matisse's musical allusion
is not uncommon in his writings and surely not unexpected from a painter who, like Ingres,
was a dedicated violinist.

BLACK I S A COLOU R
Before, when I didn't know what colour to put down, I put down black. Black is a force : I
depend on black to simplify the construction. Now I've given up blacks.2
The use of black as a colour in the same way as the other colours-yellow, blue or red-
·

is not a new thing.

The Orientals made use of black as a colour, notably the Japanese in their prints.
Closer to us, I recall a painting by Manet in which the velvet jacket of a young man with
a straw hat is painted in a blunt and lucid black. 3
In the potrait of Zacharie Astruc by Manet,4 a new velvet jacket is also expressed by
 27 How I made my Books, I946 I CY]

a blunt luminous black. Doesn't my painting of the Marocains5 use a grand black which
is as luminous as the other colours in the painting?
Like all evolution, that of black in painting has been made in jumps. But since the
Impressionists it seems to have made continuous progress, taking a more and more
important part in colour orchestration, comparable to that of the double-bass as a solo
instrument.

How I made my Books, 1 9 4 6 1

'How I made my Books' is a specialized essay contributed to an anthology of statements by

artist-illustrators. It is a literal account of Matisse's method of working, descriptive rather than
theoretical, 2 with the notable exception of the parallel drawn between making a painting and
making a book. This procedure from the broad conception to detail, and then through a process
of distillation and reduction to essentials, seems to run throughout Matisse's writings. See
Frontispiece and p. 108 for two of the works discussed.

HOW I MADE MY BOOKS

T o start with my first book-the poems o f Mallarme. 3

Etchings, done in an even, very thin line, without hatching, so that the printed page is
left almost as white as it was before printing.
The design fills the entire page so that the page stays light, because the design is not
massed towards the centre, as usual, but bleeds over the whole page.
The right-hand pages carrying the full-page illustrations were facing left-hand pages
which carry the text in 20-point Garamond italic. The problem was then to balance the
two pages-one white, with the etching, the other comparatively black, with the type.
I obtained my result by modifying my arabesque in such a way that the spectator should
be interested as much by-the white page as by his expectation of reading the text.
I can compare my two pages to two objects taken up by a juggler. His white ball and
black ball are like my two pages, the light one and the dark one ; so different, yet face to
face. In spite of the differences between the two objects, the art of the juggler makes a
harmonious whole in the eyes of the spectator.

My second book : Pasiphile by Montherlant.4

Linoleum cuts. A simple white line upon an absolutely black background. A simple
line, without shading.
 ors, donneuse aux longs cils, hiron·
delle, hirondelle •••

Un demier baiser, un demier, a Ia hague de

ton orteil.

Je serai ton v�tement dans le silence de Ia nuit.

Je prendrai tes doigts endormis.

Je les poserai en r�vant sur mon �ou, sous

mes aisselles •••

Les doigts de ceux qu'on aime sqnt des gouttes

de pluie.

Minuit. Au ciel Ies signes errent comme des

voiles.

- L'angoim qui s·amam tlf frappa,t mu Ia gorg..

Double-page spread from Montherlant : 'Pasiphiie . I944· Linoleum cuts

'

Here the problem is the same as that of the 'Mallarme', except the two elements are
reversed. How can I balance the black illustrating page against the comparatively white
page of type? By composing with the arabesque of my drawing, but also by bringing the
engraved page and the facing type page together so that they form a unit. Thus the
engraved part and the printed part will strike the eye of the beholder at the same moment.
A wide margin running all the way around both pages masses them together.
At this stage of the composition I had a definite feeling of the rather grim character
of this black and white book. Books, however, generally seem that way. But in this case
the wide, almost entirely black page seemed a bit funereal. Then I thought of red initial
letters. That pursuit caused me a lot of work ; for after starting out with capitals that were
pictorial, whimsical, the invention of a painter, I had to settle for a more severe and clas­
sical conception, more in accord with the elements already settled-the typography and
engraving.
So then : Black, White, Red-Not so bad • • •

Now for the cover. A blue came to my mind, a primary blue, a canvas blue, but with a
white line engraved on it. As the cover has to remain in the slipcase or the binding, I had
to retain its 'paper' character. I lightened the blue, without making it less blue, but
through a woven effect-which came from the linoleum. Unknown to me an attempt was
made whereby the paper, saturated with blue ink, looked like leather. I rejected it im­
mediately because it had lost the 'paper' character I wanted it to have.
This book, because of the numerous difficulties in its design, took me ten months of
effort, working all day and often at night.
The other books, notably Visages, the Poesies de Ronsard, the Lettres portugaises, 5
 28 Oceanla, I946
those in the process of publication, which are waiting their turn at press, though they
differ in appearance, were all done according to the same principles, which are :

I . Rapport with the literary character of the work.

2. Composition conditioned by the elements employed as well as thei r decorative
values : black, white, colour, style of engraving, typography. These elements are
determined by the demands of harmony for the book as a whole and arise during the
actual progress of the work. They are never decided upon before the work is under­
taken, but develop coincidentally as inspiration and the direction of my experiments
indicate.

I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting, and I
always proceed from the simple to the complex, yet am always ready to reconceive in
simplicity. Composing at first with two elements, I add a third insofar as it is needed to
unite the first two in an enriched harmony-! almost wrote 'musical' harmony.
I reveal my method of working without claiming that there are no others, but mine
developed naturally, progressively.

I want to say a few words about lino-cuts.

Linoleum shouldn't be chosen just as a cheap substitute for wood, for it gives the print
a particular character, very different from that of wood, and for which it should be singled
out.6
I have often thought that this simple medium is comparable to the violin with its bow :
a surface, a gouge-four taut strings and a swatch of hair.
The gouge, like the violin bow, is in direct rapport with the feelings of the engraver.
And it is so true that the slightest distraction in the tracing of a line causes a slight in­
voluntary pressure of the fingers on the gouge and has an adverse effect on the line.
Likewise, a change in the pressure of the fingers which hold the bow of a violin is sufficient
to change the character of the sound from soft to loud.
Lino-cutting is a true medium predestined to be used by the painter-illustrator.

I have forgotten a valuable precept : put your work back on the block twenty times over
and then, in the present case, begin over again until you are satisfied.

28
Oceania, 1 946 1

This fragment of text in which Matisse describes his own Oceania tapestry (Figure 42)
offers a nice insight into his version of the creation of forms from experience 'recollected in
tranquillity' .
1 10 29 Jazz, I947

OCEANIA
This panel, printed on linen-white for the motifs and beige for the background-forms,
together with a second panel, a wall tapestry composed during reveries which came fifteen
years after a voyage to Oceania. 2
From the first, the enchantments of the sky there, the sea, the fish, and the coral in
the lagoons, plunged me into the inaction of total ecstasy. The local tones of things hadn't
changed, but their effect in the light of the Pacific gave me the same feeling as I ha d when
I looked into a large golden chalice.
With my eyes wide open I absorbed everything as a sponge absorbs liquid.
It is only now that these wonders have returned to me, with tenderness and clarity,
and have permitted me, with protracted pleasure, to execute these two panels.

29
Jazz, 1 9 47 1

Matisse began the cut and pasted designs for Jazz some time around 1 943 and the book
was published in September 1 9 47 , as a folio of almost one hundred and fifty pages. 2 The book
consists of some twenty plates of varying subject matter taken largely from folklore, mythology,
and the circus-a departure from Matisse' s usual subject matter-with an accompanying
text reproduced in Matisse's own large, sprawling handwriting (see Figure 43).3 In the intro­
duction to the text Matisse notes that the holograph text is meant to 'serve only as an accom­
paniment to my colours . •Thus their role is purely visual.' With typical modesty Matisse
• •

states that he can only offer some remarks, made in the course of his lifetime as a painter :
' I ask of those who have the patience to read them, that indulgence which is generally accorded
to the writings of painters.' The introduction, then, serves as a modest and indirect way for
the painter to introduce his desire to make some observations about the nature of art and about
life itself. The device of saying that the writing is unimportant gives him freedom to ramble
in the text and to be metaphorical, in contrast to the usually methodical explanation of his
ideas.
Although most writers have accepted the lack of relationship between plates and text, 4 it
seems that a subtle relationship does exist. The illustrations themselves seem to have two
major kinds of subject : the isolated figures (the· Clown, Icarus, Swimmer, etc.) which seem
to be metaphors for the artist ; and the double figures (Knife Thrower, Cowboy, Heart, etc.)
which suggest a dialogue, in the manner of 'artist and model' . Thus the underlying theme
of the Jazz plates seems obliquely to be concerned with art and artifice. Further, despite
their vivid colours and circus themes, few of the compositions are cheerful ; several are among
 29 Jazz, I947 III

Matisse's most ominous images. There are also some wry j u xta po s itions , su ch as the place­
ment of 'Icarus' at the end of the 'Aeroplane' section. Not only is the subj ect matter of Jazz
unusual, then, but so is the feeling conveyed. It is quite likely that Matisse in Jazz was str iving
after the kind of meaningful cacophony found in Erik Satie's Parade of 1 9 1 7.
The subject matter is very close, and there are also striking parallels between some of
Matisse's Jazz plates and Picasso's costumes for Parade. 5 Further, Ja zz suggests some
striking parallels with the descriptions of the first performance of Parade ( 1 8 May 19 1 7), 6
which Matisse very likely attended. 7 When Matisse began work on Jazz in 1943 t he title was
evidently going to be 'Circu s', s since most the the compositions had to do with the ci rcus. It is
possible that the change of title to Jazz was the result of the connection in his mind between
jazz music and Parade. 9
The twenty plates and rambling text of Jazz, full of subtlety and innuendo, at once bold
and gay and tragic (Satie had said of jazz that 'it shouts its sorrows'), form one of Matisse's
most interesting statements about his art.

JAZZ

Notes
Why, after having written, 'he who wants to dedicate himself to painting should start
by cutting out his tongue', do I need to resort to a medium other than my own? Because
now I wish to display colour plates in the most favourable conditions possible. To do so,
I need to separate them by intervals of a different character. I decided that a handwritten
text was most suitable for this purpose. The unusual size of the writing seems to me to
provide the necessary decorative rapport with the character of the colour plates. Thus these
pages serve only as an accompaniment to my colours, as asters add to the composition of a
bouquet of more important flowers. Thus their role is purely visual.
What can I write ? I certainly cannot fill these pages with the fables of La Fontaine,
as I did when I was a solicitor's clerk, for 'engrossed conclusions' that no one, not even
the judge, ever reads ; and which only serve to use up a quantity of official paper pro­
portionate to the importance of the case.
I only offer some remarks, notes made in the course of my lifetime as a painter. I ask
that one read them in the indulgent spirit generally accorded the writings of a painter.

The Bouquet
When I take a walk in the garden I pick flower after flower, gathering them as I go,
one after the other into the crook of my arm. Then I go into the house with the intention of
painting them. Mter I have rearranged them in my own way, what a disappointment :
all their charm is lost in this arrangement. What has happened? The unconscious grouping
made when my taste le � me from flower to flower, has been replaced by a conscious
arrangeme nt, the result of remembered bouquets long since dead, which have left in my
memory the bygone charm with which I have burdened this new bouquet •

Renoir told me : 'When I have arranged a bouquet in order to paint it, I go round to the
.
s1de I have not looked at.'

The Aeroplane
A simple voyage by plane from London to Paris gives us a revelation of the world which
our imagination cannot anticipate. At the same time that the feeling of our new situation
1 12 29 Jazz, I947
delights us, it confuses us with the memory of the cares and annoyances with which we let
ourselves be troubled on that same earth that we catch sight of below us as we cross over
holes in the plain of clouds that we are overlooking from an enchanted world which was
there all the time. And when we are returned to our modest condition of walking, we will
no longer feel the weight of the grey sky upon us because we will remember that beyond
this wall of clouds, so easily crossed, there exists the splendour of the sun ; the perception
of limitless space, in which we felt for a moment so free.
Shouldn't one have young people who have finished their studies make a long journey
by plane.
The character of a face in a drawing depends not upon its various proportions but upon a
spiritual light which it reflects-so much so, that two drawings of the same face may rep­
resent the same character though drawn in different proportions. No leaf of a fig tree
is identical to any other, each has a form of its own, but each one cries out : Fig tree ! lO ,
If I have confidence in my hand that draws, it is because as I was training it to serve me, I
never allowed it to dominate my feeling. I very quickly sense, when it is paraphrasing
something, if there is any disaccord between us : between my hand and the 'je ne sais quai'
in myself which seems submissive to it.
The hand is only an extension of sensibility and intelligence. The more supple it is,
the more obedient. The servant must not become the mistress.

Drawing with Scissors

Cutting directly into colour reminds me of a sculptor's carving into stone. This book was
conceived in that spirit.

My Curves are not Mad

The plumb line, in determining the vertical, forms, with its opposite, the horizontal, the
draughtsman's points of the compass. Ingres used a plumb line. ll You see in his studies
of standing figures this unerased line, which passes through the sternum and the inner
ankle bone of the leg which bears the weight.
Around this fictive line the 'arabesque' develops. I have derived constant benefit from
my use of the plumb line. The vertical is in my mind. It helps me give my lines a precise
direction and in my quick drawings I never indicate a curve-for example, that of a
branch in a landscape-without a consciousness of its relationship to the vertical.
My curves are not mad.
A new picture must be a unique thing, a birth bringing to the human spirit a new figure in
the representation of the world. The artist must summon all his energy, his sincerity, and
the greatest modesty, to shatter the old cliches that come so easily to hand while working,
which can suffocate the little flower that does not come, ever, in the way one expects.

A Musician Has Said:

In art, truth and reality begin when you no longer understand anything you do or know
and there remains in you an energy, that much stronger for being balanced by opposition,
compressed, condensed. Then you must present it with the greatest humility, completely
white, pure, candid, your brain seeming empty in the spiritual state of a communicant
approaching the Lord's Table.
You clearly must have all your accomplishments behind you, and have known how to
·

keep your Instinct fresh.

Do I Believe in God?
Yes, when I work. When I am submissive and modest, I sense myself helped immensely
by someone who makes me do things by which I surpass myself. Still, I feel no gratitude
29 Jazz, I947 1 13

toward Him because it is as if I were watching a conjurer whose tricks I cannot see through.
Ithen find myself thwarted of the profit of the experience that should be the reward for
my effort. I am ungrateful without remorse.
Young painters, painters misunderstood or only lately understood-no hatred! Hatred is a
parasite that devours all. 'One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love. Emulation is
necessary, but hatred • • •

'Love, on the contrary, sustains the artist.

'Love is an important thing, the greatest good, which alone renders light that which
weighs heavy, and bears with an equal spirit that which is unequal. For it carries weights
which without it would be a burden, and makes sweet and pleasant all that is bitter . . .
'Love wants to rise, not to be held down by anything base • • •

'Nothing is more gentle than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing larger,
nothing more pleasant, nothing more complete, nothing better-in heaven or on earth­
because love is born of God and cannot rest other than in God, above all living beings.
He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices ; he is free and nothing holds him back.1 2

Happ£ness
Derive happiness from yourself, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes
in the fog that surrounds us. Think that all those who have succeeded, as they look back
on the difficulties of their start in life, exclaim with conviction, 'Those were the good old
days !' For most of them success = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.
Prisoner? An artist must never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a
reputation, prisoner of success, etc. Did not the Goncourt brothers write that Japanese
artists of the great period changed their names several times during their lives? This
pleases me : they wanted to protect their freedom.
Lagoons : wouldn't you be one of the seven wonders of the Paradise of painters?lS
Happy are those who sing with all their hearts, in the forth.tjghtness of their hearts.
Find Joy in the sky, in the trees, in the flowers. There are flowers everywhere for those
who want to see them.

Future Life
Wouldn't it be consoling and satisfying if all those who gave their lives to the develop­
ment of their natural talents, for the profit of all, were to enjoy after their deaths a life of
satisfaction in accord with their desires, while those who live in narrow-minded selfish­
ness • •14 •

Jazz
These images, in vivid and violent tones, have resulted from crystallizations of memories
of the circus, popular tales, or travel. I have written these pages to calm the simultaneous
oppositions of my chromatic and rhythmic improvisations, to provide a kind of 'resonant
background' which carries them, surronnds them and thus protects their distinctiveness.
I pay my respects to -AngcHe Lamotte and Teriade-their perseverance has sustained
me in the creation of this book. I S
 30
Andre Marchand: The Eye, 1 9 47 1

Like the interviews of Montherlant and Bouvier, Andre Marchand's recollection of his con­
versation with Matisse gives a charming insight into Matisse's candid views on painting.
Matisse was evidently quite fond of anecdotes like that of the Corsican painter. Clearly, he also
enjoyed interesting verbal juxtapositions and transcriptions of different levels of awareness of
reality.

THE EYE
I arrive at the villa 'Le Reve'. 'You know,' says Matisse, 'I didn't invite you to come and
see me the other day because I am often bothered by people who drop in unexpectedly.
But I have the greatest delight in chatting, and that's why I called you this morning.' I
reply that I wouldn't want to disturb his peace and quiet for anything in the world. Then
the conversation turns to the country : he asks if I find it beautiful. I tell him it is downright
ugly, that all the buildings are dreadful, that the ruin of the countryside is the fault of the
architects. Henri Matisse smiles, says to me : ' But at Versailles, you can't paint, whereas
here, in this disorder, it is the painter who must find order.'
Some photos had just arrived from Paris. They are of landscapes, one of which Matisse
painted forty years ago. 'I was very young, you see, I thought it was no good, a bad job,
not constructed, an unimportant sketch. Well, look at it in miniature there in the photo ;
everything is there, it has balance, the tree leaning slightly toward the right ; look, here
is an enlargement. Basically, after that, I only developed this idea further. You know,
you have only one idea, you are born with it and all your life you develop your fixed idea,
you make it breathe. I believe that in drawing I have been able to say something, I have
worked a lot with that problem. Cezanne constructed his paintings, but the magic of
colour still remained to be found after him Cezanne's paintings have a peculiar structure ;
.

reversed, looked at in a mirror for example, they often lose their balance.'
Henri Matisse tells ine he used to go to the Louvre. Chardin attracted him when he was
young, but he realized that he couldn't paint like Chardin, that basically he had to harmon­
ize yellow, blue and red, and by this apparently abridged means, he had to express him­
self completely. Everything had to be redone in order to attain life, and then there was the
problem of black.
Matisse quotes Pissarro on the subject of Manet ; Pissarro said to him one day, 'Manet
is stronger than us all, he made light with black' (this went against all the Impressionist
theories of the time). While Henri Matisse speaks, outside the daylight is fading and the
·

evening sky is turning pale green.

Matisse says to me : 'Here is a country where light plays the leading role, colour comes
second ; it's with colour that you put down this light of course,2 but above all you must
feel this light, have it within yourself; you can get there by means which seem completely
paradoxical, but who cares? It's the result alone that counts. I went to Corsica one year,3
 31 The Path of Colour, I947 1 15

and it was by going to that marvellous country that I learned to know the Mediterranean.
I was quite dazed by it all ; everything shines, everything is colour and light.
'I met a Corsican painter one day who told me his country was abominable and seeing
my work said : "How strange what you're doing is ; what is it of?" I told him it was a
certain house and described it to him. "Ah !" he said, " I know the place well, I will go
and see it tomorrow. " The next day he came to the place I was working, stood in surprise
in front of my canvas, looking at the subject, understanding nothing at all, and said : " I
like what you're doing there, but I can't find it anywhere in the subject" .'
Matisse continues : 'There is a young girl who draws who comes to see me fairly often.
I tell her : basically when you look at a subject you have only to copy it, right'-Matisse
smiled as he watched me. 'Yes, it's not that you have only to copy it, but in the course of
working whether you are before a landscape, a person, a bunch of flowers-anything at
all-along comes the struggle, the revolt, and it's at that moment that you exactly set down
the chosen subject according to your own temperament ; painters with nothing to say
copy quite stupidly ; they are boring and useless.'
Adjusting a navy-blue cap on his head, Matisse adds : 'Ah l what a fascinating occupa­
tion, it's strange how short life is : now I can see what I have to do, I would like to start
over again, but a painter's life is never long enough, you leave your work in the middle ;
the essential thing is to say well what you have to say.' Then suddenly he says :
'Do you know that a man has only one eye which sees and registers everything, this eye,
like a superb camera which takes minute pictures, very sharp, tiny (Matisse shows me the
size between his fingers, about three millimetres across) and with that picture man tells
himself: "This time I know the reality of things", and he is calm for a moment, then
slowly superimposing itself on the picture another eye makes its appearance, invisibly,
which makes an entirely different picture for him.
'Then our man no longer sees clearly, a struggle begins between the first and the second
eye, the fight is fierce, finally the second eye has the upper hand, takes over and that's the
end of it. Now it has command of the situation, the second eye can then continue its work
alone and elaborate its own picture according to the laws of interior vision. This very
special eye is found here', says Matisse, pointing to his brain.

31
The Path of Colour ) 1 9 47 1

'The Path of Colour' is Matisse's account of how he came to the realization that 'colour exists
in itself, possessing its own beauty', and notes the positive effect of h aving one's efforts
con­
firmed by a tradition, especially a long-lived one. Although the allusion here is to the Fauve
?
period, t e sa�e idea was se n to be a moving force behind Matisse's disavowal
� of the style
of the Nice period. Here Matisse sums up an important aspect of his use of colour
: the way in
1 16 31 The Path of Colour, I947
which light is suggested through colour, the musical effect that can be created with colour
which obeys the needs of the painting (rather than mere description of objects), and the sim­
plicity of his use of colour. Matisse used a fairly limited palette through which he was able to
achieve broad colour effects. 2
Instead of elaborately detailed means for the rendering of light, atmosphere, and the use of
different colours, Matisse notes again that 'it is enough to invent signs. When you have a real
feeling for nature you can create signs which are equivalents to both the artist and the spectator.'
In this way Matisse reaffirms the importance of the artist's personality in contact with nature as
a source of image-making.
The use of expressive colours is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modem mentality,
an historical necessity, beyond choice. This sense of the inevitable seems to run through a
great deal of Matisse's thought, as in his reminiscence of the time when he started to paint and
realized that there was no turning back. 3 Just as there is often no turning back for the individual
so there is sometimes no turning back for a whole tradition, and it seems that Matisse was
possessed of an acute awareness of this.
This statement parallels in many ways the ideas in 'Role and Modalities of Colour' , Text 23 ,
above.

THE PATH OF COLOUR

Colour exists in itself, has its own beauty. We were made to realize this by the Japanese
crepons we bought for a few centimes on the rue de Seine. 4 Then I understood that one
could work with expressive colours which are not necessarily descriptive colours. Of
course, the originals were no doubt disappointing. But isn't eloquence even more powerful,
more direct when the means are vulgar? Van Gogh was also crazy about Japanese crepons.
Once my eye was unclogged, cleansed by the Japanese crepons, I was capable of really
absorbing the colours pecause of their emotive power. If I ' instinctiveiy admired the
Primitives in the Louvre and then Oriental art, in particular at the extraordinary exhibition
at Munich,5 it's because I found in them new confirmation. Persian miniatures, for
example, showed me all the possibilities of my sensations. I could find again in nature
what they should be. By its properties this art suggests a larger and truly plastic space.
That helped me to get away from intimate painting.
Thus my revelation came from the Orient. It was later, before the icons in Moscow,
that this art touched me and I understood Byzantine painting. You surrender yourself
that much better when you see your efforts confirmed by such an ancient tradition. It
helps you jump the ditch.
I had to get away from imitation, even of light. One can provoke light by the invention
of flats, as with the harmonies of music. I used colour as a means of expressing my emotion
and not as a transcription of nature. I use the simplest colours. I don't transform them
myself, it is the relationships which take charge of them. It is only a matter of enhancing
the differences, of revealing them. Nothing prevents composition with a few colours, like
music which is built on only seven notes.
It is enough to invent signs. When you have a real feeling for nature, you can create
signs which are equivalents to both the artist and the spectator.
In the early Russian ballets, Bakst threw in colours by the bucketful. It was magnificent
but without expression. It is not quantity which counts, but choice and organization. The
only advantage which comes out of it is that colour henceforth has universal freedom even
in the department stores.
 32 Exactitude is not Truth, I947 1 17

We have made this choice in spite of ourselves. It was an inescapable fate. That is why
it so profoundly represents the spirit of a period. But there is no need to confine oneself to
that ; today one !llUSt continue and go beyond.

32

Exactitu de is not Truth, I 9 47 1

In 1948 The Philadelphia Museum of Art held large retrospective show of Matisse's work,
a

organized by Henry Clifford. For the catalogue of that exhibition Matisse wrote two short
essays ; the first is 'Exactitude is not Truth'. In this essay Matisse makes some very cogent
statements about his art. He notes that in painting and drawing, even in portraiture, conviction
does not depend on 'the exact copying of natural forms, nor on the patient assembling of
exact details, but on the profound feeling of the artist before the objects which he has chosen,
on which his attention is focussed and the spirit of which he has penetrated' . He reiterates the
image of the fig tree that he used in Jazz, and extends the image to other growing things, even
people, concluding that everything has an inherent truth which must be distinguished from
its surface appearance ; and that this is the only truth that matters. He notes that it is the essential
truth of an object which makes a drawing or painting successful. This describes the process by
which the painter arrives at 'signs' for objects.

EXACTITUDE IS NOT TRUTH

Among these drawings, which I have chosen with the greatest of care for this exhibition,
there are four-portraits perhaps-done from my face as seen in a mirror. I should
particularly like to call them to the visitor's attention. [See page 1 18.]
These drawings seem to me to sum up observations that I have been making for many
years on the characteristics of a drawing, characteristics that do not depend on the exact
copying of natural forms, nor on the patient assembling of exact details, but on the pro­
found feeling of the artist before the objects which he has chosen, on which his attention
is focussed, and the spirit of which he has penetrated.
My convictions on these matters crystallized after I had verified the fact that, for
example, in the leaves of a tree-of a fig tree particularly-the great difference of form
that exists among them does not keep them from being united by a common quality. Fig
leaves, whatever fantastic shapes they assume, are always unmistakeably fig leaves. I
have made the same observation about other growing things : fruit, vegetables, etc.
Thus there is an inherent truth which must be disengaged from the outward appearance
of the object to be represented. This is the only truth that matters.
 �·
Four self-portrait drawings, I939
30 Exactitude is not Truth, I947 1 19

The four drawings in questions are of the same subject, yet the calligraphy of each one
of them shows a seeming liberty of line, of contour, and of the volume expressed.
Indeed, no one of these drawings can be superimposed on another, for all have com­
pletely different outlines.
In these drawings the upper part of the face is the same, but the lower is completely
different. In no. 1 58 [top, left], it is square and massive ; in no. 1 59 [top, right], it is
elongated in comparison with the upper portion ; in no. 1 6o [bottom, left] , it terminates
in a point and in no. 1 6 1 [bottom, right] , it bears no resemblance to any of the others.
Nevertheless the different elements which go to make up these four drawings give in
the same measure the organic makeup of the subject. These elements, if they are not
always indicated in the same way, are still always wedded in each drawing with the same
feeling-the way in which the nose is rooted in the face-the ear screwed into the skull­
the lower jaw hung-the way in which the glasses are placed on the nose and ears-the
tension of the gaze and its uniform density in all the drawings-even though the shade of
expression varies in each one.
It is quite clear that this sum total of elements describes the same man, as to his
character and his personality, his way of looking at things and his reaction to life, and as
to the reserve with which he faces it and which keeps him from an uncontrolled surrender
to it. It is indeed the same man, one who always remains an attentive spectator of life and
of himself.
It is thus evident that the anatomical, organic inexactitude in these drawings has not
harmed the expression of the intimate character and inherent truth of the personality, but
on the contrary has helped to clarify it.
Are these drawings portraits or not?
What is a portrait?
Is it not an interpretation of the human sensibility of the person represented?
The only saying of Rembrandt's that we know is this : 'I have never painted anything
but portraits.'
Is the portrait in the Louvre, painted by Raphael and showing Joan of Aragon in a red
velvet dress, really what is meant by a portrait?

These drawings are so little the result of chance, that in each one it can be seen how, as the
truth of the character is expressed, the same light bathes them all, and that the plastic
quality of their different parts-face, background, transparent quality of the spectacles, as
well as the feeling of material weight-all impossible to put into words, but easy to do by
dividing a piece of paper into spaces by a simple line of almost even breadth-all these
things remain the same.
Each of these drawings, as I see it, has its own individual invention which comes from
the artist's penetration of his subject, going so far that he identifies himself with it, so that
its essential truth makes the drawing. It is not changed by the different conditions under
which the drawing is made ; on the contrary, the expression of this truth by the elasticity
of its line and by its freedom lends itself to the demands of the composition ; it takes on
light and shade and eve� life, by the turn of spirit of the artist whose expression it is.

L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.

 33

Letter to Henry Clifford} 1 9481

Matisse considered himself a continuation of the tradition of painting that came before him
and was very conscious of the influence that his predecessors had upon him. Especially in the
later years of his life, he was also concerned about his own influence upon young painters. In
the 'Letter to Henry Clifford', written upon the occasion of the 1 948 Philadelphia Exhibition,
he expresses this concern and makes some observations about the relationship of his own paint­
ings to the young painters of the day.
His comment that if drawing is of the Spirit, colour is of the Senses, is one of his most
definitive comparisons of colour and drawing.
Although Matisse states, 'I do not claim to teach', it is obvious that this letter is prompted
by the desire to make his ideas known to young artists and that he feels that only training like
his own, or at least that of his own tradition, based upon careful observation of nature and dili­
gent hard work, will allow the painter to achieve true mastery of his art. He also states, going
back to his belief in the capacities of the individual, that the young artist must be gifted and
that this gift cannot be taught, only amplified, by appropriate study. This reiteration of the
importance of study and of nurturing one's own spirit, and pedagogical concern, are common
in his later writings.

LETTER TO HENRY CLIFFORD

Vence, 1 4 February 1 948

Dear Mr. Clifford :

I hope that my exhibition may be worthy of all the work it is making for you ; your efforts
touch me deeply.
However, in view of the great reverberations it may have, seeing how much preparation
has gone into it, I wonder whether its scope will not have a more or less unfortunate
influence on young painters. How are they going to interpret the impression of apparent
facility that they will get from a rapid, even superficial, overall view of my paintings and
drawings?
I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wanted my work to have the lightness
and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labours it has cost. So
I am afraid that the young, seeing in my work only the apparent facility and negligence
in the drawing, will use this as an excuse for dispensing with certain efforts which I
·

believe necessary.
The few exhibitions that I have had the opportunity of seeing during these last years
make me fear that young painters may avoid the slow and painful preparation which is
necessary for the training of any contemporary painter who claims to construct with colour
alone.
33 Letter to Henry Clifford, I948 121
This slow and painful work is indispensable. Indeed, if gardens were not dug over at
the proper time, they would soon be good for nothing. Do we not first have to clear and
then to cultivate the soil in season?
The preparatory work of initiation, of renewing, is what I call 'cultivating the soil'.
When an artist has not known how to prepare for his time of flowering, by work which
bears little resemblance to the final result, he has a short future before him ; or when an
artist who has 'arrived' no longer feels the necessity of getting back to the soil from time to
time, he ends up going around in circles, repeating himself until, by this very repetition,
his curiosity is extinguished.2
An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts
that prepare for the mastery by which he will later be able to express himself in his own
language. a
The future painter must be able to forsee what is useful to his development-drawing
or even sculpture-everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself
with her, by penetrating the things-which is what I call Nature-that arouse his feelings.
I believe study by means of drawing to be essential. If drawing belongs to the realm of the
Spirit and colour to that of the Senses, you must draw first to cultivate the Spirit and to
be able to lead colour through the paths of the Spirit. That is what I want to cry aloud,
when I see the work of young people for whom painting is not an adventure, and whose
only goal is their impending first exhibition which is to start them on the road to fame.
It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch colour-not
colour as description, that is, but as a means of personal expression. Then he can hope
that all the images, even the very symbols which he uses, will be the reflection of his love
for things, a reflection in which he may have confidence if he has been able to carry out his
education with purity, and without lying to himself. Then he will employ colour with
discernment. He will place it in accordance with a natural, unformulated and completely
concealed design that will spring directly from his feelings ; this is what allowed Toulouse­
Lautrec, at the end of his life, to exclaim, 'At last, I no longer know how to draw.'
The painter who is just beginning thinks that he is painting from the heart. The artist
who has completed his development also thinks that he is painting from the heart. Only
the latter is right, because his training and his discipline allow him to accept impulses from
within, which he can in part control.
I do not claim to teach ; I only want my exhibition not to suggest false interpretations
to those who have their own way to make. I should like people to know that they cannot
ap�roach colour as though it held open house, that one must go through a strict prepara­
tion to be worthy of it. But first of all it is clear that one must have a gift for colour, as a
singer must have a voice. Without this gift one can get nowhere, and not everyone can
declare like Correggio, 'I too am a painter'.4 A colourist makes his presence known even
in a simple charcoal drawing.
My dear Mr. Clifford, here my letter ends. I started it to let you know that I am aware
of the trouble you are taking over me at the moment. I see that, obeying an inner necessity,
I have made it an expression of what I feel about drawing, colour, and the importance of
discipline in the education of an artist. If you think that all these reflections of mine can
be of any use to anyone, do whatever you think best with this letter. You may add it, if there
is still time, to the explanatory part of your catalogue.
Please accept, Mr. Clifford, the expression of my feelings of deepest gratitude.
Henri Matisse
 34
Interview with R . W. Howe, 1 9 49 1

In 1949 Matisse gave a brief interview to Russell Warren Howe which, despite the chattiness of
Howe's reportage, is of interest. The statement that 'to draw is to make an idea precise' , for
example, reinforces the impression that one gets from Matisse's paintings, that the idea is
embedded in the drawing and the emotional or sensory impulse is carried for the most part by
colour. This comment is also consonant with Matisse's statement in the letter to Henry
Clifford that drawing is of the spirit and colour of the senses.
Of especial interest is Matisse's (expected) criticism of the doctrinaire aspect of Cubism, so
foreign to his own intuitive approach, and his disavowal of the influence of Gauguin, to whom
he was so often compared because of the superficial similarity between their works.
Matisse's equivocal response to 'non-objective' painting is worth noting ; only a few years
later, his answers to Andre Verdet's questions on the subject will be quite specific and out­
spoken.

INTERVIEW WITH R. W. HOWE

Caravaggio, Velazquez, Turner, Van Gogh and many other artists have taught us to
expect a physical link between a painter and his canvases, but Henri-Matisse in no way
resembles his art. With his careful dress and manner and his neat apartment in the
Boulevard Montparnasse, he is in magnificent contrast to his startling North Mrican
orientalism, to his fantasy-arabesques of figure and decoration, to the drenching reds and
poster emerald-greens he found in the French Midi, or to the other myriad pure-tints
which were on his palette when he returned from the South Seas. At seventy-nine, he is
a discreet and simplicity-loving grandfather.
But the popular picture of Matisse, scientific craftsman, is inaccurate. M. Rene
Huyghes [sic], curator of paintings at the Louvre, attributes to him an 'exquisite and re­
fined impassibility'. When I told Matisse this, he nodded characteristically and said,
'Look at the walls around you. You will see that what he says is not altogether true.'
The walls he indicated were covered by large Indian ink drawings on figure-and­
decoration themes, typified by a power of simplicity and gentle French lucidity, by an
orchestration of line and arabesque which suggested at one and the same time concision
and intensity, and which, transformed into colour, would become an art of independent
harmonies, each supporting the other. The essential lesson of each was personal emotion,
instinctiveness.
'How can one make art without passion?' asked Matisse. 'Without passion, there is no
art. The artist to a greater or lesser degree dominates himself, but it is passion which
motivates his work.'
Some critics have fixed Matisse's aim as the solidity which Cezanne spoke of. Others
propose a classic dignity. When I asked him which was correct, he just said, 'Look at
what I'm doing now,' and if the bold Matisse line of his latest work suggested Cezanne
34 lntervlew wlth R. W. Howe, I949 1 23
and solidity, the group of recent female head-portraits on one of his bedroom walls re·
caHed equally the classic dignity of David (the current exhibition of whose works Matisse
had just visited) and the more fluid dignity of Utamaro and Kuniyoshi.
The lasting quality of Matisse rests to a great extent in the drawing. 'To draw is to
make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought. By it the feelings an d the soul
of the painter travel without difficulty into the spirit of he who looks on. A work without
drawing is a house without a frame', he told me.
Of his method, Matisse speaks freely. For his figure-pieces, his favourite work, he
does not always work from studio drawings. He often draws directly from model to
canvas.
When I asked him if he believed in a methodical life, he gave a great wink of agreement,
for that is one of his strongest principles. 'One must work at set hours every day. One
must work like a workman. Anyone who has done anything worthwhile has done that.'
Later he said, 'All my life, I have worked all my waking day.'
The master of colour chuckles when you mention the conception of Paul Signac's
theory that there were a fixed number of complementary tones, and ask him if this con­
ception is absolute. 'Assuredly not ! Complementaries ? There are some which have no
name. One can create associations which are not red, not green, not blue. We do not need
laws, we just assimilate each new discovery.'
Too doctrinaire also is the mind-over-feeling attitude of many Cubists. For Matisse, the
mind effort is only partly dominant, and it is the instinct which creates. 'For me, it is the
sensation first, then the idea. I see a bouquet of flowers, it pleases me, I do something. If
the Cubist conceives an idea and then asks himself "what sensation does that give me?"­
well, I just don't understand that.'
The art of Matisse was a courageous individualism, but he modestly describes it in
another way-' I owe my art to all painters. When I was young, I worked in the Louvre,
copying the old masters, learning their thought, their technique. In modem art, it is
indubitably to Cezanne that I owe the most.'
The architectural solidity and virility of Matisse is far from the colour-shapes of the
Impressionist-born art of Gauguin, to whom the textbooks ascribe Matisse's chief
inspiration. He says strongly, 'The basis of Gauguin's work and mine is not the same.' For
that reason, Matisse can do no more than 'esteem' the Impressionistic and Gauguinesque
art of his old friend Pierre Bonnard.
His most iconoclastic opinion is on Delacroix, whose Journal is now the most-read
book among French painters : perhaps because Matisse, in line with French tradition,
finds a mysticism like Delacroix's too philosophical, too intellectual-too 'literary', as
French critics say-he thinks all this interest completely unjustified.2
I asked him : 'What do you think of the abstract-do you believe that one should deduce
one's abstractions from the forms of nature, or that one should create the form, outside
of nature ?'
Matisse replied, 'There is always a measure of reality. The rest, I agree, is imagination.
But there are no laws until the work is finished. One cannot make programmes. Painting
is a grave art : we have not yet all its spirit, all its reason ; nor have we liberty, and that is
what is needed most.'
On the new painting, Matisse is non-committal. ' I am not rightly placed to speak of the
art of younger painters. I know better-! was falsely judged myself when I was a young
man.'3 And at the mention of Surrealism, Matisse puts his chin out sharply-a gesture
which is all a Frenchman needs to make in order to say, 'That's a different kettle of fish.'
For the aesthetics which his genius does not span do not much interest him ; he is a
specialist. 'I have no opinion on Surrealism. It is difficult, so difficult to judge the young.
We all do that of which we are capable. '
1 24 34 Interview with R. W. Howe, I949
I asked him what he would do if he were a young painter in this day and age. 'I should
be very thankful l' he smiled, adding, 'but seriously, my life tells you what I should do.
I should do what I have done. �ow I am almost at the end of the journey, and I cannot know
precisely what I would do if I were at the beginning. I am not exactly youthful, and one
must have youth to see into the future. If I were young, I would do something, and when
I had done it I should know then on what researches I should spend my life.
'To-day, everything is expensive for the painter-colours, materials, life itself. If I
were a young painter, I should take a job with a salary, and then I would be independent
and paint freely.
'My art would not suffer. If I did bad painting, if I decorated Christmas crackers, that
would harm my art, but bank-clerking or loading a goods-train would be fine.
'Nietzsche said, "All artists should learn a trade in order to be free." One need only
work three or four hours a day. Then one's painting can be sincere, and one need not
worry about the tastes of others. Sometimes, I know, one must work as one can', he says,
and then recalls the time when he and Marquet painted laurel leaves all over Jambon's
theatre in Paris for one-and-a-half francs an hour.
Unlike Vlaminck, Matisse is undismayed at the modern scene, and to the feelings of the
new generation he says, 'Anxiety? It is no worse to-day than it was for the Romantics.
One must dominate all that. One must be calm ; and art should not be worrying or dis­
turbing-it should be balanced, pure, tranquil, restful. '
Matisse, in his simplicity, is yet too complex a character to capture in half-an-hour's
conversation. I found him in bed after the ritual afternoon nap, dictated by feeble health.
He was reading a book on architecture, and by his hand lay the Bible. His assistant was
tracing some of his inkline drawings, in connection with his experiments, and the walls
were lined with his work. He has a look of intense intelligence, and his rare smile is warm
and candid. In his simplicity, he is strangely like his master, Cezanne. He is often wisely
non-committal. He is specialized to his art, which is primarily instinctive, and he is no
example of Baudelaire's theory that literature, music and painting were interrelated. The
only scientific side of his nature seems to be his sure knowledge of anatomy, which lends
itself to the discovery of new values, some structural, some less easy to define. He is
conscious of his assured place in the history of art, but conscious too that he is of a
different period to that of the new painting, and selflessly indifferent to a future that will
probably see others going on ahead.
Henri-Matisse has brought all the great traditions of French painting onto a new path,
where for many bitter, impoverished years he walked alone, ill and in debt and doubting
himself; on that path he now rests, contented.
He has often been called the painter of luxury. One has only to think of the lives of the
great Spanish masters to see that few things are more artistic than luxury. He is perhaps
a fraction less aptly called the painter of exoticism, for there is little evidence in him of
that element which is half of exoticism-fear that the world is destined to become uniform.
But at all costs he has in him the other half-the desire for escape, a feeling for broad
spaces : one of his parting remarks was, 'If I were young, I'd make a tour of the world in
a plane. I find that an extraordinary achievement. Why in a matter of hours, one can be in
India, China, South Mrica. Miraculous 1'
 35
Henri Matisse Speaks to You, 1 9 5 01

In March 1 950, Matisse wrote a short essay for Traits, a small avant-garde periodical addressed
largely to art students. Matisse's article, in keeping with the tenor both of the periodical and of
his own pedagogical concerns, is addressed to the aspiring artist. He once again encourages
study of the art of the past while cautioning against the dangers of superficial imitation This .

short statement is a good example of Matisse's acute awareness of the historical context within
which every artist works, and of his own use of the past as a 'library' of possibilities of per­
ception.

HENRI MATISSE SPEAKS TO YO U

For forty years, I lived with a large plaster cast of the Argive statue 'Cleobis' .2
This larger-than-lifesize figure with its rigid forms, and parallel limbs, in which one
sees an Egyptian influence-how alive it is ! with a life more condensed and more pro­
found than that of Egyptian sculpture, and also more human. It marks the beginning of
Greek feeling, from which we are descended.
For ten years, I walked around it in my garden. Placecl in a corner of the lawn and sur­
rounded by tree trunks, it looked beautiful.
When its head and shoulders had become partially disintegrated by the rains of many
winters, I brought it into the studio so as not to lose it completely, and finally here we
are now in Nice.
We have rarely been separated for more than forty years, and the great interest I have
had in it has only increased.
Recently, during a night of insomnia, I caught myself unconsciously contemplating it
from the hollow of my armchair. The perfect silence of the hour certainly helped our
coming together. With each involuntary pause I made before this plaster statue, this
revealer of so many treasures, its exceptional qualities once again impressed me. It did not
reveal new beauties to me, but old discoveries asserted themselves with greater intensity
and with more profundity than in our previous encounters.
Happy with this renewal of interest, I solemnly promised myself to commune with it
again, charcoal in hand, not doubting the benefit that it would be able to give me in future
revelations.
I understood then the great benefit that the artist's sensibility can draw from an en­
counter with an ancient, especially very ancient work, with which he feels affinities.
Didn't Cezanne encounter Poussin?
I remembered studies that I made before other ancient sculptures. These studies didn't
produce pleasant drawings, but dra\vings revealing intense efforts ; they were not final
results, it's true, but were afterwards recognized as profitable.
I just had a visit from Le Corbusier, that distinguished and inventive mind, who has
successfully realized his great architectural and decorative daring.
1 26 36 The Text, I95I
As we stopped before my Argive Adonis, he said to me, 'Let me look at this marvel, I
drew it a great deal ten years ago.' 3
Isn't this a little surprising, this confession of an artist who would seem to be only
self-motivated ?

All that I am relating has n o other intent than t o b e read b y some artist i n formation
(isn't one in formation all one's life ? ) who is searching for new sources of inspiration in
which he would be able to feel confident because his personality could draw freely upon
those sources.
May I add that it is perilous to fall under the influence of the masters of my own epoch,
because the language is too close to ours, and one risks taking the letter for the spirit. The
masters of ancient civilizations had a language which was very full for them, but so different
from ours that it prevents us from making too literal an imitation. Influenced by them, we
are obliged to create a new language, for theirs refuses us a full development of ideas and
very quickly closes its door on us.
Cezanne said : ' Defy the influential master.'
Cezanne did not need to fear the influence of Poussin, for he was sure not to adopt the
externals of Poussin ; whereas when he was touched by Courbet, as were the painters of
his period, his technique was too strongly affected by Courbet, and Cezanne found his
expression limited by Courbet's technique. Also, after that period, all this group of
painters went to the other extreme : Courbet worked with black paint, and the Impression­
ists, at first his imitators, used all the colours of the rainbow.
WHEN ONE IMITATES A MASTER, THE TECHNIQUE OF THE MASTER STRANGLES THE IMITATOR

AND FORMS ABOUT HIM A BARRIER WHICH PARALYSES HIM. I COULD NOT REPEAT THIS TOO

OFTEN.

The Text) 1 9 5 1 1
[ Preface to the Tokyo Exhibition]
In 1 95 1 Matisse had a large retrospective exhibition in Tokyo, for which he wrote a preface to
the catalogue. As in the letter to Henry Clifford, Matisse states his concern that the students
who will see the exhibition should be able to see that 'the principal interest of my works comes
from careful observation and respect for nature' . Matisse then goes on to reiterate the advice
to young artists that he expressed in the letter to Henry Clifford, stating that without sincerity
and the study of nature the artist can do nothing but float from one influence to another. Thus
in the last years of his life, while his own works-
· especially the late cut gouaches-were be­
cooling more and more abstract, Matisse felt impelled to advise the younger generation, who
were producing painting that he admittedly did not understand, to study nature in order that
they might realize that the source of his imagery was not in mere stylization, but in a conviction
of sincerity before nature.
 37 The Chapel of the Rosary, I95I 1 27

THE TEXT [Preface to the Tokyo Exhibition]

After I had decided that my exhibition at the Maison de Ia Pensce Fran�aise in Paris2
would be my last show of this kind, I nevertheless agreed to this important exhibition in
Japan-Mr. Hazama had so clearly explained the interest it would have for the art
students of his country.
Given the place that Japanese artists have accorded me until now, I thought it my duty
to accept his proposition and so I collected for this exhibition paintings and drawings
which show my activity retrospectively.
I hope that the students who see this show will perceive that the principal interest of my
works comes from attentive and respectful observation of Nature as well as from the
quality of feeling which Nature has inspired in me, rather than from a certain virtuosity
which almost always comes from honest and constant work.
I cannot stress enough the absolute necessity for an artist to have perfect sincerity in
his work, which alone can give him the great courage he needs in order to accept it in all
modesty and humility.
Without this sincerity, for which I am making a great case, the artist can only drift from
one influence to another, forgetting to find the ground from which he must take his own
individual characteristics.
Let the young artist not forget that the attraction of this ground is directed to his heart
and rarely fits in with the problems of existence.
He must nevertheless manage to reconcile the two without impairing his scope.

37
The Chapel of the Rosary ) 1 9 5 1 1

Upon completion of the Chapel of the Rosary at V ence, Matisse wrote an introduction to the
picture book of the Chapel. His comments, which are quite general, barely touch on the Chapel
itself. Instead he stresses the importance of the Chapel as a summing up of his career, as a
unique contribution to posterity and as a major synthesis of the traditions of which he is a
part. He calls particular attention to his reaction against the Beaux-Arts teaching and to his
study of the expressive qualities of form and colour : in short to the respect for 'the purity of
the means' which he saw as perhaps his most important contribution to the plastic tradition,
and which he felt to be so powerfully realized in the Chapel.
 37 The Chapel of the Rosary, I95I

THE CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY

All my life I have been influenced by the opinion current at the time I first began to paint,
when it was permissible only to render observations made from nature, when all that
derived from the imagination or memory was called bogus and worthless for the construc­
tion of a plastic work. The teachers at the Beaux-Arts used to say to their pupils, 'Copy
nature stupidly'.
Throughout my career I have reacted against this attitude to which I could not submit ;
and this struggle has been the source of the different stages along my route, in the course of
which I have searched for means of expression beyond the literal copy-such as Division­
ism and Fauvism.
These rebellions led me to study separately each element of construction : drawing,
colour, values, composition ; to explore how these elements could be combined into a
synthesis without diminishing the eloquence of any one of them by the presence of the
others, and to make constructions from these elements with their intrinsic qualities
undiminished in combination ; in other words, to respect the purity of the means.

Each generation of artists views the production of the previous generation differently. The
paintings of the Impressionists, constructed with pure colours, made the next generation
see that these colours, if they can be used to describe objects or natural phenomena,
contain within them, independently of the objects that they serve to express, the power to
affect the feelings of those who look at them.
Thus simple colours can act upon the inner feelings with more force, the simpler they
are. A blue, for example, accompanied by the brilliance of its complementaries, acts upon
the feelings like a sharp blow on a gong. The same with red and yellow ; and the artist
must be able to sound them when he needs to.
In the Chapel my chief aim was to balance a surface of light and colour against a solid
wall with black drawing on a white background.

This Chapel is for me the culmination of a life of work, and the coming into flower of an
enormous, sincere and difficult effort.
This is not a work that I chose, but rather a work for which I was chosen by fate, to­
wards the end of the course that I am still continuing according to my researches ; the
Chapel has afforded me the possibility of realizing them by uniting them.2
I forsee that this work will not be in vain and that it may remain the expression of a
period in art, perhaps now left behind, though I do not believe so. It is impossible to be
sure about this today, before the new movements have been fully realized.
Whatever weaknesses this expression of human feeling may contain will fall away of
their own accord, but there will remain a living part which will unite the past with the
future of the plastic tradition.
I hope that this part, which I call my revelation, is expressed with sufficient power to be
fertilizing and to return to its source.
 The Chapel of the Rosary) 1 9 5 1 1
[On the Murals and Windows]

Late in 1 95 1 Matisse wrote a short statement on the Vence Chapel (Figure 45) for the Christ­
mas issue of France Illustration. In this essay Matisse elaborates on the composition of the
main visual elements of the Chapel : the three ceramic tile panels (St. Dominic, the Virgin
and Child, The Stations of the Cross), and the stained-glass windows. This essay, which is
descriptive in a manner reminiscent of 'How I made my Books' (Text 27), provides one of
Matisse's most detailed discussions of a single work.

THE CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY

[On the Murals and Windows]
This chapel is for me the culmination of a lifetime of labour.
The ceramics of the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence have produced reactions of such
astonishment that I would like to try to dispel them.
These ceramic panels are composed of large squares of glazed white tile bearing drawings
in black outline which decorate them while still leaving them very light. The result is an
ensemble of black on white in which the white dominates, and whose density forms a
balance with the surface of the opposite wall, which is composed of stained glass windows
which run from the floor to the ceiling, and which express, through their adjacent forms,
an idea of foliage which is always of the same origin, coming from a characteristic tree of
the region : the cactus with large oval spine-covered stalks, which bear yellow and red
flowers.
These stained-glass windows are composed of three carefully chosen colours of glass,
which are : an ultramarine blue, a bottle green, and a lemon yellow, used together in each
part of the stained-glass window. These colours are of quite ordinary quality ; they exist
as an artistic reality only with regard to their quantity, which magnifies and spiritualizes
them.
To the simplicity of these three constructive colours is added a differentiation of the sur­
face of some of the pieces of glass. The yellow is roughened and so becomes translucent
only while the blue and the green remain transparent, and thus completely clear. This
lack of transparency in the yellow arrests the spirit of the spectator and keeps it in the
interior of the chapel, thus forming the foreground of a space which begins in the chapel
and then passes through the blue and green to lose itself in the surrounding gardens. Thus
when someone inside can see through the glass a person coming and going in the garden,
only a metre away from the window, he seems to belong to a completely separate world
from that of the chapel.
I JO 39 Matisse speaks, I95I
I write of these windows-the spiritual expression of their colour to me is indisputable
-simply to establish the difference between the two long sides of the chapel, which,
decorated differently, sustain themselves by their mutual opposition. From a space of
bright shadowless sunlight which envelops our spirit on the left, we find, passing to the
right, the tile walls. They are the visual equivalent of a large open book where the white
pages carry the signs explaining the musical part composed by the stained-glass windows.
In sum, the ceramic tiles are the spiritual essential and explain the meaning of the monu­
ment. Thus they become, despite their apparent simplicity, the focal point which should
underline the peaceful contemplation that we should experience ; and I believe this is a
point that should be stressed.
In their execution the artist is revealed with complete freedom. Thus, having from the
first foreseen these panels as illustrations of these large surfaces, during the execution he
gave a different feeling to one of these three : that of the Stations of the Cross. .
The panel of Saint Dominic and that of the Virgin and the Christ Child are on the same
level of the decorative spirit, and their serenity has a character of tranquil contemplation
which is proper to them, while that of the Stations of the Cross is animated by a different
spirit. It is tempestuous. This marks the encounter of the artist with the great tragedy of
Christ, which makes the impassioned spirit of the artist flow out over the chapel. Initially,
having conceived it in the same spirit as that of the first two panels, he made it a proces­
sion of succeeding scenes.2 But, finding himself gripped by the pathos of so profound a
tragedy, he upset the order of his composition. The artist quite naturally became its
principal actor ; instead of reflecting the tragedy, he has experienced it and this is how he has
expressed it. He is quite conscious of the agitation of the spirit which this passage from
the serene to the dramatic arouses in the spectator. 3 But isn't the Passion of Christ the
most moving of these three subjects ?
I would like to add to this text that I have included the black and white habits of the
Sisters as one of the elements of the composition of the chapel ; and, for the music, I
preferred to the strident tones-however enjoyable, too explosive-of the organ, the
sweetness of the voices of women which with their Gregorian chant can become a part of
the quivering coloured light of the stained-glass windows.

39
Matisse Speaks) 1 9 5 1 1

'Matisse Speaks' is a transcription by Teriade of a statement made by Matisse in July 195 1 .

The context of the statement is autobiographical, and Matisse refers here to several incidents
(Bouguereau's studio, Moreau, the Louvre, his own class, etc.) which, judging from his
frequent reference to them, he evidently felt to be significant incidents in his life.
This document is also of especial interest because Matisse refers to specific events and
works which were important enough to him to be mentioned many years later in this outline of
his career.
39 Matisse speaks, I95I IJ I

MATISSE SPEAI{S
Beginnings, I890-92
I was an attorney's clerk, studying to be a lawyer, at St. -Quentin. Convalescing after an
illness, I met somebody who copied chromos-sort of Swiss landscapes which in those
days were sold in albums of reproductions. I bought a box of colors and began to copy
them, too. Mterwards, every morning from seven to eight, before going to my studies, I
used to go to the E cole Quentin Latour where I worked under draftsmen who designed
textiles.2 Once bitten by the demon of painting, I never wanted to give up. I begged my
parents for, and finally got, permission to go to Paris to study painting seriously.
The only painter in St.-Quentin was a man named Paul Louis Couturier, 3 a painter of
hens and poultry-yards. He had studied with Picot-one of Bouguereau's disciples­
which he mentioned, and with Gustave Moreau, which he· never mentioned. So I came
to Paris with recommendations from Couturier to Bouguereau.
I showed some of my first pictures to Bouguereau who told me that I didn't know
perspective. He was in his studio, re-doing for the third time his successful Salon picture,
The Wasp's Nest (it was a young woman pursued by lovers). The original Salon picture
was nearby ; next to it was a finished copy, and on the easel was a bare canvas on
which he was drawing a copy of the copy. Two friends were with him : Trupheme, 4
one of the prize-winners of the Artistes Fran�ais group and director of the Municipal
School of Drawing on the Boulevard Montparnasse, and a man named Guignon, another
of the Artistes Fran�ais painters-he only painted olive trees at Menton. Bouguereau
was literally re-making his picture for the third time. And his friends exclaimed : ' Oh,
Monsieur Bouguereau ! What a conscientious man you are ; what a worker !' 'Ah, yes ! '
responded Bouguereau, ' I am a worker, but art is hard.'
I saw the unconsciousness (unconscious because they were sincere) of these men who
were stamped by official art and the Institute, and soon understood that I could get
nothing from them.
I went to the Academie Julian and signed up for the Prix de Rome competition at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. One of my friends persuaded me that there was nothing to learn at
the E cole de Rome and I began to work from my own experiences. 5 I was enormously
helped in this by meeting Gustave Moreau, in whose studio I entered and where I met
Dufy and Rouault. Moreau took an interest in my work. He was a cultivated man who
stimulated his pupils to see all kinds of painting, while the other teachers were preoccupied
with one period only, one style-of contemporary academicism-that is to say their own,
the leftovers of all conventions.

Copies at the Louvre, I894-96

We used to make copies at the Louvre, somewhat to study the masters and live with them,
somewhat because the Government bought copies. But they had to be executed with
minute exactitude, according to the letter and not the spirit of the work. Thus the works
most successful with the purchasing commission were those done by the mothers, wives
and daughters of the museum guards. Our copies were only accepted out of charity, or
sometimes when Roger-Marx pleaded our cause. a I would have liked to be literal, like the
mothers, wives and daughters of the guards, but couldn't.
What is believed to be boldness was only awkwardness. So liberty is really the impos­
sibility of following the path which everyone usually takes and following the one which
your talents make you take.
Among the pictures I copied at that time, I remember the Portrait of Baldassare Castig­
lione by Raphael, Poussin's Narcissus, Annibale Caracci's The Hunt, the Dead Christ of
 39 Matisse speaks, I95I
Philippe de Champagne. As for the Still-life by David de Heem, I began it again, some
years later, with the methods of modern construction.?
Around 1 896 I was at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and roomed on the Quai St.-Michel.
Next door was the painter Very who was influenced by the Impressionists, especially
Sisley. One summer we went to Brittany together, to Belle- tie-en-Mer. Working next to
him I noticed that he could get more luminosity from his primary colors than I could with
my old-master palette. This was the first stage in my evolution, and I came back to Paris
free of the Louvre's influence and heading towards color.
The search for color did not come to me from studying paintings, but from the outside
-that is from the revelation of light in nature.

Divisionism, I904
At St.-Tropez I met Signac and Cross, theoreticians of Divisionism. In their company I
worked on my picture The Terrace at St.- TropezB-really the boathouse at Signac's
house, which was called La Hune. I also painted the big composition, Luxe, Calme et
Volupte [Figure 13]-it is still in the Signac collection-a picture made of pure rainbow
colors. All the paintings of this school [Divisionism] had the same effect : a little pink, a
little blue, a little green ; a very limited palette with which I didn't feel very comfortable.
Cross told me that I wouldn't stick to this theory, but without telling me why. Later I
understood. My dominant colors, which were supposed to be supported by contrasts,
were eaten away by these contrasts, which I made as important as the dominants. This
led me to painting with flat tones : it was Fauvism.

Fauvism, I905-IO
Fauvism at first \Vas a brief time when we thought it was necessary to exalt all colors
together, sacrificing none of them. Later we went back to nuances, which gave us more
supple elements than the flat, even tones.
The Impressionists' aesthetic seemed just as insufficient to us as the technique of the
Louvre, and we wanted to go directly to our needs for expression. The artist, encumbered
with all the techniques of the past and present, asked himself : 'What do I want?' This was
the dominating anxiety of Fauvism. If he starts from within himself, and makes just three
spots of color, he finds the beginning of a release from such constraints.
This period lasted for some time, even some years. Once you have reached the point
where you take cognizance of the quality of your desire, you begin to consider the object
which you are making, and you need to modify your methods in order to become more
intelligible to others, and to organize all the possibilities that you have recognized within
yourself.
The man who has meditated on himself for a certain length of time comes back to life
sensing the position he can occupy. Then he can act effectively.
My master, Gustave Moreau, used to say that the mannerisms of a style turn against it
after a while, and then the picture's qualities must be strong enough to prevent failure.
This alerted me against all apparently extraordinary techniques.
The epithet 'Fauve' was never accepted by the Fauve painters ; it was always considered
just a tag issued by the critics. Vauxcelles invented the word. We were showing at the Salon
d 'Automne ; Derain, Manguin, Marquet, Puy and some of the others were exhibiting
together in one of the big galleries. The sculptor Marque showed an Italianate bust of a
child in the center of this hall. Vauxcelles came in the room and said : 'Well, Donatello
among the wild beasts ! ' [' Tiens, Donatello au milieu des fauves.']
A whole group worked along these lines : Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Friesz, Braque.
Later, each member denied that part of Fauvism he felt to be excessive, each according to
his personality, in order to find his own path.
39 Matisse speaks, I95I I JJ

Morocco
The voyages to Morocco helped me accomplish this transition, and make contact with
nature again better than did the application of a lively but somewhat limiting theory,
Fauvism. I found the landscapes of Morocco just as they had been described in the paintings
of Delacroix and in Pierre Loti's novels. One morning in Tangiers I was riding in a
meadow ; the flowers came up to the horse's muzzle. I wondered where I had already
had a similar experience-it was in reading one of Loti's descriptions in his book
Au Maroc.
The Moroccans9-l find it difficult to describe this painting of mine with words. It is
the beginning of my expression with color, with blacks and their contrasts. They are
reclining figures of Moroccans, on a terrace, with their watermelons and gourds.

The Academy, I908

This is what they called my 'academy'. Around1 go8, some younger painters wanted help.
At that time there was some empty space at the Couvent des Oiseaux ; we rented it for a
studio where one could get together and work. I used to come by in the evenings, from time
to time, to see what they were doing. I quickly realized that I had my own work to do, and
was wasting too much of my energy. Mter each criticism I found myself faced with lambs,
and I had to build them up constantly, every week, to make them into lions. So I wondered
whether I was a painter or a teacher ; I decided I was a painter and quickly abandoned the
school. Purrmann (member of the Academy in Berlin and a professor there), Grunwald
(professor at Stockholm), and the Scandinavian Sorenson were among my pupils.

l:he l;ollectors
Among the collectors who were interested in my work from the beginning, I must mention
two Russians, Stchoukine and Morosoff. Stchoukine, a Moscow importer of Eastern
textiles, was about fifty years old, a vegetarian, extremely sober. He spent four months of
each year in Europe, traveling just about everywhere. He loved the profound and tranquil
pleasures. In Paris his favorite pastime was visiting the Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre�
where he discovered parallels to Cezanne's peasants. He thought the lions of Mycenae
were the incontestable masterpieces of all art. One day he dropped by at the Quai St.­
Michel to see my pictures. He noticed a still-life hanging on the wall and said : 'I buy it
[sic], but I'll have to keep it at home for several days, and if I can bear it, and keep inter­
ested in it, I'll keep it.' I was lucky enough that he was able to bear this first ordeal easily,
and that my still-life didn't fatigue him too much. So he came back and commissioned a
series of large paintings to decorate the living room of his Moscow house-the old palace
of the Troubetzkoy princes, built during the reign of Catherine II. Mter this he asked me
to do two decorations for the palace staircase, and it was then I painted Music and The
Dance [Figures 22 and 21].
Morosoff, a Russian colossus, twenty years younger than Stchoukine, owned a factory
employing three thousand 1-vorkers and was married to a dancer. He had commissioned
decorations for his music room from Maurice Denis, who painted The Loves of Psyche.
In the same room were six big Maillol sculptures. From me he bought, among other
pictures, Window at Tangiers, The Moroccans on the Terrace and The Gate of the Casbah. l O
The paintings of both these collectors now belong to the Museum of Western Art in
Moscow.
When Morosoff went to Ambroise Vollard, he'd say : 'I want to see a very beautiful
Cezanne.' Stchoukine, on the other hand, would ask to see all the Cezannes available
and make his choice among them.
1 34 39 Matisse speaks, I95I

Cubism
Braque had come back from the Midi with a landscape of a village by the seashore, seen
from above. Thus there was a large background of sea and sky into which he had continued
the village roofs, giving them the colors of the sky and water. I saw the picture in the
studio of Picasso who discussed it with his friends. Back in Paris, Braque did a portrait of
a woman on a chaise-longue in which the drawing and values were decomposed. Cubism is
the descendant of Cezanne who used to say that everything is either cylindrical or cubical.ll
In those days we didn't feel imprisoned in uniforms, and a bit of boldness, found in a
friend's picture, belonged to everybody.
Cubism had a function in fighting against the deliquescence of Impressionism.
The Cubists' investigation of the plane depended upon reality. In a lyric painter, it
depends upon the imagination. It is the imagination that gives depth and space to a picture.
The Cubists forced on the spectator's imagination a rigorously defined space between each
object. From another viewpoint, Cubism is a kind of descriptive realism.

Negro art
I often visited Gertrude Stein in the Rue de Fleurus. On the way was a little antique shop.
One day I noticed in its window a small Negro head carved in wood which reminded me of
the huge red porphry[sic] heads in the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre. I felt that the methods
of writing form were the same in the two civilizations, no matter how foreign they may
be to each other in every other way. So I bought the head for a few francs and took it
along to Gertrude Stein's. There I found Picasso, who was astonished by it. We discussed
it at length, and that was the beginning of the interest we all have taken in Negro art-and
we have shown it, to greater or lesser degrees, in our pictures.
It was a time of new acquisitions. Not knowing ourselves too well yet, we felt no need
to protect ourselves from foreign influences, for they could only enrich us, and make us

more demanding of our own means of expression.

Fauvism, the exaltation of color ; precision of drawing from Cubism ; trips to the
Louvre and exotic influences from the ethnographical museum at the old Trocadero, 12
all shaped the landscape in which we were living, through which we were travelling, and
out of which we all came. It was a time of artistic cosmogony.

The War, I9I4-I8

Despite pressure from certain conventional quarters, the war did not influence the subject
matter of painting, for we were no longer merely painting subjects. For those who could
still work there was only a restriction of means, while for those who couldn't work there
was only a gathering of desires which they were able to gratify when peace returned.
From this period date two of my large works, the Young Girls by the River and The Piano
Lesson [Figure 27] . 1 3
Nice
I left L'Estaque because of the wind, and I had caught bronchitis there. I came to Nice
to cure it, and it rained for a month. Finally I decided to leave. The next day the mistral
chased the clouds away and it was beautiful. I decided not to leave Nice, and have stayed
there practically the rest of my life.
At first, in 1 9 1 8, I lived at the Hotel Beau-Rivage. Back the following winter, I went
to the Hotel de Ia Mediterranee where I spent every winter, from October to May, for
five years. Then I took an apartment at I Place Charles Felix, on the top floor overlooking
the market-place and the sea.
I worked at Nice as I would have worked anywhere.
39 Matisse speaks, I95I IJS
Windows have always interested me because they are a passageway between the exterior
and the interior. As for odalisques, I had seen them in Morocco, and so was able to put
them in my pictures back in France without playing make-believe.

Some thoughts on painting

A work of art has a different significance for each period in which it is examined. Should
we stay in our own period and consider the work of art with the brand-new sensibility of
today, or should we study the epoch in which it was made, put it back in its time and see it
with the same means and in a context of parallel creations (literature, music) of its period
in order to understand what it meant at its birth and what it brought to its contemporaries ?
Obviously some of the pleasure of its present existence and of its modern action will be
lost when it is examined from the point of view of its birth. In each period, a work of art
brings to man the pleasure that comes from communion between the work and the man
looking at it. If the spectator renounces his own quality in order to identify himself with
the spiritual quality of those who lived when the work of art was created, he impoverishes
himself and disturbs the fullness of his pleasure-a bit like the man who searches, with
retrospective jealousy, the past of the woman he loves.
This is why artists have always felt the need of dressing their themes-picked from any
and all periods-in the attributes and appearances of their own time. The Renaissance
painters did this ; Rembrandt's biblical scenes are full of anachronisms, but he preserved
the gravity and the humanity of the Bible, while James Tissot, 14 who actually went to live
in the holy places and found his inspiration from old documents, could only make anecdotal
pictures, without sweep or evocative power.
(Teriade here refers to Matisse's 1 936 statement on Fauvism.]

Travels
I am too anti-picturesque for traveling to have given me much. I went quickly through
Italy. I went to Spain. I even spent a winter in Seville. I went to Moscow at Stchoukine's
invitation around 1 9 1 0 ; it seemed to me like a huge Asian village. I went to Tahiti in
1 930.
In Tahiti I could appreciate the light, light as pure matter, and the coral earth. It was
both superb and bo.ring. There are no worries in that land, and from our tenderest years
we have our worries ; they probably help keep us alive. There the weather is beautiful at
sunrise and it does not change until night. Such immutable happiness is tiring.
Coming back from Tahiti, I went through America. The first time I saw New York, at
seven in the evening, its mass of black and gold was reflected in the water, and I was
completely ravished. Near me someone on the boat was saying 'it's a spangled dress,' and
this helped me to arrive at my own image : to me New York seemed like a gold nugget.
 Testimonial) I 9 5 I 1

In 1952 Maria Luz published a series of remarks by Matisse, recalled from a 1 95 1 interview,
the text approved by Matisse.
In this statement Matisse makes one of his clearest expositions about the nature of his space,
his objects, and his conception of drawing in relation to colour, and he is more specific about
these features than in most of his earlier writings. Just as his art at this time was more severe
distilled, and abstract, so it seems that this essay presents ideas which have been presented
before, but in a clearer, more distilled and more abstract way.

TESTIMONIAL
Ican say nothing of my feeling about space which is not already expressed in my paintings.
Nothing could be clearer than what you can see on this wall : this young woman whom I
painted thirty years ago • • this 'bouquet of flowers'
• • • this 'sleeping woman' [Figure
•

40]2 which date from these last few years, and behind you, this definitive plan of a
stained-glass window made of coloured paper cut-outs.3
From Bonheur de Vivre-I was thirty-five then-to this cut-out-1 am eighty-two-1
have not changed ; not in the way my friends mean who want to compliment me, no matter
what, on my good health, but because all this time I have looked for the same things,
which I have perhaps realized by different means.
I had no other ambition when I made the Chapel. In a very restricted space, the breadth
is five metres, I wanted to inscribe, as I had done so far in paintings of fifty centimetres or
one metre, a spiritual space ; that is, a space whose dimensions are not limited even by the
existence of the objects represented.
You must not say that I recreated space starting from the object when I 'discovered' the
latter : I never left the object. The object is not interesting in itself. It's the environment
which creates the object. Thus I have worked all my life before the same objects which
continued to give me the force of reality by engaging my spirit towards everything that
these objects had gone through for me and with me. A glass of water with a flower is
different from a glass of water and a lemon. The object is an actor : a good actor can have a
part in ten different plays ; an object can play a different role in ten different pictures. The
object is not taken alone, it evokes an ensemble of elements. You reminded me of the
table I painted isolated in a garden?4 • . Well, it was representative of a whole open-air
•

atmosphere in which I had lived.

The object must act powerfully on the imagination ; the artist's feeling expressing itself
through the object must make the object worthy of interest : it says only what it is made to
say.
On a painted surface I render space to the sense of sight : I make of it a colour limited by
a drawing. When I use paint, I have a feeling of quantity-surface of colour which is
 26 Madame Matisse 1 9 1 3 .

27 La lefon de piano 1 9 1 6.
28 L'artiste et son modele 1 9 1 6.

29 L'atelier du quai Saint-Michel 1 9 1 6.

30 L'artiste et son modele 1 9 1 9.

31 Interieur au vio. 1 1 9 1 7- 1 8 .
32 lnterieur a Nice 1 92 1 .
33 Femme au turban I 929-30.

34 Jeune fille en jaune I 929-3 I .

3 5 Jeunes filles au paravent mauresque I 92 I .
36 La danse, II 1 9 3 2-3 3 .

37 Le dos, I V 1 9 2 9 -3 0 . ..,
38 Nu rose final stage I 9 3 5 ·

Stage I , 3 May I 9 3 5 ·

Stage I I , 2 0 June I 9 3 5 ·

Stage I 8 , I 5 September I 93 5 ·
39 Grande robe bleue, fond noir 1 93 7.
40 Le reve I 94° ·

4I Na lure morte rouge au magnolia I 94 I ·

42 Oceanie -!a mer 1 947.

43 Icarus (Jazz) 1 947 .

 46 Nu bleu : Ia chevelure 1 952. ....

47 Nu bleu, III 1 952. ....

44 Grand in terieur rouge 1 948.

<IIIII 45 Chapel of the
Dominicans at Vence,
interior 1 9 5 1 .

48 L'escargot 1 9 53 .
49 Matisse at wo rk on the Crucifix for the Chapel at Vence 1 9 5 1 .
40 Testimonial, I95I 1 37

necessary to me, and I modify its contour in order to determine my feeling clearly in a
definitive way. (Let's call the first action 'to paint' and the second 'to draw'.) In my case,
to paint and to draw are one. I choose my quantity of coloured surface and I make it con­
form to my feeling of the drawing, like the sculptor moulds clay by modifying the ball
which he first made and afterwards elicits his feeling from it.
Look at this stained-glass window again : here is a dugong-an easily recognizable
fish, it is in the Larousse5-and, above, a sea animal in the form of algae. Around are
begonias.
This Chinese soldier on the mantelpiece is expressed by a colour whose shape determines
its degree of effectiveness.
This fellow (the artist turns it between his fingers)-who is turquoise and aubergine as
no soldier has ever been, would be destroyed if he were dressed in colours taken from
material reality. To invented colours whose 'drawing' determines the contours, is added
the artist's feeling to perfect the object's meaning. Everything here is necessary. This
brown spot, which represents the ground on which one imagines the figure, gives the
turquoise and aubergine an atmospheric existence which their intensity could make them
lose. a
The painter chooses his colour in the intensity and depth which suit him, as the musician
chooses the timbre and intensity of his instruments. Colour does not command drawing,
it harmonizes with it.
'Vermilion doesn't do everything . . . ' said Othon F[riesz]7 with bitterness. Neither
�ust colour simply 'clothe' the form : it must constitute it.
You ask me if my cut-outs are an end of my researches? . . . My researches don't seem
to me to be limited yet. The cut-out is what I have now found the simplest and most
direct way to express myself. One must study an object a long time to know what its
sign is. Yet in a composition the object becomes a new sign which helps to maintain the
force of the whole. In a word, each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the
picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for
which they were created, these signs have no further use.
This is why I have never tried to play chess although it was suggested to me by friends
who thought they knew me well. I told them : 'I can't play with signs that never change.
This Bishop, this King, this Queen, this Castle, mean nothing to me. But if you were to
put little figures which look like so-and-so or such a one, people whose life we know, then
I could play ; but still inventing a meaning for each Pawn in the course of each game.'
Thus the sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other
signs which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely
peculiar to it. The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it
must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change,
and which would be like writing : that would paralyse the freedom of my invention.
There is no separation between my old pictures and my cut-outs, except that with
greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials and of
the object which I used to present in the complexity of its space, I have preserved the
sign which suffices and which is necessary to make the object exist in its own form and in
the totality for which I conceived it. s
I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or
colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be under­
stood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without
bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of
expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancour and the spirit of vengeance are
useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of
everything which could make it more so.
 Interview w£th Charbonn£er) 1 9 5 1 1

Georges Charbonnier's interview with Matisse, which covers a broad range of subjects in some
depth, gives some interesting insights into Matisse's conscious and subconscious processes of
synthesis. His discussions of the dance theme and of the Chapel at V ence are especially de­
'
tailed, and in speaking of the spiritual value of his own painting he shows how far he was irom
thinking of his own art as mere decoration.

INTERVIEW WITH CHARBONNIER

GEORGES CHARBONNIER. Henri Matisse, you have made a number of mural compositions
and, in them, you have used the theme of the dance several times. How did you compose
these mural paintings?
HENRI MATISSE. I like dance very much. Dance is an extraordinary thing : life and
rhythm. It is easy for me to live with dance. When I had to compose a dance for Moscow,2
I had just gone to the Moulin de la Galette on Sunday afternoon. And I watched the
dancing. I especially watched the farandole. Often, in the middle or at the end of a session
there was a farandole. This farandole was very gay. The dancers hold each other by the
hand, they run across the room, and they wind around the people who are standing around
• it is all extremely gay. And all that to a bouncing tune. An atmosphere I knew very
• •

well. When I had a composition to do, I returned to the Moulin de Ia Galette to see the
farandole again. Back at home I composed my dance on a canvas of four metres, singing
the same tune I had heard at the Moulin de la Galette, so that the entire composition and
all the dancers are in harmony and dance to the same rhythm.3
G. c. Did the idea of using the theme of the dance exist before the mural painting, or i s
it rather the surface and form of the wall which suggested the theme to you ?
H.M. No, it's not the wall, but because I particularly like dance ; it's because I saw
more in dance : expressive movements, rhythmic movements, music that I like. This
dance was in me, I did not need to warm myself up : I proceeded with elements that were
already alive.
G.c. Did you think from the beginning that movement would be used effectively in
mural painting? It is said that the static characterizes easel painting whereas movement • • •

H.M. There are two ways of looking at things. You can conceive a dance in a static
way. Is this dance only in the mind or in your body? Do you understand it by dancing with
your limbs? The static is not an obstacle to the feeling of movement. It is a movement set
at a level which does not carry along the bodies of the spectators, but simply their
minds.4
G.c. In the United States, you did another mural composition for the American,
Barnes, using the theme of the dance.
H.M. I did a ceiling there with the same composition, but I adapted it to the circum-
4r Interview with Charbonnier, I95I 1 39
stances. For example, there were what architects call 'lunettes' in a vaulted ceili ng. And
then I made my figures larger than life-size, larger than the surfaces could contain. Thus
there is half a body coming down from above. Another is half-length. Over an area which
was not very wide, only thirteen metres, I permitted the observer to see a much larger
dance, because I used fragments. 5
G.c. Didn't any special difficulty arise from the fact that this wall painting is placed
against the light?
H.M. This wall painting is indeed against the light, but in the end I profited from the
situation. The mural is above three big doors, each five metres high, which give onto a
garden. They are glass. The spaces between the doors are about two metres wide. I made
use of the contrast created by these spaces ; I used them to create correspondences with the
forms in the ceiling. I put blacks in the ceiling much darker than the grey of the spaces
between the doors. Thus I displaced the contrast. Instead of making it between the bright
doors and the spaces in between, I put it up in the ceiling so that my very strong contrast
united the whole panel, doors and spaces.
G. c. I think you were led to use colours which were not violent because the very lively
greens of the garden upset the composition of the painting?
H.M. The main point to observe was that this decoration was placed in an enormous
room in which there were the finest Renoirs, the finest Cezannes, and remarkable Seurats.
I could not, did not claim to, nor ought to I have fought with these paintings. Being up
above I had to use a range of sort of aerial colours, and I also had to avoid some colours,
like green, it's true ; but at the same time, I made big black contrasts corresponding to the
spaces between the doors, and pink compartments, blue compartments, compartments of
various colours so as to create a music of colours which was not very singular really,
although my feeling was in harmony with the dance. 6
G.C. The dance theme-1 am returning again to this point-wasn't it suggested to you
by the form of the ceiling, more exactly by the necessity of using the whole surface of the
ceiling, which led to representing some figures standing and others crouching?
H.M. Above all I had to give the impression of vastness in a limited space. That's why
I used figures which are not always whole, so half of them is outside . . . If for example, I
filled a space three metres high, I have the figures a total height which, if fully represented,
would have been six metres. I use a fragment and I lead the spectator by the rhythm, I
lead him to follow the movement from the fragment he sees so that he has a feeling of the
totality.
The good thing is certainly-as in painting generally-to give the idea of immensity
·

within a very limited surface.

That's what I did in the Chapel at Vence. It's a convent chapel, and in spite of every­
thing, it seems to me that I created the idea of vastness which touches the soul and even the
senses. The role of painting, I think, the role of all decorative painting, is to enlarge surfaces,
to work so that one no longer feels the dimensions of the wall.
c.c. Why did you decorate the Chapel at Vence?
H.M. Because, for a very long time, I wanted to synthesize my contribution . Then this
opportunity came along._! was able, at the same time, to do architecture, stained-glass,
large mural drawings on tile and to unite all these elements, to fuse them into one perfect
unity. I even designed for the Chapel a spire more than 1 2 metres high. And this spi re-in
wrought iron-which is more than 1 2 metres, doesn't crush the Chapel but, on the contrary,
gives it height. Because I made the spire-like a pencil drawing on a sheet of paper­
in the air . . . When you see a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney at the end of the
day, and watch the smoke that rises and rises, you get the impression that it never stops at
all . That is something of the feeling I created with my spire. 7
The same for the interior, for the altar : an officiant stands in front of the public.
 41 Interview with Charbonnier, I95I

It was thus necessary to decorate the altar in a light manner so that the officiant could see
his flock and the faithful could see the officiant. There is thus, in the elements, a lightness
which meets this need. This lightness arouses feelings of release, of obstacles cleared, so
that my chapel is not 'Brothers, we must die.' It is rather 'Brothers, we must live 1'8
G.C. Do you think-I know that I am putting this clumsily-that there is such a thing
as religious art?
H.M. All art worthy of the name is religious. Be it a creation of lines, or colours : if it
is not religious, it doesn't exist. If it is not religious, it is only a matter of documentary
art, anecdotal art . . which is no longer art. Which has nothing to do with art. Which
•

comes at a certain period in civilization to explain and demonstrate to people without any
artistic upbringing the things that they could have noticed anyway without there being any
need to tell them. The public is spiritually lazy. One must put a story-picture in front of
their eyes which remains in their minds and even leads them a little farther But that's
• • •

art which we no longer need. That art is out-dated.

G.c. When you do a chapel, when you decorate it, you know that people are going to
come in who will see the paintings, the decorations, who will find themselves in a certain
environment and who will adopt a certain attitude. What do you seek to communicate to
them? Do you feel a duty towards them? This duty, do you think you have it equally
when you show only an easel painting stripped of religious ends, a mural painting which
has only a decorative end?
H.M. I want the chapel visitors to experience a lightening of the spirit. So that, even
without being believers, they sense a milieu of spiritual elevation, where thought is
clarified, where feeling itself is lightened. The benefit of the visit will come into being
easily without any need for it to be h ammered home.
G.c. This benefit, don't you dream of providing it equally for someone looking at a
canvas?
H.M. That is obvious. A picture which wouldn't give rise to that feeling wouldn't
exist. A picture by Rembrandt, Fra Angelico, a picture by a good artist always inspires this
feeling of escape and spiritual elevation. The fact that the picture is an easel painting won't
let it escape this necessity. An easel painting, what is an 'easel painting' ? It's a painting
you hold in your hand, if you like. But this painting must nevertheless take the spectator's
spirit much farther than a set-piece. I don't conceive of a painting without this quality.
Otherwise, it's a reproduction. Today, thanks to photography, one can make such lovely
reproductions, even in colour, that the duty of the artist, the painter, is to provide more ;
what photography cannot give.
G. C. The painting of Rembrandt whom you have just mentioned, for example doesn't
always communicate serenity. El Greco often communicates anxiety. Whereas, you have
said, you have written-the passage has been quoted a hundred times-' I don't wish to
disturb'.
H.M. Yes indeed. I believe my role is to provide calm. Because I myself have need of
peace.
Rembrandt's painting is obviously painting in depth. It is the painting of the North, of
Holland, Flanders, which doesn't have the same atmosphere as ours in France or on the
Mediterranean . . . the Mediterranean is quite close to Paris, after all.
El Greco is a tormented soul who exteriorizes his torment and puts it on canvas. This
torment is certainly communicated to the spectator. But one could conceive that had El
Greco dominated his torment and anxiety, he would have expressed it as Beethoven did
in his last symphony. 9
G. c. Let's change the subject. You are a painter, but you are also a sculptor and,
personally, there's a question I am always asking myself. Are the means of expression
equivalent? Do certain things express themselves by choice in music, others in painting?
41 Interview with Charbonnier, I95I
Can you say certain things in painting and others in sculpture? And conversely, in painting
and sculpture, can you say the same thing? Suppose one morning, a man begins to paint
and not to sculpt--or vice-versa-it is probable that this choice cannot be put down to
chance.
H.M. I myself have done sculpture as the complement of my studies. I did sculpture
when I was tired of painting. For a change of medium. But I sculpted as a painter. I did
not sculpt like a sculptor. Sculpture does not say what painting says. Painting does not
say what music says. They are parallel ways, but you can't confuse them.lO
G.C. But is their course the same?
H.M. The horizon line is vast. It is made of innumerable points. As you go on walking,
you go towards the horizon, but you go towards quite different points. In any case, art is
the expression of man's soul. He uses what means he can : music, sculpture, painting . • .

It's a personal affair, an affair of natural dispositions and talents.

G. c. Let us restrict ourselves to the field of forms and colours. Can you oppose paint­
ing and drawing? Alain has said that painting expresses the moment and drawing the
instant does that seem valid to you ?ll
• . .

H .M. Personally, I think painting and drawing say the same thing. A drawing is a
painting made with reduced means. On a white surface, a sheet of paper, with pen and
ink, you can, by creating certain contrasts, create volumes ; by changing the quality of the
paper you can give supple surfaces, bright surfaces, hard surfaces, without, however,
using either shading or highlights . . . For me, drawing is a painting made with reduced
means, which can be totally absorbing, which can very well release the feelings of the artist
just as much as the painter. But painting is obviously a thing which has more to it,
which acts more strongly on the spirit.
G.c. Like all artists of real importance, you have thus done painting, drawing, sculp­
ture, but you have also made illustrations. What sort of problem does illustration present?
What is involved in illustrating a text?
H.M. Illustrating a text is not completing a text. If a writer needs an artist to explain
what he has said it's because the writer is inadequate. I have found writers to whom there
was nothing to add : they had said everything.
The illustration of a book can also be an embellishment, an enrichment of the book by
arabesques, in conformity with the writer's point of view. You can also produce illustra­
tions by decorative means : fine paper, and so on. Illustration has its usefulness, but it
doesn't add much to the essential literature. Writers have no need of painters to explain
what they want to say. They should have enough resources of their own to express them­
selves.
G.c. One last question, positively the last : how is it that in the work of a fairly large
number of contemporary painters, the human face is becoming anonymous ?
H.M. Are you saying that for my benefit? Because I don't put i n eyes sometimes, o r a
mouth for my figures. But that's because the face is anonymous. Because the expression is
carriedDy the whole picture. Arms, legs, all the lines act like parts of an orchestra, a
register, movements, different pitches. If you put in eyes, nose, mouth, it doesn't serve
for much ; on the contrary) doing so paralyses the imagination of the spectator and obliges
him to see a specific person, a certain resemblance, and so on. whereas if you paint lines,
values, forces, the spectator's soul becomes involved in the maze of these multiple elements
• •and so, his imagination is freed from all limits.
.
 Interview with Verdet) 1 9 5 2 1

In April and May I 9 5 2, Andre Verdet interviewed Matisse at Cimiez. This extended inter­
view, ranging over many subjects, is one of the most important interviews with Matisse.
Verdet's questions are well chosen, and Matisse's answers clarify and extend many of his pre­
vious ideas with great eloquence, such as the personal motivation behind his desire for balance
and equilibrium, his choice of subject matter, and the process of creation.
Matisse also has a good deal to say about drawing, especially the arabesque, which he de­
clares to be the most synthetic means of linear expression, and speaking of colour, he emphasizes
its relative nature, noting that the relationship between painting and drawing is that of the
modification of colour areas through drawing. As in the statement to Maria Luz, he notes that
the sensation of space is separate from the size of the actual area, be it a small canvas or the
Chapel at Vence, that his works are projections of his sensations enlarged in a spiritual space.
Matisse also elaborates upon the projection of imagery which he believes to be a synthesis of
the self in relation to nature and states that his drawings and paintings are parts of himself:
'Together they constitute Henri Matisse'.
Matisse's feelings about the relationship between the abstractness of art and the importance
of inspiration from nature are quite fully stated here. Current developments in America and
Europe perplexed and disturbed him. This interview prov:ides valuable insight into Matisse's
understanding of abstraction ; he himself at the time of this interview had created several
works which might be called non-objective, such as L' escargot (Figure 48) . But his description
of how he arrived at the final metaphor in such works shows the great importance to" him of
the experience of the actual object in the formulation of the image ; the . final image is an

equivalence of the object, however abstract or metaphorical. Whereas in the earlier paintings
he abstracted directly from what he saw, in the cut-outs he abstracted more from what he knefJ) :
the same process of recollection that he described in relation to his Oceania tapestry.
Matisse's antipathy to non-figurative art is not so much an objection to its theoretical basis
(equivalence through non-figurative form) but a dislike of what he obviously felt to be a loss
of contact with nature. This of course is very closely related to his concern about young painters,
as expressed in the. letter to Henry Clifford and in the preface to the I 9 5 I Tokyo Exhibition
catalogue.

INTERVIEW WITH VERDET

Why are you in love with the arabesque?

Because it's the most synthetic way to exp ress oneself in all one's aspects. You find it in the
general outline of certain cave drawings. It is the impassioned impulse which swells
these drawings.2
42 Interview with Verdet, I952 1 43
How do you find the arabesque?
Look at these blue women, 3 this parakeet, these fruits and leaves. These are paper cut­
outs and this is the arabesque. The arabesque is musically organized. It h as its own
timbre.

Can the arabesque have an important function as a mural decoration?

It has a real function. There again it translates the totality of things with a sign. It makes
all the phrases into a single phrase. And there again, it is the proportion of things which is
the chief expression.

Does easel painting still have a future?

I think that one day easel painting will no longer exist because of changing customs.
There will be mural painting.
Colours win you over more and more. A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has
an effect on your blood-pressure. A certain colour tones you up . It's the concentration of
timbres. A new era is opening.

Shouldn't a painting, based on the arabesque, be placed on the wall, without a frame?
The arabesque is effective only when contained by the four sides of the picture. With
this support, it has strength. When the four sides are part of the music, the work can be
placed on the wall without a frame.

Are there many elements of oriental art in the art of the Ioth, IIth, and I2th centuries, that is,
Romanesque art?
Yes, there were many. These elements came through Constantinople and Venice as did
all imports from the East at the time. These elements were a good contribution. Such
contributions, in general, are always good. The bad is very quickly rej ected. The con­
tributions transform, rejuvenate and enrich. They open up new avenues and also form
links.

Do you agree with Cezanne that there is a green blue and a yellow blue?
I would simply say that colour exists only through relationships, and that the painting
calls forth the emotional relationship of colour to drawing. 4

Is the choice of the painted object determined in the first place by a soc£ological necess£ty or by
a subconscious necessity of the artist?
First of all by a subconscious necessity. But then the sociological necessity intervenes and
becomes operative.

A critic has claimed that the work of art is always made in advance. Do you think so?
A work of art is never made in advance, contrary to the ideas of Puvis de Chavannes, \vho
claimed that one could not ever visualize the picture one wanted to paint too completely
before starting. There is no separation between the thought and the creative act. They
are completely one and the same.

Does the necessity to create the work of art begin to germinate when the individual realizes
that something £s missing?
It begins when the individual realizes his boredom or his solitude and has need of action
to recover his equilibrium.
 42 Interview with Verdet, I952

Does the work reflect the artist?

The work is the emanation, the projection of self. My drawings and my canvases are
pieces of myself. Their totality constitutes Henri Matisse . The work represents, expresses,
perpetuates. I could also say that my drawings and my canvases are my real children.
\Vhen the artist dies he is cut in two. There are lives of artists which are short. Raphael,
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, for example. But these people expressed themselves com­
pletely. They died represented. And they haven't finished living.s
An artist must therefore force himself to express himself totally from the beginning.
Thus, he will not grow old : if he is sincere, human and constructive, he will always find
an echo in following generations.

Do you have faith, far the future, in the collective wark of art?
Yes, I believe in the collective work of art for certain given subjects, certain functions, and
on the condition of a discipline. Let someone take the initiative. Others will follow,
bringing their personal contribution, if they respect their guiding spirit. They will re­
main freely obedient to a direction while maintaining their own emotive powers.

Do the paper cut-outs represent your need far surprise?

No. It's rather the paper material which remains to be disciplined, to be given life, to be
augmented. For me, it's a need for knowledge. Scissors can acquire more feeling for line
than pencil or charcoal.
Observe this big composition : foliage, fruit, scissors ; a garden. The white intermediary
is determined by the arabesque of the cut-out coloured paper which gives this white­
atmosphere a rare and impalpable quality. This quality is that of contrast. Each particular
group of colours has a particular atmosphere. It is what I "ill call the expressive atmosphere. 6

With the completion of the Chapel of Vence, it was said you were reconciled wt"th Catholicism?
Much has been said and written. A lot of stories were circulated, in Europe and in America.
The work of art was nothing more than a pretext for gossip. 7
First of all , sacred art demands a good moral hygiene. My only religion is the love of the
work to be created, the love of creation, and great sincerity. I did the Chapel with the sole
intention of express ing myself profoundly. It gave me the opportunity to express myself in
a totality of form and colour. The work was a learning process for me. I set a game of
equivalences in play there. I created an equilibrium between rough and precious materials.
These things were reconciled and harmonized by the law of contrasts. Multiplication of
planes became unity of plane.
And it is intentional that I repeat yet again that it's not by copying the object that I will
be able to make it come alive in the soul of the spectator, as I feel it, but rather by the
single virtue of synthetic equivalence.
Let's return to Vence : red cannot be introduced into the Chapel . . . However, this red
exists and it exists by virtue of the contrast of the colours ·which are there. It exists by
reaction in the mind of the observer.

I k1ww you attach the greatest value to sincer£ty in a wark of art . . •

Art is not a trick of invention. Art must al'\vays be measured to the actual emotion of the
man. \Vithout sincerity there is no authentic work. 'Vhen I am questioned and I answer, I
always see myself doing the thing or having done it. I can't contradict myself. I am
sincere and this sincerity is my equilibrium.
I also think of Courbet : 'A real masterpiece is something one must be able to begin
again to prove one is not guided by whim or by chance. ' That is part of sincerity. Like
Rude said : 'That which goes beyond my compass is my personality.'
42 Interview with Verdet, I952 1 45

Abroad, notably in Scandinavia, people are very much amazed by the mediocrity of the
teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and that such a backward institution can still exist in
the 2oth century • • •

Reactions are needed. Summer needs the winter. At the Ecole des Beaux-Arts one learns
what not to do. It's an example of what to avoid. That's the way it is. The Ecole des
Beaux-Arts is an excuse for the Prix-de-Rome. It will die all alone.
Attendance at the Ecole should be replaced by a long free stay at the zoological gardens.
There, by continual observation, students would learn the secrets of embryonic life, of
quiverings. Little by little, they would acquire this fluid that real artists eventually possess.8
You see : break with habit and the conformist routine. One day Toulouse-Lautrec
cried, 'At last I don't know how to draw.' That meant he had found his true line, his
true drawing, his own draughtsman's language. That also meant that he had left the
means used to learn to draw.
One must know how to maintain childhood's freshness upon contact with objects, to
preserve its naivety. One must be a child all one's life even while a man, take one's
strength from the existence of objects-and not have imagination cut off by the existence
of objects.9

Did your stay in Tahiti have a great influence on your work?

The stay in Tahiti was very profitable. I very much wanted to experience light on the
other side of the Equator, to have contact with its trees and to penetrate what is there.
Each light offers its own harmony. It's a different atmosphere. The light of the Pacific, of
the Islands, is a deep golden goblet into which you look.
I remember that first of all, on my arrival, it was disappointing. And then, little by
little, it was beautiful, beautiful, it is beautiful ! The leaves of the high coconut
• • •

palms, blown back by the t�ade winds, made a silky sound. This sound of the leaves
could be heard along with the orchestral roar of the sea waves, waves which broke over
the reefs surrounding the island.
I used to bathe in the lagoon. I swam around the brilliant corals emphasized by the
sharp black accents of holothurians.lO I would plunge my head into the water, transparent
above the absinth bottom of the lagoon, my eyes wide open . . . and then suddenly I
would lift my head above the water and gaze at the luminous whole. The contrasts • • •

Tahiti • . the Islands

• But the tranquil desert island doesn't exist. Our European
• • •

worries accompany us there. Indeed there were no cares on this island. The Europeans
were bored. They were comfortably waiting to retire in a stuffy torpor and doing nothing
to get out of the torpor, nothing to interest themselves or to defeat their boredom ; they
did not even think any more. Above them and all around them, there was this wonderful
light of the first day, all this splendour ; but they didn't see how good it was any more.
They had closed the factories and the natives wallowed in animal pleasures. A beautiful
country, asleep in the bright heat of the sun.
No, the tranquil desert island, the solitary paradise doesn't exist. One would be quickly
bored there because one would have no problems. The memory even of Mozart would
seem strange to you.

I have often observed that even your canvases go beyond the limits of what is called easel
painting and that they contain the space of mural painting.
The size of a canvas is of little importance. What I always want is to give the feeling of
space, as much in the smallest canvas as in the Chapel at Vence. Everything we see passes
before the retina, is inscribed in a small chamber, then is amplified by imagination. One
must find the tone of the correct quantity and quality to make an impression on the eye,
the sense of smell, and the mind. To make someone fully enjoy a jasmine plant for example.
 42 Interview with Verdet, I952
To find the quantity and quality of colours. Look at this composition : a garden. Well now,
this garden is the recollection of my sensations experienced in nature which I project
forward, which I expand in space.

Ijust interrupted you when you were going to talk about linear decisions • • •

Yes, the decision of line comes from the artist's profound conviction. That paper cut-out,
the kind of volute acanthus that you can see on the wall up there, is a stylized snail.
First of all I drew the snail from nature, holding it between two fingers ; drew and redrew.
I became aware of an unfolding, I formed in my mind a purified sign for a shell. Then I
took the scissors. It was important that 'the end should always be contained in the begin­
ning' . Further, I had to establish the connection between the object observed and its
observer.
I had placed that snail in the big composition of the Jardin. But the musical movement
of the whole combination was broken. So I removed the snail ; I have put it on one side to
wait for a different purpose.
I repeat once more : one must be sincere ; the work of art only exists fully when it is
charged with human emotion and is rendered with complete sincerity, and not by means of
applying some pre-arranged programme. This is the way we can look at the pagan works
of artists before the early Christian primitives without being disturbed. On the other
hand we can find ourselves before certain works of the Renaissance made in rich, sumptu­
ous, alluring materials, which make us disturbed to see that a feeling which has the
characteristics of Christianity has so much that is ostentation and fabrication about it.
Yes, that comes from the bottom of my soul : fabricated for the rich. The artist sinks to
the level of his patron. In pagan art, the artist is frank with himself, carnal, natural ; his
emotion is sincere. There is no ambiguity. In the equivocal situation of the Renaissance,
too often the patron's satisfaction guides the artist. The artist's spirit is thus limited.ll

I believe you knew Vollard well?

He had come from Reunion.12 I don't know how he managed to approach Renoir. He
nosed about everywhere. From time to time, in the evening, he used to visit him. Often, in
order to work, Renoir was obliged to throw him out. One day he told him : 'You should do
something for Cezanne ; believe me, he's a great artist.'
Cezanne's exhibition took place. Almost everyone was against it. No one could believe
it. They thought it dreadful. The bourgeois who knQw they understand nothing of art­
they not only passed up Cezanne but also Renoir, Bonnard and many others ; the bourgeois
claimed that Cezanne's painting did not conform to the Greek canon of beauty. Only
one critic, Geoffroy [sic] wrote a good favourable article.l3
But this Vollard was a cunning fellow, a gambler, and he had a flair for business. He
• • .

succeeded in setting up a gallery on rue Laffitte. Foniin said of him then that he was the
'tripe-seller' of the rue Laffitte.
Vollard had acquired a considerable number of Cezannes. They were everywhere ; the
walls were covered with them ; there were even piles of them on the floor, one right next to
another, leaning up against the wall. He had managed to buy them at a low price. Cezanne,
moreover, had judged him : 'Vollard is a "slave-trader". '
To show you what kind o f fellow h e was, here i s a little story : Valtat was in the Midi and
his works were beginning to be noticed by a few collectors.14 Vollard, who was advised by
Renoir, stopped at Antheor at Valtat's house and after having counted some canvases in
a pile against the wall, said to Valtat without turning them around : 'That makes so much
• ' Of course Valtat accepted.
• .

The exhibitions of young artists at the gallery on the rue Laffitte were no more than a
pretext to bring in well-known buyers. On the day of a vernissage, without respect for the
42 Interview with Verdet, I952 1 47
artist's work, etchings by Cezanne, Renoir and others were soon brought out. Vollard had
no consideration for the canvases of young artists.
To break even at the end of each month, he set out to visit all his clients at home with
sumptuous books under his arms which he had published and which he sold at a discount.
He ate like a pig, digested slowly, grew sullen and seemed to fall asleep. Around four
o'clock, upsy daisy ! the call of the evening papers woke him up and off he dashed, Take
the Dreyfus affair, now ! Vollard was violently anti-Dreyfus. He said all those fellows,
Dreyfus and the Dreyfusards should be stuck away on an uninhabited island until they
chewed each other up.
Poor Gauguin ! Vollard brought him to the end of his tether . . . Gauguin used to send
him canvases and Vollard sent him small consignments of colours, little tubes of colours.
Yes, Vollard acted shamefully toward Gauguin.
More than ten years ago, I met Vollard for the last time at Vittel. I reminded him of one
of the old anecdotes he liked to bring out about female logic. Mterwards he said : 'Monsieur
Matisse is a very dangerous man because he has an excellent memory.'

Your book Jazz caused a considerable stir. Many consider ·lt one of the turning-po£nts in your
constant evolution. What gave you the idea for this book, which was so well done?
By drawing with scissors on sheets of paper coloured in advance, one movement linking
line with colour, contour with surface. It simply occurred to me to unite them and Teriade
made a book out of it. Yes, Jazz did cause a considerable stir and I felt that I should
continue, because until then the work was made useless by a lack of co-ordination between
the different elements functioning as global sensations. Sometimes a difficulty arose :
lines, volumes, colours and when I united them everything melted, one thing destroying
another. I had to start over again, to look to music and dance, to find equilibrium and
avoid the conventional. A new departure, new exercises, discoveries. I can tell you in
confidence that it's from. the book Jazz, from my paper cut-outs, that later my stained­
glass windows were born.
It's not enough to place colours, however beautiful, one beside the other ; colours must
also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony. Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Nearly two years ago, the critic Charles Estienne published an anthology called Is Abstract
Art Academic?15 Do you think that today's abstract art could lead to a dead-end?
First of all, I will say that there is no one abstract art. All art is abstract in itself when it is
the fundamental expression stripped of all anecdote. But let's not play on words . . . Non­
figurative art, then . . •

All the same, one can say that today if there is no longer any need for painting to give
explanations in its physical make-up, yet the artist who is expressing the object by a
synthesis, while seeming to depart from it, must nonetheless be able to explain this object
himself to himself. He must necessarily end by forgetting it but, I repeat, deep within
himself he must have a real memory of the object and of the reactions it produces in his
mind. One starts off with an object. Sensation follows. One doesn't start from a void.
Nothing is gratuitous. As for the so-called abstract painters of today, it seems to me that
too many of them depart from a void. They are gratuitous, they have no power, no inspira­
tion, no feeling, they defend a non-existent point of view : they imitate abstraction.
One doesn't find any expression in what is supposed to be the relationship of their
colours. If they can't create relationships they can use all the colours in vain.
Rapport is the affinity between things, the common language ; rapport is love, yes love.
Without rapport, without this love, there is no longer any criterion of observation and
thus there is no longer any work of art.
 43

Looking at Life with the Eyes of a Child,

1 9531

In this essay Matisse notes that creation begins with vision, which is itself a creative operation.
Within Matisse's canon it is essential for the artist to look at everything as if he were seeing it
for the first time, as though he were a child ; for without this faculty it is impossible to express
oneself in an original, personal way.
Matisse feels that this equivalence and transposition of objects from the chaos of actual
visual reality to the order and structure of a picture is achieved by infusing the picture with the
same power and beauty that is found in nature. He concludes once again with the observation
that the act of creation is the equivalent of an act of metaphysical love, and that love is at the
root of all creation.

LOOKING AT LIFE WITH THE EYES OF A CHILD

Creation is the artist's true function ; where there is no creation there is no art. But it
would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genuine
creator is not just a gifted being, but a man who has succeeded in arranging, for their
appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work of art is the outcome.
Thus, for the artist creation begins with vision. To see is itself a creative operation,
requiring an effort. Everything that we see in our daily life is more or less distorted by
acquired habits, and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters
and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the
eye what the prejudices are to the mind.
The effort needed to see things without distortion takes something very like courage ;
and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it
for the first time : he has to look at life as he did when he was a child and, if he loses that
faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
To take an example. Nothing, I think, is more difficult for a true painter than to paint
a rose because, before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
I have often asked visitors who came to see me at Vence whether they had noticed the
thistles by the side of the road. Nobody had seen them ; they would all have recognized
the leaf of an acanthus on a Corinthian capital, but the memory of the capital prevented
them from seeing the thistle in nature. The first step towards creation is to see everything -
� as it really is, and that demands a constant effort. To create is to express what we have .._
� within ourselves. Every creative effort comes from within. We have also to nourish our
feeling, and we can do so only with materials derived from the world about us. This is the
process whereby the artist incorporates and gradually assimilates the external world within
43 Looking at Life with the Eyes of a Child, I953 1 49
himself, until the object of his drawing has become like a part of his being, until he has i t
within him and can project i t onto the canvas as his own creation.
When I paint a portrait, I come back again and again to my sketch, and every time it is
a new portrait that I am painting : not one that I am improving, but a quite different one
that I am beginning over again ; and every time I extract from the same person a different
being.
In order to make my study more complete I have often had recourse to photographs of
the same person at different ages ; the final portrait may show that person· younger or under
a different aspect from that which he or she represents at the time of sitting, and the reason
is that that is the aspect which seemed to me the truest, the one which revealed most of the
sitter's real personality.
Thus a work of art is the climax of long work of preparation. The artist takes from his
surroundings everything that can nourish his internal vision, either directly, when the
object he is drawing is to appear in his composition, or by analogy. In this way he puts
himself into a position where he can create. He enriches himself internally with all the
forms he has mastered and which he will one day set to a new rhythm.
It is in the expression of this rhythm that the artist's work becomes really creative. To
achieve it, he will have to sift rather than accumulate details, selecting for example, from
all possible combinations, the line that expresses most and gives life to the drawing ; he
will have to seek the equivalent terms by which the facts of nature are transposed into art.
In my Still Life with Magnolia [Figure 41] I painted a green marble table red ; in
another place I had to use black to suggest the reflection of the sun on the sea ; 2
all these transpositions were not in the least matters of chance or whim, but were the result
of a series of investigations, following which these colours seemed to me to be necessary,
because of their relation to the rest of the composition, in order to give the impression I
wanted. Colours and lines are forces, and the secret of creation lies in the play and balance of
those forces.
In the Chapel at Vence, which is the outcome of earlier researches of mine, I have
tried to achieve that balance of forces ; the blues, greens and yellows of the windows
compose a light within the chapel, which is not strictly any of the colours used, but is the
living product of their mutual blending ; this light made up of colours is intended to play
upon the white and black-stencilled surface of the wall facing the windows, on which the
lines are purposely set wide apart. The contrast allows me to give the light its maximum
vitalizing value, to make it the essential element, colouring, warming, and animating the
whole structure, to which it is desired to give an impression of boundless space despite its
small dimensions. Throughout the chapel every line and every detail contributes to that
.
unpresston.
.

That is the sense, so it seems to me, in which art may be said to imitate nature, namely,
by the life that the creative worker infuses into the work of art. The work will then appear as
fertile and as possessed of the same power to thrill , the same resplendent beauty as ·we
find in works of nature.
Great love is needed to achieve this effect, a love capable of inspiring and sustaining
that patient striving tuwards truth, that glowing warmth and that analytic profundity
that accompany the birth of any work of art. But is not love the origin of all creation?
 44

Portrilits) 1 9 5 41

For the folio Portraits, which consists of some ninety-three plates, Matisse wrote an intro­
duction about portraiture, apparently at the request of Fernand Mourlot, 2 in which he makes
general comments on portraiture and describes his own process of creating portraits.
In portraiture, as in the rest of his paintings, Matisse notes his fidelity to original sensation
and avoidance of schematization. He notes that when painting a portrait a painter need not
consciously inflect the work with his own style since it will bear his personal stamp anyway,
once again stating his avoidance of both formula and exactitude in favour of personal ex­
pression.
He remarks that the process of producing a portrait requires a kind of rapport with the model
in which the image is revealed gradually in progressive sittin� until he finally arrives at an
image which has a certain resonance to the model. This description of his working method for
doing portraits applies, at least ideally, to the method of all of his painting. Matisse shrewdly
observes that when a surgeon asked him how he did his rapid drawings he answered that they
were like revelations which followed analysis, and that the surgeon replied that Matisse's
method was �ery much like the method of medical diagnosis ; thus underlining the value of
informed intuition.
Matisse's discussion of portraiture and its application to his method of painting from life is
curiously reminiscent of the statement in 'Notes of a Painter' , that like Chardin, Cezanne,
Rodin and Leonardo, Matisse felt that above all : ' I want to secure a likeness'.

PORTRAITS

The study of the portrait seems forgotten today. Yet it is an inexhaustible source of interest
to anyone who has the gift or simply the curiosity.
One might think that the photographic portrait is adequate. For anthropometry,
yes, but for an artist who seeks the true character of a face, it is otherwise : recording the
model's features reveals feelings often unknown even to the very diviner who has brought
them to light. 3 If need be, the analysis of a physiognomist would be almost indispensable
to attempt an explanation of them in comprehensive terms, for they synthesize and contain
many things that the painter himself does not at first suspect.
True portraits, that is to say those in which the features as well as the feelings seem fo
come from the model, are rather rare. When I was young, I often went to the Musee
Lecuyer at Saint-Quentin. There were a hundred or so pastel drawings by Quentin­
Latour, done before starting his large formal portraits. I was touched by those agreeable
faces, and then realized that each one of them was quite personal. I was surprised, as I
left the Museum, by the variety of individual smiles on each countenance ; though natural
and charming on the whole, they had made such an impression on me that my own face
44 Portraits, I954
was aching as if I had been smiling for hours. In the seventeenth centu ry, Rembrandt,
both with his brush and with his etching needle, made true portraits. My master Gustave
Moreau said that before Rembrandt only grimaces had been painted, and Rembrandt
himself declared that all of his work was nothing but portraits. I remembered this saying,
as it appeared to me true and profound.
The human face has always greatly interested me. I have indeed a rather remarkable
memory for faces, even for those that I have seen only once. In looking at them I do not
perform any psychological interpretation, but I am struck by their individual and pro­
found expression. I don't need to put into words the interest which they arouse in me ;
they probably retain my attention through their expressive individuality and through an
interest that is entirely of a plastic nature.
The driving force which leads me throughout the execution of a portrait depends on
the initial shock of contemplating a face.
I have studied the representation of the face a good deal through pure drawing and so as
not to give the result of my efforts the characteristics of my own personal style-as a
portrait by Raphael is before everything a Raphael-! endeavoured around 1 900, to copy
the face literally from photographs, which kept me within the limits of the visible features of
a model. Since then I have sometimes taken up this way of working again. While following
the impression produced on me by a face, I have tried not to stray from the anatomical
structure.
I ended up discovering that the likeness of a portrait comes from the contrast which
exists between the face of the model and other faces, in a word form its particular asym­
metry. Each figure has its own rhythm and it is this rhythm which creates the likeness.
In the West the most characteristic portraits are found in Germany : Holbein, Durer, and
Lucas Cranach. They play with asymmetry, the dissimilarities of faces, as opposed to the
Southerners who usually tend to consolidate everything into a regular type, a symmetrical
structure.
I believe, however, that the essential expression of a work depends almost entirely on the
projection of the feeling .of the artist in relation to his model rather than the organic ac­
curacy of the model.
The revelation of the interest to be had in the study of portraits came to me when I was
thinking of my mother. In a post office in Picardy, I was waiting for a telephone call. To
pass the time I picked up a telegraph form lying on a table, and used the pen to draw on it
a woman's head. I drew without thinking of what I was doing, my pen going by itself, and
I was surprised to recognize my mother's face with all its subtleties. My mother had a
face with generous features, the highly distinctive traits of French Flanders.
I was still a pupil occupied with 'traditional' drawing, anxious to believe in the rules of
the School, remnants of the teaching of the masters who came before us : in a word, the
dead part of tradition, in which all that was not actually observed in nature, all that derived
from feeling or memory was scorned and condemned as bogus. I was struck by the
revelations of my pen, and I saw that the mind which is composing should keep a sort of
virginity for certain chosen elements, and reject what is offered by reasoning.
Before the revelatioQ _at the post office, I used to begin my study by a kind of schematic
indication, coolly conscious, showing the sources of the interest which the model moved me
to interpret. But after this experience, the preliminary tracing I have just mentioned was
modified right from the very beginning. Having cleaned and emptied my mind of all
preconceived ideas, I traced this preliminary outline with a hand completely given over
to my unconscious sensations which sprang from the model. I was careful not to intro­
duce into this representation any conscious observation, or any correction of physical
error.
The almost unconscious transcription of the meaning of the model is the initial act of
 44 Portraits, I954

every work of art, particularly of a portrait. Following this, reason takes charge, holds
things in check and makes it possible to have new ideas using the initial drawing as a
springboard.
The conclusion of all this is : the art of portraiture is one of the most remarkable. It
demands especial gifts of the artist, and the possibility of an almost total identification of
the painter with his model. The painter should come to his model with no preconceived
ideas. Everything should come to him in the same way that in a landscape all the scents
of the countryside come to him : the smell of the earth, the flowers linked with the play of
clouds, the movement of trees, and the different sounds of the countryside.
I am able to speak only of my experiences ; I find myself before a person who interests
me and, pencil or charcoal in my hand, I set down his appearance on the paper, more or
less freely. This, in the course of a banal conversation during which I speak myself or
listen without any spirit of opposition, permits me to give free rein to my faculties of
observation. At that moment, it wouldn't do to ask a specific question, even a banal one
such as 'What time is it?' because my reverie, my meditation upon the model, would be
broken, and the result of my effort would be seriously compromised.
Mter half-an-hour or an hour I am surprised to see a more or less precise image, which
resembles the person with whom I am in contact, gradually appear on my paper.
This image is revealed to me as though each stroke of charcoal erased from the glass
some of the mist which until then had prevented me from seeing it.
This generally is the meagre result of a first sitting. It seems wise to me then to let one
or two days intervene between this and the second sitting.
During this interval there occurs a kind of unconscious mental fermentation process.
And thanks to this fermentation, in conformity with the impressions I received from my
subject during the first sitting, I mentally reorganize my drawing with more certainty
than there was in the result of the first contact.
When I look at my first attempt again it appears weak, uncompromising ; but beyond
the haze of this uncertain image I can sense a structure of solid lines. This structure
releases my imagination which works, at the next sitting, in accordance with the inspira­
tion which comes both from the structure and directly from the .model. The model is no
more to me than a particular theme from which the forces of lines or values grow out which
widen my limited horizon.
This second sitting is analogous to having a fresh encounter with a sympathetic person.
The model ought to be relaxed, and feel more confident with his observer ; the latter is con­
cealed behind a conversation which is not concerned with particularly interesting things,
but on the contrary, runs on unimportant details. It seems to set up a current between the
two, independent of the increasingly commonplace words passing between them.
There generally appears, in accordance with the impressions of this sitting, a linear
construction. The conclusions made during the first confrontation fade to reveal the most
important features, the living substance of the work.
The sittings continue in the same spirit, probably without these two people becoming
substantially more informed about each other than on the first day. Something has come
into being, however, an interaction of feeling which makes each sense the warmth of the
other's heart ; the outcome of this can be the painted portrait, or the possibility of expres­
sing in a series of quick drawings that which has come to me from the model.
I have gained a deep knowledge of my subject. Mter prolonged work in charcoal, made
up of studies which more or less interrelate·, flashes of insight arise, which while appearing·
more or less rough, are the expression of the intimate exchange between the artist and his
model. Drawings containing all the subtle observations made during the work arise from
a fermentation within, like bubbles in a pond.

These drawings spring forth in one piece constituted of elements without apparent
44 Portraits, I954 1 53

co-ordination to the analysis which has preceded them ; the multiplicity of sensati ns
expressed in each o f them seems impossible to execute, so great is the sp ee d with which
they all combine. I am absolutely convinced that they represent the goal of my curiosity.
During a friendly visit, the surgeon L[eriche]4 said to me, 'I s houl d like to know how you
do your quick drawings'. I answered that they were like the revelations esultin g from
an analysis but made without first knowing what subject I was dealing with : a kin of
meditation.s He said to me : 'That's exactly how I mak e my diagnoses. If someone asks
why I say such r:nd such, I answer : "I have no idea, but I'm sure of it, and I mean it".'
I
 Notes

In the notes, references to certain basic works have been made throughout in the following
shortened forms :

Barr = Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public (New York, 1 95 1).
Diehl = Gaston Diehl, Henri Matisse (Paris, 1954).
Escholier, 1937 = Raymond Escholier, Henri Matisse (Paris, 1 937).
Escholier, 1956 = Raymond Escholier, Matisse, ce vivant (Paris, 1956).
Schneider = Pierre Schneider, Henri Matisse exposition du centenaire (Paris, 1970).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

I This brief account of Matisse's life is meant to help it seemed to me like a huge Asian village' (Text 39,
the reader put the documents and discussions that below.) See also Alison Hilton, 'Matisse in Moscow',
follow into context. For a detailed account of Matisse's Art Journal, XXIX, 2, Winter 1 969/70, pp. 166--73.
life and work the reader is referred to the basic works 6 Clara T. MacChesney, 'A Talk with Matisse,
above. Leader of Post-Impressionists', New York Times
2 See Barr, pp. 44-5, for a translation of Roger Magazine, 9 March 1 9 1 3.
Marx's essay. 7 Escholier, 1956, p. 1 26.
3 Barr, p. 92. 8 Barr, p. 256. The letter is dated I September 1940.
4 See Barr, p. 1 16, n. 2. 9 Barr, p. 256.
5 Later Matisse was to recall, 'I went to Moscow . • •

INTRODUCTION

1 Matisse told Georges Charbonnier (Text 41 , be­ theoretical statement ('Picasso Speaks', The Arts, May
low) : 'I myself have done sculpture as the complement 1923 , pp. 3 1 5-26) came even later. Further, while
of my studies. . . For a change of medium. But I
• Braque's writings on art are aphoristic, and sometimes
sculpted as a painter. . . . Sculpture does not say what obscure, and Picasso's bombastic, Matisse usually
painting says.' While Matisse wrote on painting, uses the expository form, as in 'Notes of a Painter'.
drawing, and book illustration, he wrote virtually He also wrote statements on each of his major media,
nothing about his sculpture. with the exception of sculpture.
2 Matisse was conscious of this continuity : 'There is 7 At the turn of the century Matisse was considerably
no separation between my old pictures and my cut­ older than his fellow students, and while working at
outs .. . .' he told Maria Luz in 195 1 (Text 40, below). Carriere's atelier evidently took a somewhat peda­
3 Quoted by Apollinaire (Text 1, below). gogical attitude toward his colleagues. Jean Puy, for
4 'Notes of a Painter' (Text 2, below). example, recalls Matisse's discussion of the structure
5 Barr, p. 562. of Cezanne at this time (Michel Puy, L' effort des
6 'Notes of a Painter' preceded by a considerable peintres modernes, Paris, 1933, p. 70).
amount of time published statements by Braque and 8 In this way Matisse's writings differ quite sharply
Picasso. Although Braque's earliest interview ( 1 908) from the intense systematization and specificity of
was published in 1 9 10 (Gelett Burgess, 'The Wild Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, or the
Men of Paris', Architectural Record, May 1 9 10, pp. writings of Paul Klee. Matisse was inclined to speak
4oo-14), his writings were not published until later in general terms ; he avoided complicated nomenclature
('Pensees et reflections sur Ia peinture', Nord-Sud, or practical demonstration of ideas, and his writings
December 1 9 1 7, pp. 3-5). Picasso's first published are always more philosophic than technical ; or, when
 Notes
he is being pedagogical, more concerned with general quoting : 'Because it forces them into the same cliche :
principles than with conveying practical information. believe it or not they are being taught to do a head, a
9 Matisse's difficulties during the Experimental bust, hands and feet in a limited amount of time, a
period are reflected in his correspondence. In April "monstrous procedure" for the study of art. • • •
1 9 1 3 he wrote to Camoin, 'The truth is that Painting 'Because, manual dexterity alone counts.
is very deceptive', expressing his dissatisfaction with 'Because, deprived of their instinct, their curiosity,
the portrait of Madame Matisse (Figure 26). In an the poor artists are turned into chronic invalids at a
important letter of autumn I9I4 he wrote to Camoin period of their lives, between IS and 2S years, which
at some length discussing his evaluation of Seurat and determines their future . • • . '
Delacroix in relation to himself, also noting his own 22 See the 'Letter to Henry Clifford' (Text 33,
realizations to be more elusive than they had been below, especially Note 2).
ten years before. And on 2 May I 9 I 8, he wrote to 23 The general procedure for a student was to draw
Camoin : 'Contour gives grand style (as soon as one in the Cours Yvon, and hope to attract the favourable
proceeds by half-tones one is closer to truth but less attention of one of the professors, who would then
grand). Don't you find that that is seeing things a invite the student to work in his atelier. This, however,
little superficially, and that one can use contour and was not properly speaking entrance to the Ecole des
a semblance of grand st�le, and half-tones and real Beaux-Arts, for which an examination, comprised of
grand style? Which is the grander style, that of Gauguin five parts, was necessary : un dessin d'anatomie (osteo­
or of Corot? I believe that style comes from the order logie), un dessin de perspective, un fragment de figure
and the elevation of the mind of the artist. That order modeM d'apres l' antique, une etude elimentaire d'archi­
is acquired or developed or even completely intuitive, tecture, and un examen sur les notions generales de
perhaps the consequence of order. But if it is the l'histoire. This competition was known as the concours
result of taking a position it never results in more than de places. In the Matisse dossier at the Ecole des
half-tone. This is said without pretension.' Beaux-Arts archives is a note signed by Bouguereau
10 Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of {dated January I 892) presenting Matisse for the
Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture, Garden concours de places ; thus Matisse probably competed
City, N. Y., 1956, p. 23 : 'The nineteenth century was in the February I 892 concours, although he may have
remarkably cross-eyed • • . its products • . . may be waited until the summer. (The life drawing [Fig. 2]
said to mark a maximum aberration in the history of submitted for the concours is presently at the Musee
taste. ' Matisse at Le Cateau. It is inscribed 'Matisse H.
1 I Frederic-Auguste-Antoine Goupil (officier d'acad­ eleve de MM. Bouguereau et Ferrier'. In 19s2 Matisse
hnie, eleve d'Horace Vemet • • •) was the author of wrote a note on this drawing stating that it was the
several 'how-to-do-it' books on art and decoration. basis for his refusal.) Bouguereau's endorsement of
The book that Matisse used was Manuel general de Matisse's candidacy was standard procedure, Matisse
la peinture a l'huile precede de considerations sur les having worked in his atelier (Matisse had been recom­
peintures anciennes et modernes, restauration et conserva­ mended to Bouguereau by the Saint-Quentin painter
tion des tableaux, peinture d la eire, renaissance de la P.-L. Couturier who, like Bouguereau, had studied
mosaique en France, Paris, I877· The book was part with Picot).
of a series, most of which-including another work on As Albert Boime (The Academy and French Painting
painting, Traite methodique et raisonne de la peinture d in the Nineteenth Century, London, 1971, p. 23) points
l'huile, Paris, I 867-were priced at one franc. The out, 'the rules governing inscriptions at the Ecole
elaborate Manuel general, however, was priced at six required the formal recommendation of a master in
francs and included historical and aesthetic, as well as favour of an applicant. Enrolment in a private atelier
practical advice and instruction. was thus in practice a condition for admission to the
I2 This is discussed in detail by Frank Anderson Ecole.'
Trapp in 'The paintings of Henri Matisse : origins Matisse, in his own most elaborate recounting of
and early development, 1 89o-1 9I 7', unpublished this experience, neglects the entrance examination,
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, I 9S2, pp. but dwells instead on the inadequacy of Bouguereau
237-43· and Ferrier as teachers (see Escholier, I937, pp. 3o-1).
13 Goupil, op. cit. p . 6. 24 When asked in I 942 'What do you remember of
14 See for example Texts 33, 35, 36, below. your teachers?' Matisse replied : 'One only among
I S Goupil, op . cit. p . 6. them counts for me : Gustave Moreau who turned out,
16 Goupil, op. cit. p. 7· among numerous students, some real artists. • • • '
17 'Henri Matisse le Mediterraneen nous dit', (See below, Text 20.)
Comredia, 7 February 1942, p. 6. Although Gaston Diehl (Henri Matisse, Paris, 19S4,
18 Goupil, op. cit. p. I I ; see Texts 10 and 44, below, p. 7, n. I 6) says that Matisse, at the request of Moreau,
for Matisse's use of photographs. was admitted as a Beaux-Arts student by special
19 Goupil, op cit. p. 74· exemption from the entry concours, the Matisse dossier
20 Later, Matisse recounted his debut at Bouguer­ at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts reveals that Matisse was
eau's studio to Escholier and Guenne (see Text 7, finally accepted to the Ecole proper in the March 1895
below). judgement, after the February I 895 concours. Out of a
21 Barr, p. s63. The rest of the statement is worth possible 20 points in each of the five categories,
Notes 1 57

Matisse received 1 7 in life drawing, 3 in perspective, o f Early Matisse', Art Journal, XXVI, 1 , Fall, 1 966,
4 in modelling, o in architecture, and 1 3 in history pp. 2-8.
(see Note 23 above for the exact categories) for a total 45 Trapp , Art Journal, pp. 6-8.
of 37 out of a possible 1 00. With this score he finished 46 Madsen, op. cit. pp. 1 5- 1 6.
the concours in forty-second place (eighty-six pupils 47 Meyer Schapiro, 'Matisse and Impressionism',
were accepted to the Ecole at that time). Androcles, 1, 1, February 1 932, p. 23 .
25 Moreau also introduced his students to the masters 48 Guenne : Interview with Matisse (Text 7, below).
of the Louvre. Matisse later ( 1 943) recalled the bene­ 49 The Impressionists of course also relied on in­
ficial effect that this had on his early experience, since stinct, as did Matisse. It is likely that Matisse experi­
it shielded him from the prevailing state of mind at enced his first physical boldness with a canvas and
the Ecole, which was centred on producing Salon free instinctive rendering of the first impression during
entries and Prix-de-Rome candidates : ' It was almost his Impressionistic phase. Monet, for example, had
a revolutionary attitude on Moreau's part to send us written to Sargent : ' Impressionism simply means the
off to the Louvre at a time when official art, doomed sensation of the moment. All great painters were more
to the vilest pastiches, and living art, given over to or less impressionists. It is really a question of instinct.'
plein-air painting, seemed to have joined forces to (Evan Charteris, John Sargent, New York, 1 927,
keep us away.' (Diehl, p. 1 1 ). p. 1 29.) Monet also had stressed self-expression of a
26 Cited in Jean Guichard-Melli, Matisse, New sort, saying that he 'has simply tried to be himself and
York, 1 967, p. 36. not another'. (E. G. Holt, From the Classicists to the
27 Cited in Guichard-Melli, op. cit. p. 25. Impressionists : A Documentary History of Art and
28 For discussion and reproduction of some of these Architecture, New York, 1 966, p. 38 1 .) Although
works, see Barr, pp. 3 3 , 293· Matisse like Monet tried to preserve a certain naivety
29 The exhibition opened on 25 April I 896. On toward experience, it was in order to arrive at fresh
9 June 1 896 Matisse wrote to his cousin Lancelle say­ 'signs' for objects, not in order to submerge objects
ing that the exhibition had not given him only 'platonic into the optical effect. Monet emphasized the recording
satisfactions', since he had sold two paintings, one to of pure optical sensation, almost the opposite of what
the State, which had also commissioned two more Matisse was after in 1 908. See for example Lilla Cabot
copies : one of a Chardin for I ,ooo francs, another of Perry, 'Reminiscences of Claude Monet from 1 889 to
an Annibale Caracci for 1 ,200 francs. Matisse added, 1 909', The American Magazine of Art, XVIII, March
'You see, my dear friend, that there is some painting 1 927, p. 1 20.
which brings returns'. (Letter to Lancelle), Arts, so Barr, p. 38.
I3 August 1 952, p. I . 51 It should also be remembered that Matisse visited
30 For a discussion o f landscape etudes and esquisses, Renoir at Cagnes several times during I 9 17-18.
see Boime, op. cit. , Note 23, above, p . 1 5 0 ff. 52 Schapiro, art. cit. , p. 29.
3 I For Matisse's own description of this experience, 5 3 See Kurt Badt, The Art of Cezanne, Berkeley and
See Escholier, 1 937, pp. 77-8. Los Angeles, I 965 , pp. 268-75, for a discussion of
32 Goupil's 1 877 treatise (p. 1 63), for example, Cezanne and Symbolism. Some of Badt's comments
briefly discusses the decorative arts, including the also apply to Matisse, such as (p. 270) : 'Cezanne
study of ornamental composition and arabesques with "manufactured" nothing with his mind, he invented
scrolls, and refers to his own Manuel general de nothing, he painted merely what he perceived. .Hut
l'ornement decoratif (Paris, 1 862). he perceived in an entirely individualistic way . . .
33 Diehl, p. 7· Cezanne's formula was the medium of expression for
34 'Matisse Speaks' (Text 39, below). the symbolic exposition of the real world as a sign
35 Henry Havard, La decoration, 2nd ed. , Paris, • . of the unshakeable objectiveness and unshakeable
.

1 892?. Havard is advertised on the title-page as "existing together" of objects. It emerged in his art
'Inspecteur general des Beaux-Arts' and the book was in various forms, without however changing at the
published under the patronage of 'l' administration des core. What was novel about it was that it turned all
Beaux-Arts couronne par l'Institut (Prix Bordin) et external appearances of real things into a symbol of
lwnore des souscriptions du Ministere d'Instruction Pub­ being, "which is eternal".'
lique, de la Ville de Paris, des Chambres du Commerce de 54 The Matisse is reproduced in Guichard-Melli, op.
Paris'. I should like to thank Mr Jolm Neff for calling cit. , Note 26, above, p . 45 , the cezanne , in Meyer
this book to my attention. SchaJ?iro, Paul Cezanne, New York, I 952, p. 63 .
36 Havard, op. cit. p. 4· 5 5 The Matisse is reproduced in Barr, p. 3 I I ; the
37 Havard, op. cit. p . 7· Cezrume in Schapiro, Paul Cezanne, p. 5 I .
38 Havard, op. cit. p. 8. s 6 Matisse was also aware of the painting's direct
39 Havard, op. cit. p . 1 5. effect upon his early career. Speaking of the purchase
40 Havard, op. cit. p. 1 9 . of his Cezanne Trois baigneuses, to Gaston Diehl
4 1 Havard, op. cit. p. 1 4. ('Avec Matisse le classique', C011UEdia, no. 102, I 2
42 Havard, op. cit. p. 20. June 1 943 , p. I ) he said : ' I remember that everything
43 S. Tschudi Madsen, Art Nouveau, New York­
�here had its place, that the hands, the trees counted
Toronto, 1 967, p. 1 5 . m the same way as the sky. I had recognized in
44 Frank Anderson Trapp, 'Art Nouveau Aspects [Cezanne] this stability in the form, this song of the
 Notes
arabesque in close union with the colour, that I myself Edward F. Fry, Cubism, New York-Toronto, I 9 66,
wanted to obtain. pp. 37-40, for a brief but interesting discussion.
'What I always sought was to arrive at an ordered 6 s Braque spoke of finding behind the brilliance of
ensemble, using only the strict means of painting. At Proven�! light 'something deeper and more lasting'.
Collioure in I90S , before a landscape already exalted (Cited in Fry, op. cit. p. I7.) See also Braque's inter­
by him , I attempted to establish a vast composition view with Gelett Burgess, 'The Wild Men of Paris',
with several of my drawings, to put them into a general Architectural Record, May I 9 IO, pp. 4oo-I4, in which
arabesque and to find an accord with my colours Braque emphasizes the role of art as an equivalence
brought to their maximum force and luminosity.' rather than an imitation of nature, thus producing what
57 See Jack D. Flam, 'Matisse's Backs and the Matisse similarly calls a more lasting interpretation of
Development of his Painting', Art Journal, xxx, 4, nature.
Summer I 97 I , pp . 3 S2-6 I . 66 See Fry, op. cit. pp. 3 9-40. Juan Gris made one
5 8 Camoin, who had known Cezanne since I 899, of the most cogent statements of this in L'Esprit
wrote in a letter to Matisse (2 December I90S) : 'I nouveau, I S February I92I, pp. 533-4 ; translated in
found [Cezanne] squeezing some Veronese green onto Fry, op. cit. pp. I 62-3 .
his palette . . . "But there is only theory I My dear 67 See Fry op. cit. p. 40 ; see also Albert Gleizes and
fellow, but Veronese, that's it ! The theory." Ah l how Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme, Paris, I 9 I 2 ; translated
we laughed . . . What a sensitive man, Cezanne, "also, in Robert L. Herbert, Modern Artists on Art, New
you see, you must make pictures, compose the pictures York, I 964.
as the masters did, not like the Impressionists who 68 The flow of Cubist ideas must have made an im­
cut out a piece of nature by chance, put in personages. pression on Matisse, and very likely emboldened him in
Look at [Claude] Lorrain. " ' his own explorations of more expressive construction.
Cezanne's important letters to Emile Bernard were Matisse, however, seems to have been even more affec­
published in I 907 : E. Bernard, 'Souvenirs sur Paul ted by Eastern art at this time, especially after the
Cezanne et lettres inedites', Mercure de France, I and large Islamic art exhibition in Munich in I9IO, and
I S October I907. Matisse had doubtless read them, his trips to Spain, Russia and Morocco the year after.
and possibly knew of others through Vollard. It is also possible that Matisse's wariness of the
59 See for example John Rewald, ed. , Paul Cezanne Cubists kept him back from any public statement
Correspondence, Paris, I937, pp. 289-9 I , for Cezanne's about his art at this time, even though for a while in
use of the words 'researches' (recherches) and 'studies' I 9 I 4 Matisse and Juan Gris talked 'relentlessly' about
(etudes) ; and of 'means of expression' (pp. 262, 268, painting every day. See Douglas Cooper, The Cubist
273-s), another phrase used by Matisse in similar Epoch, London, I970, p. 207.
contexts. 69 In such works as Tete blanche et rose (Barr, p. 402),
6o Some aspects of this common heritage are dis­ and the Schoenborn Poissons rouges (Barr, p. I69). In
cussed below. See also Carla Gottlieb, 'The Joy of I9S2, speaking of Cubism, c. I 9 I 4, he told Frank A.
Life : Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne', College Art Trapp : 'I had my own work to do • •After all, there
•

Journal, XVIII, 2, Winter, I9S9, pp. I 06- I 6. is in Paris an atmosphere and one senses that atmo­
6 I Lawrence Gowing, Henri Matisse: 64 Paintings, sphere. In that respect there was perhaps a concordance
New York, I966, p. 7· between my work and theirs. But perhaps they them­
62 Picasso, Statement to Marius de Zayas, I923 ; selves were trying to find me.' Frank Anderson Trapp,
cited in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. , Picasso : Fifty Years of his 'The Paintings of Henri Matisse : Origins and Early
Art, New York, I 946, pp. 27o-I . The entire statement Development, I 89o-I 9 I 7', unpublished Ph.D. disser­
provides an interesting contrast to Matisse's ideas. tation, Harvard University, I9S2, p . 2I2.
63 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years, revised ed., 70 Gowing, op. cit. , Note 6 I above, pp. I I-I2.
London, I 969, p. 327. See also Shattuck's chapter on 7 I That Picasso was aware of this difference, too,
the aesthetics of this period, pp. 32s-s2. can be seen from his conversations with Fran�ise Gilot
64 For a discussion of Matisse and Bergson see the in Life with Picasso, New York-Toronto-London,
Introduction to 'Notes of a Painter', below ; also I 964, p. 27 I .

I APOLLINAIRE ' S INTERVIEW

I 'Henri Matisse', La Phalange, II, I 8 ; December talk about painting he chose his words deliberately.
I907, pp . 48 I-s. Translation from Matisse : his art and Leo Stein, in Appreciation : Painting, Poetry and Prose,
his Public by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. © I 9S I by the Mus­ New York, I947, p. I S2, speaking of this period
eum of Modem Art, New York. All rights reserved. Re­ recalls : 'Matisse was really intelligent. He was also
printed by permission of The Museum of Modern Art. witty, and capable of saying exactly what he meant
The original essay was illustrated by the following when talking about art. This is a rare thing with
works by Matisse : Portrait de l' artiste, I 906 (Barr, p. painters. . . . ' And George L. K. Morris, recalling a
3 33 ) ; La madras rouge, I 907 (Barr, p. 3so) ; La coiffure, I 93 I meeting with Matisse ('A Brief Encounter with
I907 (Barr, p. 339) ; Le luxe, I, I 907 (Barr, P· 340). Matisse', Life, LXIX, 9 ; 28 August I970, p. 44), notes :
2 Femande Olivier, in Picasso et ses amis, Paris, 'As soon as Matisse speaks about art his voice becomes
I933, p. I07, notes that whenever Matisse began to gentle and distinct, he talks very slowly'.
 1 59
Notes
2 NOTES OF A PAINTER

I Henri Matisse, 'Notes d'un peintre', La Grande 8 As cited in Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years,
Revue, LII, 24 ; 25 December I 908, pp. 73 I-45 · Within revh;ed ed. , London, I 969, p. 327.
a year of its original publication, 'Notes d'un peintre' 9 See Kurt Badt, The Art of Cezanne , Berkeley and
was translated into Russian and German : Toison d'Or Los Angeles, I 965 , pp . I 95-228. Cezanne also pursued
(Zolotye Runo), 6, I 909 ; Kunst und Kilnstler, VII, what Badt calls 'the One which is permanent in the
I 909, pp. 335 -47 · changing world' (p. 2 I 7). The whole problem of
Matisse's article was prefaced by Georges Des- realization is based essentially on arriving at an intui­
vallieres who noted that Matisse wished to have tion of truth (source), a tangible vehicle in which the goal
certain of his works illustrated so that the public could might be realized (motif) , and a vehicle for expressing
compare what he said with what he did. The following the aim (articulation). The artist must penetrate appar­
works were illustrated ; La liseuse, I 906 (Barr, p. 332) ; ent reality to arrive at Reality. The problem is compli­
Nu debout, I 907 (Barr, p. 338) ; Nu assis, I 908 (Lenin­ cated, in that while Reality is constant, or rather has a
grad) ; Greta Moll, I 908 (Barr, p. 3S I ) ; Nu noir et or, constant duration, its manifestations and the means for
I909 (Schneider, p. I 6 s ) ; Joueurs de boules, I 908 perceiving them, are not. Hence Pissarro's acute obser­
(Figure 19). The three nudes are very close in style vation that Cezanne painted the same painting all his
and appear to have been done from the same model. life. (See Barr, p. 38, where this is taken literally to
Joueurs de boules is the most 'advanced' of the works mean his 'Bathers'.) In other words, Cezanne was
represented and is the only 'imagined' and only multi­ striving for the same realization all his life. The
figure scene. Desvallieres' preface tries to 'explain' realisation of which Cezanne speaks is an articulation
and prepare his essentially literary readership for of the penetration into Reality. For this Cezanne
Matisse's works, of which he says that although 'our depended upon the sensations he could receive from
personal good taste may sometimes be shocked by the Proven�al landscape by which he might realize
them • • even then our artistic intelligence should
• the structure behind the material manifestation and
not be indifferent to the discoveries made by this construct accordingly. The process of realisation, then,
artist• • he has liberated our eyes ; he has enlarged
• moves, by intuition, from source to work to articula­
our understanding of design. • •' La Grande Revue
• tion : paintings are the material results, condensed, of
indeed was a somewhat prestigious forum for Matisse's perceptions of reality based on visual sensations modi­
statement, recent issues having contained articles by fied by intuition. Matisse's process follows a similar
such writers as Andre Gide, Raymond Poincare, Uon path. The main difference between Cezanne and
Blum and Charles Martel. Matisse on this point is that Cezanne's sensations
2 By I 908 Matisse was beginning to lose his domin­ were received and articulated in detail, whereas
ant position among the Paris avant-garde to Picasso Mat!sse sought a Gestalt perception. Whereas Cezanne
and the Cubists. (See Barr, pp. 86-8.) He felt that worked toward the whole in parts, achieving realiza­
Cubism was too systematic and theoretical, and was tion by adjusting the parts to form a 'realized' totality,
to recall later in life that it was only another form of Matisse started with the whole and adjusted the parts
descriptive realism (Text 39, below). until the totality was 'realized' by adjustment and
3 Though it now seems odd, Matisse's early Fauve balancing of parts. Thus the notion of being able 'to
works were themselves criticized for being applica­ reconceive in simplicity'.
tions of theory. Andre Gide ('Promenade au Salon 10 Cited in Shattuck, op . cit. p. 342.
d'Automne', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXXI V, December 1 I In I 941 Matisse, speaking to Francis Carco,
1 905 , pp. 476-85) noted that La femme au chapeau, the referred to his studio as the cinema of his sensibility
scandal of the I 905 Salon, was not madness but 'the (See Text I 8, below.) This idea also seems quite
result of theories'. In Maurice Denis' review of the Bergsonian : 'To reduce things to Ideas is therefore to
I 905 Salon (L'Ermitage, 1 5 November I 90S ; reprinted resolve becoming into its principal moments, each of
in Maurice Denis, Theories, z89o-I9IO, 4th ed., Paris, these being, moreover, by the hypothesis, screened
I 920, pp. 203-Io) Denis criticizes Matisse . for lack from the laws of time and, as it were, plucked out of
of individual emotion, and for painting a kind of eternity. That is to say that we end in the philosophy
excessively theoretic 'dialectic*. Leo Stein (Apprecia­ of Ideas when we apply the cinematographical mech­
tion: Painting, Poetry · and Prose, New York, I 947, anism of the intellect to the analysis of the real.'
p. I 6 I ) relates that Matisse rebuffed Denis in front (Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 3 I S . )
of one of Matisse's own paintings. 1 2 Only recently Alison Hilton ('Matisse in Moscow,'
4 Charles Edward Gauss, The Aesthetic Theories of Art Journal, XXIX, 2.; Winter I 969-70, p. I 66) has
French Artists from Realism to Surrealism, Baltimore, written of Matisse's position in 'Notes of a Painter' :
I949, p. 63 . 'He believed in a purely decorative and hedonistic art.
5 Clara T. MacChesney, 'A Talk with Matisse, Accordingly, he stripped his paintings of all the dis­
Leader of Post-Impressionists', New York Times turbing or boring sides of life, and gave full play to
Magazine, 9 March I 9 1 3 . (Text 6, below.) what is festive, as in the early Jo.y of Life . A painting
6 Gauss, op cit. p. 64..
should contain nothing exciting or excessive, and,
7 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, New York, above all, no message.'
19I I , pp. 1 77-8. 13 It is interesting in this context to note Greta
 I6o Notes
Moll's account of the portrait Matisse painted of 2 1 Cf. Matisse, 'A Cezanne is a moment of the
her ( 1 908) and which was illustrated in 'Notes of a artist while a Sisley is a moment of nature.' (Barr,
Painter'. She noted, 'I found it very interesting to p. 38.)
watch how always when he altered one color he felt 22 Cf. Braque, in 1 908 : 'I couldn't portray a woman
forced to change the whole color scheme.' (Barr, in all her natural loveliness • • I haven't the skill.
•

p. 1 29.) No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of

I4 Cf. Cezanne (letter to Camoin, 28 January 1 902) : beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of
'I have little to tell you ; indeed one says more and volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that
perhaps better things about painting when facing the beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is a
motif than when discussing purely speculative theories mere pretext for decorative composition, plus senti­
-in which as often as not one loses oneself.' (John ment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion
Rewald, ed., Paul Cezanne, Letters, London, I 94I, into art. I want to expose the Absolute, and not
p . 2 1 8.) merely the factitious woman.' ( The Architectural
IS Paul Signac (1 863-1 93S) ; Georges Desvallieres Record, New York, May 1 9 1 0, p. 405 .)
(I86I-I95 I ) ; Maurice Denis (1 87o-I943) ; Jacques­ 23 Matisse here makes a fine distinction between
Emile Blanche (I86I-I942) ; Charles Guerin (1 875- various levels of reality. The movement captured by a
I 939) ; Emile Bernard (I 868-1941). It is interesting snapshot, although it actually has happened, is so far
that Matisse cites mostly his contemporaries and away from absolute Reality (so superficial a moment),
painters older than himself, rather than the younger that it is without meaning, not 'seen', even though the
painters such as Braque (1 882-I 963) and Derain image may have passed imperceptibly across the retina.
(I 88o-1 954), or Marquet (1875-1 947) with whom he 'Seen' (ayons vu) is meant here in the sense of 'per­
had in fact been more closely allied. The painters that ceived'.
Matisse names might be considered as the more 24 Thus (in Bergsonian terms) the image can 'direct
'respectable' element of the avant-garde at the time, the consciousness to the precise point where there is
and also represent a group of men who had some an intuition to be seized'.
reputation as writers and theorists. (Bernard had in 25 Cf. Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. I S6-7, and
fact recently written on Cezanne in 'Souvenirs sur especially, 'the intellect is characterized by the un­
Paul Cezann e et lettres inedites', Mercure de France, limited power of decomposing according to any law
I and I S October I 907.) and of recomposing into any system'.
I6 The reference is most pointedly to Signac (see 26 Auguste Rodin (184o-I 9 1 7).
Note 3 above), although Matisse obviously did not 27 An implicit rebuttal to Signac.
want his criticism of the Impressionists or Rodin to be 28 Matisse had just been to Italy in 1907.
taken as a slur on their work. 29 A criterion that Matisse no doubt got, at least in
17 Ironically, a criticism still made in 1 970, see part, from Cezanne.
Note 1 2, above ; see also Janet Flanner (as Genet), 30 Cf. Braque (1917) : 'One must not imitate what
The New Yorker, 30 May 1 970, p. 86 ; also Denys one wishes to create.' (Cited in Edward F. Fry,
Sutton, 'Matisse Magic Again', Financial Times, 3 June Cubism, New York-Toronto, 1 966, p. I 47· ) Also
I970, who describes Matisse as a painter 'who is so Picasso (1 923) : 'We all know that Art is not truth.
easy on the eye and who is in no way profound '. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. • •The artist
•

18 Cf. Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 145, where a must know how to convince others of the truthfulness
similar idea is set out in more detail. of his lies.' (Fry, op. cit. pp. I 65-6.)
I9 Matisse would return to this point several times. 3 I Merodack Josephin Peladan, novelist and critic,
Speaking of the I93 I-3 Barnes Murals, he told was the founder of a mystic order of Catholic Rosi­
Escholier (1 956, p. 1 29) : 'Perhaps it would be import­ crucians. In the I 89os he had invented his own sym­
ant to indicate that the composition of the panel arose bolic system in relation to which he conceived of him­
from a struggle between the artist and the fifty-two self as a prophet who would renovate art through
square metres of surface of which his spirit had to mystical aesthetic ideas based on Dante and Leonardo
take possession, and not the modem procedure of the (hence Matisse's reference at the end of this essay).
compositions' projection on the surface, multiplied to The article referred to is 'Le Salon d'Automne et ses
the size required and traced. Retrospectives-Greco et Monticelli', La Revue
'A man looking for a plane with a searchlight does He'bdomadaire, 42 ; 1 7 October 1 908, pp. 36o-78. In
not explore the vastness of the sky in the same way this article Peladan (pp. 36o-1) wrote : 'The created
as an aviator. being, like the Creator, in His image . . . is not restricted
'If I have made myself clear, I think you will grasp to historical costume. A manner of dress results from
the essential difference between the two conceptions.' a manner of thought. The form manifests its basis ;
20 Cf. Cezanne (letter to Bernard, 12 May 1 904) : it is born of incessant work, of a growth from within
'I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals her­ and without. • • Each year it becomes more difficult
•

self to me in very complex forms ; and the progress to speak of these people who have called themselves
needed is incessant. One must see one's model cor­ les fauves in the press. They are curious to see beside
rectly and experience it in the right way ; and further­ their canvases. Correct, rather elegant, one would
more express oneself forcibly and with distinction.' take them for department store floor-walkers. Ignorant
(Rewald, Paul Cezanne, Letters, p. 235.) and lazy, they try to offer the public colourlessness and
Notes 161
formlessness.' Peladan's review of the I 9o8 Salon beauty, wants only antics. A clown makes the fortune
d'Automne makes an interesting contrast with that of of a circus, and thousands of artists imitate Chocolat ;
Georges Desvallieres ('L'art finlandais au Salon only it is the canvas that receives the kicks in the face
d'Automne', La Grande Revue, 25 November I 908, in colour. Truth, the most despairing of the Muses,
pp. 3 97 ff in which Desvallieres speaks of the purely terrible Truth would say : "Suppose that M. Matisse
plastic means of the Fauves). painted honestly ; wouldn't he be nearly unknown ;
32 Peladan wrote under the name of 'Sar'. he shows off as at the fair, and the public knows him".
33 Peladan (Revue Hebdomadaire, p. 373) had written : By honestly, I mean with respect to the ideal and the
'The public, insensible to the difficult effort toward rules . • • • '

3 STATEMENT ON PHOTOGRAPHY

J Camera Work, No. 24 ; New York, October I 9o8, 3 Cf. Gustave Moreau, 'Photographic truth is merely
p. 22. a source of information.' Ragnar von Holten, L'Art
2 Cf. Matisse's I933 statement to Teriade, and his fantastique de Gustave Moreau, Paris, I 96o, p. 3·
comments on the use of photographs in Portraits
(Texts IO and 44).

4 SARAH STEIN'S NOTES

I The publishers are grateful to Professor John compare, reason, retain, abstract, combine and order,
Dodds for permission to use his transcription of Sarah analyse, generalize, imagine or invent.
Stein's manuscript. The headings given here are those 4 Matisse's indirect way of getting this Beaux-Arts
used by Barr, pp. 5 5o-2. For a history of Matisse's information across is interesting and amusing. He
school, see Barr, pp. I I 6- I 8. On the Steins and Matisse himself was not unaware of the irony of his position
see Four Americans in Paris : The Collection of Gertrude as a teacher. In I925 he noted the irony of the situation
Stein and her Family, New York, I 970, especially in his interview with Jacques Guenne (Text 7, below).
pp. 35-50. For other first-hand accounts of Matisse's 5 The specific imagery here seems to be inspired by
school see : Hans Purrmann, 'Aus der Werkstatt Henri the structure of Cezanne, particularly the Cezann e
Matisses', Kunst und Kiinstler, xx, 5, February I922, Trois baigneuses that Matisse owned. Although the
pp. I 67-76 ; Isaac GrUnewald, Matisse och Expression­ advice is figurative, Matisse himself often used such
is-men, Stockholm, I 944 ; Leo Swane: Henri Matisse, metaphorical structures as in the obviously tree-like
Stockholm, I 944 ; Matisse also gave a brief account of structure of La serpentine, I 909 (Barr, p. 367), or the
the opening of the school to Raymond Escholier, architectural structure of Le dns, II of I 9 I 3-I4
( I 937, pp. 92-7). Escholier, I956, pp. 8o-I , publishes (Schneider, p. 286), and Mlle Yvonne Landsberg of
Pierre Dubreuil's version of Matisse's teaching, close I 9 I4 (Barr, p. 395).
to that of Sarah Stein : 6 Such subtle ambiguities of shape recur throughout
'The human body is an architectural structure of Matisse's work. Sometimes, as in L'italienne of I 9 I 5
forms which fit into one another and support one (Barr, p. 403), which is i n the shape o f a n amphora,
another, like a building in which every part is neces­ the main compositional motif of the work is such a
sary to the whole : if one part is out of place, the whole compound image.
collapses . If you are not sure, take measurements,
• • • 7 Note the complete, almost mystical, fusing of the
they are crutches to lean on before you can walk. impulses inherent in the model and those received by
Construct your figures so that they stand, always use the painter.
your plumb-line. Think of the hard lines of the 8 This provides some clue to Matisse's concept of
stretcher or the frame, they affect the lines of your his sculpture in relation to his two-dimensional works.
subject . • All human shapes are convex, there are
• • In many cases his sculptures seem to be the results of
no concave lines. Paint on the white canvas. If
• • • self-imposed disciplines that would force him to
you place a tone on a surface already coloured, with­ 'definitely express' formal constructions that are illus­
out reference to your subject you sound a discord ory in painting or drawing. See Jack D. Flam,
from the start which will hinder you all-the way. One 'Matisse's Backs and the Development of his Paint­
tone is just a colour ; two tones are a chord, which is ing', Art Journal, XXX , 4, S ummer I 97 I , pp. 352-6 I .
life. A colour exists only in relation to its neighbour. 9 A vivid description o f the linear substructure of
• •. Determine your impression from the beginning, Matisse's paintings between I 907 and I 9 I7.
and hold to that impression. Feeling counts above I O The correct reading should probably be : 'The
everything.' leg fits into the foot at the ankle. '
2 Hans Purrmann, cited in Barr, p. I I8.
• • •

I I Matisse here, as in other places (Cf. Note 4,

3 For example, the use of the plumb line. For some above), seems to want to convey useful Academic
very interesting parallels see F. Goupil, Manuel studio advice, without seeming didactic. Thus he
ghzbal de Ia peinture a l'huile, Paris, I 877, pp. I 5 8-66, states the principle in the spirit of advice, without
with his ten procedural steps : perceive, be attentive, making it a rule.
1 62 Notes
I2 Also a common compositional feature in Matisse's this feature persists in Matisse's pamtmgs through
painting of that period : La liseuse, I906 (Barr, p. 3 32) ; about I9I8, it is less common after that.
both versions of Le luxe, I907-o8 (Barr, pp. 34o-I) ; I 3 This is especially vivid in the four reliefs of Le
Baigneuses a la tortue, I9o8 (Barr, p . 357). Though dos.

5 ESTIENNE : INTERVIEW WITH MATISSE

1 Charles Estienne, 'Des tendances de la peinture 4 This paragraph also repeats part of 'Notes of a
modeme : Entretien avec M. Henri-Matisse', Les Painter'.
Nouvelles; I2 April I909, p. 4· Starting with the 5 A reference to the first version of La danse (I 909),
catalogue of the I904 Salon d'Automne Matisse began done as a design for a proposed commission.
to use the hyphenated 'Henri-Matisse' employed here 6 The staircase referred to is that of Sergei Shchukin,
by Estienne in order to avoid confusion with the well­ the Russian collector who had just recently (3 I March
known marine painter Auguste Matisse. Mter the latter I909) confirmed an order for two large panels (La
died in I 93 I Matisse generally dropped the hyphen. danse and La musique) to decorate his stairway. The
2 Some twenty-five years later Matisse, speaking of project, which had been in the air for several months,
the same problem was to say : 'The great mass of was understandably on Matisse's mind at the time.
people who seem to have been touched by painting This commission represented not only the opportunity
in the Middle Ages were not interested in the plastic for two of his largest works, but also the considerable
and graphic qualities of the paint and the painter's sum of 27 ,ooo francs.
work. They were interested in the story he had to tell This interview suggests that the original commission
because there were not other available ways for them from Sergei Shchukin was conceived in terms of three
to learn the story . • Today, no one ne�d look at a
• . and not two panels. The third panel that Matisse here
picture, unless he is interested in painting . • • • mentions very likely refers to Baigneuses (Barr, p. 408)
'When a painting is finished, it's like a new born which is the same size as the two Shchukin paintings.
child, and the artist himself must have time for under­ A watercolour sketch for this painting, in a style
standing. How, then, do you expect an amateur to similar to that of Da�se and Musique, is presently in
understand that which the artist does not yet compre­ Russia. (See Matiss. Zivopis, skul'ptura, grafika, pisma,
hend?' ('Matisse Speaks', Art News, XXXI , 36 ; 3 June Leningrad, I969.) Thus it seems that Baigneuses well
1933, p. 8.) may have been started as early as I 9 I o as Pierre Matisse
Some forty years later, Matisse, answering a ques­ has suggested (Barr, p. I90, n. 8), although it was
tionnaire about art and the public, wrote : finally completed (much transformed) considerably
'Art cannot be hampered by the dead weight of the later.
public. But today there is no rupture between art and Matisse's conception here is quite in keeping with
public. I experienced such a rupture in my youth. I the procedure for decorative arts as outlined by such
resisted without compromising, and the public came writers as Henry Havard, La decoration, Paris, I 892? :
to terms all the same. Does the rupture between art he chooses subjects which avoid intense emotion and
and public result from a severance between art and with clearly legible but non-illusionistic imagery, con­
reality? I keep my feet on the ground, true enough, ceives of his pictures in terms of their ultimate destina­
and the public can always find their way into my work. tion, and thinks in terms of emblematic abstract ideas.
But when I began, there was no way in. When the (See Havard, pp. 2-35.)
artist is gifted, people come to him as to a living spring.' 7 In this passage, which again parallels 'Notes of a
( Transition Forty-Nine, 5 , I 949, p. I I 8.) Painter', the reference to the armchair is omitted.
3 This passage is an almost exact repetition of a
passage in 'Notes of a Painter' (Text 2, above).

6 CLARA T. MacCHESNEY : A TALK WITH MATISSE

I Clara T. MacChesney, 'A Talk with Matisse, would have represented to MacChesney 'acceptable
Leader of post-Impressionists', New York Times modernity'. Degas once said of Besnard that he 'has
Magazine, 9 March I9 I 3 ; © I 9 I 3 by The New York stolen our wings'. (Albert Boime, The Academy and
Times Company. Reprinted by permission. French Painting in the Nineteenth Century, London,
2 The Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. I97I, p. I 7), and Matisse in a I942 radio interview
3 Matisse's house at Issy-les-Moulineaux, a suburb was to say of Besnard : 'Albert Besnard? But he is a
of Paris. conventional painter who is hiding behind the palette
4 Matisse was then working on Les capucines a 'La of the Impressionists. The terrible Degas said : "Bes­
danse', I and II (Barr, pp . 382-3). nard? Mais c'est un pompier qui prend feu".' (Barr,
5 Matisse's school had in fact closed in I9 I I . p . s 63.)
6 Paul Albert Besnard (I 849-I934) and Jean-Fran�ois 7 The statement is of course paraphrased from
Raffaelli (I 8So-I 924), successful popular painters in Matisse's own 'Notes of a Painter'.
the 'modem style' who combined the look of modem­ 8 MacChesney seems here to be confusing Matisse
ism with an essentially traditional outlook, probably and Monet.
Notes 1 63

7 INTERVIEW WITH JACQUES GUENNE

I Jacques Guenne, 'Entretien avec Henri Matisse', bequeathed his collection of Impressionist paintings
L'Art vivant, I 8 ; IS September I 92S, pp. I-6 ; Por­ to the Luxembourg Museum.
traits d'artistes, Paris, I 92S, pp. 20S-I9. 14 The Matisse copy, which he worked on for
2 The villa a t Issy-les-Moulineaux, which was at several years ( 1 894-I9oo), is in the Musee Matisse
42 (later 92) route de Clamart, a few miles southwest at Le Cateau. (Reproduced in Schneider, p. 1 3 1 ) .
of Paris. IS The landscape painter Emile Very, or Wery,
3 The acquaintance referred to here is Philbert-Leon ( x 868-I93S), with whom Matisse went to Brittany in
Couturier, whom Matisse later characterized as a I896.
'painter of hens and poultry-yards' (Text 39, below). I6 La desserte, 1 897 (Figure s).
Adolphe William Bouguereau ( I 82S-I 90S) was one of I7 The Salon de Ia Societe Nationale des Beaux­
the most popular and 'successful' nineteenth-century Arts of I897· Matisse had been made an Associate in
Academic painters. For an amusing account of I896, thus the painting had to be hung ; but it was
Matisse's introduction to Bouguereau's studio, see hung badly.
'Matisse Speaks', I9S I (Text 39, below) . I 8 This story had evidently been told earlier to
4 Matisse told Escholier ( I 937, p. 30) a slightly Georges Desvallieres. (Barr, p. 3S, n. 1 .)
different version of the story, noting that Bouguereau I9 I 898, when Matisse worked in Corsica, and at
said to him : 'You are erasing your charcoal with your Fenouillet near Toulouse.
finger. That denotes a careless man ; take a rag or a 20 The reference is evidently to the Islamic art
piece of amadou. Draw the plaster casts hanging on exhibition at the Pavilion de Marsan of the Louvre in
the studio walls. Show your work to an older student : I903, although there is some confusion on the matter.
he will advise you • • You have to understand per­
• (See Barr, p. 90, n. s.)
spective . . . But first you must learn how to hold a 2I See Texts 23 and 3 I , below.
pencil. You'll never know how to draw.' 22 See Text I4, below.
s Gabriel Ferrier ( I 847-I9I4) and Bouguereau alter­ 23 The school, partially financed by Michael Stein,
nately taught the class at the Academie Julian. opened in January I9o8, at s6 rue de Sevres, and was
6 For Matisse's elaboration of this story, see moved in the spring to the former Couvent du Sacre
Escholier ( I 937, pp. 3 o-I). Creur on the boulevard des Invalides. The class
7 It was later recounted that he was encouraged to tapered off after Matisse left Paris in the spring of
go on painting by Goya's Jeune et Vieille at the Lille I909 , and was finally closed in the spring of I 9 I I .
Museum, of which he thought, 'Ca, je pourrais le (See Barr, pp. I I 6- I 7.)
jaire.' (Barr, p. 3, note to p. ISA.) 24 Cf. Courbet, 'I maintain that art is completely
8 Gustave Moreau (I 826-98) had at this time recently individual, and is for each artist nothing but the talent
been appointed a professor at the Ecole des Beaux­ issuing from his own inspiration and his own studies
Arts. The 'Antiques' refers to the Cours Yvon at the of tradition.' Pierre Courthion, ed. , Courbet raconti par
Ecole des Beaux-Arts where students drew from casts. lui-meme et par ses amis, Geneva, I9 SO, n, p. 2os.
9 Giulio Romano ( I 499-IS46), the Mannerist painter 2S For the Exposition Universelle of I 900.
and follower of Raphael. 26 Pere (Julien) Tanguy ( I 82s-I 894), the colour
IO Painted in June I 89o. Illustrated, Cahiers d'Art, dealer who early helped and exhibited the Impression­
no. S-6 ( I 93 I), p. 230. ists, and was painted by Van Gogh.
I I Albert Marquet ( I 87S-I947) was Matisse's closest 27 Antoine Druet (b. I 8S7), subsequent owner of the
friend at the time. The Petit Casino was a cabaret on Galerie Druet.
the Passage Jouffroy. 28 Ambroise Vollard, the famous shrewd dealer,
I 2 Delacroix's statement reported by Baudelaire was the largest early dealer in Cezannes, and gave
was : 'If you are not skilful enough to sketch a man Matisse his first one-man show in June I 904.
falling out of a window, during the time it takes him 29 It was Druet who instituted the practice of photo­
to get from the fifth storey to the ground, you will graphing the reuvre of painters, the so-called 'Druet
never be able to produce monumental work. ' (Marius Process' .
Vachon, Pour devenir un artiste, Paris, n.d., p. I34.) 30 Berthe Weill, the courageous gallery owner, the first
Marquet is supposed to have added the postscript : 'Yes, to show Picasso in Paris (in I 900), also first exhibited
and make it a recognizable likeness, too 1' (Barr, p. 38.) Matisse, with five other Moreau pupils, in February
1 3 But later Matisse informed Alfred · Barr that he I 9o2. Matisse later told Escholier ( I 956, p. s s) that
had seen the Impressionists at Durand-Ruel's and while Weill and Druet had been as useful as any d ealer
Vollard's before I 897· (Barr, p. I 6, n. 4.) Caillebotte is to a beginner, that they could offer no security.

8 STATEMENTS TO TERIADE

I E. Teriade, 'Visite a Henri Matisse', L'lntransi­ through Colour] ; 'Entr�tien avec Teriade', L' Intransi­
geant, I 4 and 22 January I 929, partially reprmted as geant, 20 and 27 October I 930 [On Travel] . Translated
'Propos de Henri Matisse a Teriade', Verve, IV, I 3 , by permission of the author.
December I 94S, p. s6 [On Fauvism and Expression
 Notes
2 Matisse mentioned this need to be away from the mauvais quart d'heure avec Matisse', Arts, 37I , 7-I 3
city on other occasions--cf. Text 20, below. August I 952, p. I ) . 'The mission of the artist is
3 Henri Edmond Cross (I856-I 9IO). See also Texts important enough for him to preoccupy himself only
I2 and 39, below. with his art . . . I know. Delacroix did some pictures in
4 The reference to Matisse's battle with the neo­ I 848. Revolutions can sometimes serve a purpose, but it
lmpressionists is obvious. Signac was so angry at is necessary despite everything to remain outside of
Matisse for abandoning his camp that he picked a politics. One can have liberal ideas, but the artist
fight with him at the cafe where the exhibitors and hasn't the right to lose any of the precious time which
jurors met after the opening of the I 906 lndependants he has for his self-expression.'
(Georges Duthuit, The Fauvist Painters, New York, 8 James Tissot (I836-I 902), a painter of exotic
1 950, p. 6I). In this statement Matisse implies that Eastern scenes. Cf. Text 39, below.
Seurat is a great painter almost despite, rather than 9 Cf. Texts 20 and 39, below.
because of, his theories. The emphasis is once again I O Jeune fille en jaune (Figure 34).
on human values-just what Matisse had been accused I I Cf. the 'Aeroplane' section of Jazz (Text 29, be­
of lacking in I905-6. In autumn I 9 I 4, Matisse wrote low).
a letter to Camoin, regarding Seurat : 'I know that I2 In January I93 I Matisse met George L. K. Morris,
Seurat is completely the opposite of a romantic, which a young American painter, on a French train. Morris
I am ; but with a good portion of the scientific, of the ('A Brief Encounter with Matisse', Life, LXIX 9, 28
rationalist, which creates the struggle from which I August I970, p. 44) has recorded the following : 'I reply
sometimes emerge the victor, but exhausted.' In the that I'm returning to New York in two months. "That's
same letter, Matisse goes on to say : 'Delacroix's com­ a very good idea", Matisse chimes in. "Artists should
position is more entirely created, while that of Seurat stay in their own countries." •I start a defense of
• . .

employs matter organized scientifically, reproducing, my European trip . . The gentleness that had char­
. •

presenting to our eyes objects constructed by scientific acterized Matisse's voice is now gone abruptly.
means rather than by signs coming from feeling. As a "Poussin and El Greco have been dead 300 years and
result there is in his works a positivism, a slightly inert you consider them in your procedure !" He ends up :
stability coming from his composition which is not the "The only hope for American art is for the painters
result of a creation of the mind but of a juxtaposition there to stay home ; they have a new untried country
of objects. It is necessary to cross this barrier to re-feel with beautiful skies and beautiful women-what more
light, coloured and soft, and pure, the noblest pleasure. do you need?" '
Delacroix's imagination, brought to bear on a subject, 13 For other discussions of Matisse's voyage to
remains anecdotal, which is a shame ; this relates to the Tahiti, see Texts 9, 28, 29, 39, 42, below.
quality of his mind, for Rembrandt in the same con­ 14 Cf. Text 39, below.
ditions is noble. A word that I never can say in front I S The Collection of Albert C. Barnes, in Merion,
of a picture by Delacroix. . • I am happy with my
• Pennsylvania. Barnes, who owned several of Matisse's
picture that returns me to the middle of all these paintings, commissioned Matisse to do the famous
movements of my mind.' Dance mural (see Texts I I and 4 I , below) for the
S Perhaps an amusing reference to his relatives in Barnes Foundation.
Bohain and Le Cateau. (See Escholier, I956, p. 98.) I6 Matisse's earliest collectors and patrons had been
6 Cf. Texts 9 and 42, below. Russians and Americans. See Barr, pp. 57-203.
7 Although Matisse refers here to 'art politics', he also I 7 This idea had. great appeal to Matisse. See Text
felt that there was no relationship between art and any 25, below.
kind of politics. 'I keep myself outside of politics - as I 8 Matisse had himself won the Carnegie prize in
much as possible', he told Yves Bridault ('J'ai passe un I927 (see p. 5, above).

9 COURTHION : MEETING WITH MATISSE

I Pierre Courthion, 'Rencontre avec Matisse', Les 7 Copying Cezanne is not meant literaJy, but in
Nouvelles littbaires, 27 June I93 I, p. I ; translated spirit. Cf. Cezanne's Le golfe de Marseilles vu de
by permission of the author. l'Estaque, c. I 885 (F. Novotny, Cezanne, London,
2 Matisse had been able to see works by Goya and I 96 I , p. 22) and Matisse's view of Saint- Tropez,
El Greco at Durand-Ruel's gallery during the I 89os, I904 (Jean Guichard-Melli, Matisse, New York, I 967,
including the latter's View of Toledo. p. 45) ; or various still-lifes (Guichard-Melli, pp. 22-3).
3 From 'Notes of a Painter'. This influence, especially from Matisse's own Cezanne
4 Matisse had visited Tahiti in the spring of I 930. Trois baigneuses, may be seen in Le dos IV, I929-JO,
S (Figure J.) Matisse also did a variation on this and in the Barnes Murals.
still-life between I 9 I 5 and 1 9 I 7. (Barr, p. I7o.) 8 Copied c. I 895· (Barr, p. 293.)
6 By Chardin ; copied I 894-I 900. (Schneider, p. 9 By Raphael, copied, c. I 894· (Guichard-Melli,
1 3 1.) op. cit., p. 39.)
Notes 165

10 STATEMENT TO T ERIADE (ON CREATIVITY]

I E. Teriade, 'Propos de Henri Matisse', Minotaure, I copied . . . photographs, forcing myself to make the
I, 3-4, I933, p. I O. Reprinted Verve, IV, I 3 ; December greatest resemblance possible ; an image with as good
I 945, p. 20. Translated by permission of Albert a likeness as possible. I thus limited the field of possible
Skira. evolutions from my imagination. It was still an error,
2 In I 943, Matisse told Aragon : 'To get away from but what a lot of things I learned from it I' Louis
the individuality of the artist who relegates to the Aragon, 'Matisse-en-France', Henri Matisse dessim :
second level the intimate character inherent in the themes et variations, Paris, I943, p. 36.
thing in question like Raphael, Renoir, etc., who seem 3 The river that rises in the Alpes Maritimes and
to have always painted from the same woman • • • enters the sea at Nice.

II LETTERS TO ALEXANDRE ROMM

I The Fregch originals have recently been published from 1932-3 . For a detailed discussion of the project
in Matiss. Zivopis, skul'ptura, grafika, pisma, Lenin­ see Barr, pp . 24I-4.
grad, I 969, pp. I 3o-3 . Two of the letters on the 6 Poesies de Stephane Mallarme, Lausanne, I932.
Barnes Murals were first published in Iskusstvo, 4, 7 One of the two versions of Nature morte, Seville
I 934, pp. I 99-203. of I 9 I I . (Schneider, cat. no. 104 and addendum to
2 Alexandre Romm, Henri Matisse, Moscow, I935 ; no. 104 : pp. 77, I07 and Errata Addenda , n.p.)
an English translation was published in New York 8 For additional background and comments on these
in I 947· compositions see Barr, pp. 1 3 2-8.
3 Matiss [sic], Leningrad, I969, p. I 34· 9 Matisse had visited Renoir at Cagnes in I 9 1 7-1 8.
4 See for example : Dorothy Dudley, 'The Matisse IO Shchukin, fearing a scandal, was uneasy about
fresco in Merion, Pennsylvania', Hound and Horn, having such a large painting of nudes in his house,
VII, 2 ; January-March I934, pp . 298-303 ; Escholier, and had asked Matisse to paint out the boy flautist's
I 937, pp. I 38-4I ; Gaston Diehl, 'Matisse : A Ia sex, which Matisse refused to do (Barr, p. I 34).
recherche d'un art mural', Paris, Les Arts et les Shchukin then had it done when the painting was
lettres, no. 20, I 9 April I 946, pp. I , 3 ; also Text 4 I , delivered. Matisse's request to Romm evidently went
below. unheeded, since in autumn I970 the painting still had
S The first version dates from 193 I-2, the second a spot of red over the boy's sex,

12 ON MODERNISM AND TRADITION

1 Henri Matisse, 'On Modernism and Tradition', (Cezanne to Camoin, 1 3 September I903, in Rewald,
The Studio, IX, s o ; May I93S, pp. 236-9. op. cit. p. 230.)
2 Henri Matisse, 'Confrontations ', Formes, I, I I 6 Andre Derain (I88o-I954), whom Matisse had
January I930, p. I I . met at Carriere's studio in IC)O I . It was at Collioure
3 C f.. Cezanne (letter t o Roger-Marx, 2 3 January in the summer of I 90S that Matisse and Derain painted
I9os) : 'To my mind one should not substitute oneself their first purely Fauve canvases.
for the past, one has merely to add a new link.' (John 7 Henri-Edmond Cross ( I8s6-I9IO) with whom
Rewald, Paul Cezanne, Letters, London, I94I, p. 248.) Matisse worked in the s ummer of I904 at St. Tropez.
4 Roger Fry, 'Henri Matisse', Cahiers d'Art, VI, 8 An allusion, perhaps, to Picasso's Symbolic
s-6, I93 I , p. 63. Cubism of this period.
S Cf. Cezanne (letter to Emile Bernard, I 90S) : 'The 9 The incident seems to have taken place at the I 9o6
Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.' (Rewald, Salon des lndependants (Georges Duthuit, The
op. cit. p. 2so.) 'Go to the Louvre. But after having Fauvist Painters, New York, I 9SO, p . 35). Vauxcelles
seen the great masters who repose there, we must himself credited Matisse with helping to coin the term.
hasten out and by contact with nature revive in us the (See Barr, p. s6).
instincts and sensations of art that dwell within us.'

IJ STATEMENT TO T RIADE E (THE PURITY OF THE MEAN S]

I E. Teriade, 'Constance du fauvisme', Minotaure, II, changes in wording and with the addition here of:
9 ; IS October I936, p. 3· Translated by permission of 'A kilogramme of green is greener than half a kilo.
Albert Skira. Gauguin attributes this saying to Cezanne in a visitor's
2 As in such paintings as Grande robe bleue, fond noir book at the house of Marie Gloanec at Pont-Aven.'
of I937 (Figure 39). 4 Escholier, I 937, has this paragraph end with : 'It
3 The same statement is published by Escholier. all depends on the feeling you're after.'
(1 937, p. I 68 ; I 956, pp. I 34-5) wi� some slight S This sentence is omitted from the Escholier version.
1 66 Notes
14 ON C EzANNE'S 'TROIS BAIGNEUSES'

I Escholier, I 937, p. I 7 ; idem, I956, p. so. 2 For an account of Matisse's purchase of the paint­
ing, see Barr, pp. 38�40.

I5 DIVAGATIONS

I Henri Matisse, 'Divagations', Verve, I, I ; Decem­ who wanted to show my drawings to his master.
ber I937, pp . 8o-4. Rodin, who received me kindly, was only moderately
2 See Barr, pp. 222-3. interested. He told me I had facility of hand, which
3 The American painter Stuart Purser, for example, wasn't true. He advised me to do "fussy" drawings
recalls that when he visited Matisse in I 938, Matisse and to show them to him. I never went back. In order
was pleased when Purser expressed not only his own to understand my direction, I figured I had need of
enthusiasm for Matisse's drawings, but that of his someone's help to arrive at the right kind of detailed
students and colleagues. Purser has noted that Matisse drawings. For, proceeding from the simple to the
seemed to feel at this time that his drawing had the complex (but it's the simple which is difficult to ex­
widest appeal of all his work. plain) , when I had mastered the details, I would have
4 See interview with Jacques Guenne (Text 7, finished my work : that of understanding myself.
above) for Matisse's account of his own experience as 'My work-discipline was already the reverse of
a teacher. Rodin's. But I did not realize it then, for I was quite
5 The reference is to the well-known passage in modest, and each day brought its revelation.
Leonardo's notebooks. See for example Elizabeth G. 'I could not understand how Rodin could work on
Holt, A Documentary History ofArt, Garden City, N.Y., his Saint John, cutting off the hand and holding it on
I957, vol. I, p. 283. a peg ; he worked on the details holding it in his left
6 Matisse had brought Rodin some drawings in hand, it seems, anyhow keeping it detached from the
I 900, and was apparently rebuffed by the master. whole, then replacing it on the end of the arm ; then
Maurice Denis relates that Rodin told Matisse : 'Fuss he tried to find its direction in accord with his general
over it, fuss over it. When you have fussed over it two movement.
weeks more, come back and show it to me again.' 'Already, for myself I could only envisage the general
(Andre Gide, Journal, New York, I 947, I, p . I74-) architecture, replacing explanatory details by a living
Matisse gave Escholier (I 956, pp. I 6 I-2) his own and suggestive synthesis.�
version of the story as follows : 'I was taken to Rodin's 7 Michel Breal (I 832-I 9 I S), a well-known philo­
studio in the rue de l'Universite, by one of his pupils logist and semantic scholar.

16 MONTHERLANT : LISTENING TO MATISSE

I Henry de Montherlant, 'En ecoutant Matisse', chal de France and writer, served in the colonies in
L'Art et les Artistes, XXXI II, I 89 ; July I938, pp . 3 36-9. Indochina and Madagascar with General · Joseph
Translated by permission of Henry de Montherlant's Gallieni (I849- I 9 I 6) .
Executor. 5 Matisse, o n the other hand, was t o note that from
2 Though Matisse refused to illustrate both of these the time he chose a career as an artist he was pushed
books he later did illustrate a limited edition of on 'by I do not know what, a force that I see today is
PasipluU for Fabiani, published in I 944· He was to quite alien to my normal life as a man'. (Escholier,
repeat his ideas on the role of illustration in his inter­ I9S6, p. I 8.)
view with Georges Charbonnier in I9SO (see Text 4 I , 6 Matisse had also just expressed this idea in
below). 'Divagations'. He was doubtless aware that an artist's
3 The novelist Maurice Barres (I 862-I 923), who writings and statements could be quite relevant to
described Hugo's magnificent funeral in a chapter of other artists. As has been noted, Matisse was himself
Les diracines (I 897). keenly aware of the effect of statements by other
4 Louis Lyautey (I 8S4-I934), General, later Mare- artists (Cezanne, etc.) on his own thought.

17 NOTES OF A PAINTER ON HIS DRAWING

I Henri Matisse, 'Notes d'un peintre sur son dessin', 3 In I943, Matisse told Aragon : 'I do not paint
Le Point no. 2 I , July I939, pp . I04-IO. ·things, I paint only the difference between things . . . •

2 When Matisse was compared to the famous juggler, Consider, • . in the same series of drawings, the dress
.

Rastelli, around I 930, he replied : 'No, rather I am an or the fabric . you will find that in each drawing
• •

acrobat'. (Escholier, I956, p. I45·) Matisse later did they have the same quality as in the whole series. And
compare himself to a juggler ('How I Made My thus with other elements. There is, then, in these
Books', Text 27, below). series, a descriptive part of the objects which remains
Notes
unchanged from one drawing to the next. . . . Even 6 The 'someone' here and directly below refers to
if I feel like adding a few little embellishments to it I Gertrude Stein, by whose descriptions of Mme
Only the expression of the model has changed.' Louis Matisse ( The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, first
Aragon, 'Matisse-en-France', Henri Matisse dessins : published I 933 ; New York, 1 95 5 , pp. 35ff) Matisse had
themes et variations, Paris, I 943 , p. 37· been incensed enough to write a rebuttal for Testimony
4 The jewels and arabesques here referred to are Against Gertrude Stein, The Hague, I 93 5 , pp. 3-5 .
those which Matisse often used in his prints and draw­ 7 This was a recurring idea in Matisse's discussion
ings. Cf. William S. Lieberman, Matisse : so Years of drawing. See for example Gaston Diehl, 'Hen ri
of His Graphic Art, New York, I 956, pp . I I4-I7. Matisse le mediterraneen nous dit', Comredia, 7 Febru­
5 Cf. Matisse : ' Isn 't a drawing a synthesis, the cul­ ary I 942, p. I : 'The drawing should generate light.
mination of a series of sensations retained and re­ . . . To modify the diverse parts of the white paper, it
assembled by the brain and let loose by one last feeling, suffices to play the neighbouring areas against each
so that I execute the drawing almost with the irrespon­ other.'
sibility of a medium?' (Aragon, op. cit. p. 34.)

18 CARCO : CONVERSATION WITH MATISSE

I Francis Carco, 'Conversation avec Matisse', L'ami more important question to resolve. This spectacle
des peintres, Paris, I 953, pp. 2 I 9-3 8 (originally pub­ creates a shock in my mind. It is that which I have to
lished in Die Kunst-Zeitung, Zurich, 8, August I 943) ; represent, that which comes forth from myself.
interview dates from I 94 I . © Editions Gallimard 'I tum to nature to find the essence of each thing.
I 953 translated by permission. The means we use are beautiful in themselves, it is
2 In I 900 Matisse and Marquet had taken jobs at quite useless to add to them, and nature is herself
the theatrical scenery atelier of }ambon, near the Butte­ beauty and richness. It is a question of choice. But it
Chaumont. is always necessary to choose and to compose in order
3 Femande Olivier, Picasso's mistress, and author of to express oneself. In that way one moulds the brain
Picasso et ses amis, Paris, I 933· of the spectator.'
4 Cf. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (first published I O A street festival in Nice.
I 933 ; New York, I 95 5 , p. 36). Matisse actually had I I A popular music hall in Montmartre.
studied law, not pharmacy. This was one of many parts I 2 Kees Van Dongen ( I877-I934}, one of the original
of Gertrude Stein's account that Matisse refuted in Fauve group.
Testimony Against Gertrude Stein, The Hague, I 935· I 3 A French dance.
5 Max Jacob and Picasso a t that time lived at I 3 rue I 4 The Barnes collection is actually in Merion,
de Ravignan in the building known as 'Le Bateau­ Pennsylvania. The reference here may not be to the
Lavoir'. Frede, the proprietor of the 'Lapin Agile' Barnes Danse of I 93 I -3 , but to the I 909 Danse which
cabaret, was a well-known local character. in I 94 I was in the collection of Walter P. Chrysler
6 Cf. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, p. 37 : 'She (cf. Text 4 I , below).
was a very straight dark woman with a long face and I S Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon ( I 707-I 778), a
a firm loosely hung mouth like a horse'. famous naturalist, director of the Jardin du Roi, who
7 La femme au chapeau was of course painted in wrote extensive works on plants and animals. Matisse's
I 905 . The reference here is possibly to the portrait memory of the incident is perhaps somewhat confused.
of Mme Matisse, Le Madras rouge, I 907, Barr, The archives of the Musee National d'Histoire Natur­
p. 3 50. Matisse did not move to Issy, however, until elle reveal that the statue of Buffon in the Jardin des
I 909, and there may be some confusion here with Mme Plantes was executed by Jean-Marius-Simeon Carlus
Matisse of I 9 I 3, Barr, p. 392. (I 852-I 930), a student of Falguiere and Mercie. The
8 The Cezanne Trois baigneuses which Matisse had Buffon statue was done for the I 907 bicentennial
bought from Vollard in I 899· Despite his poverty at anniversary of Buffon 's birth. In I 903 Carlus did a
the time, he held on to the painting, which he gave bust of the museum director, Edmund Perrier, which
to the Musee du Petit Palais in I 936. (See Text I4, evidently led to the Buffon commission. It is therefore
above.) possibly the bust of Perrier that Matisse remembers
9 In 1 947 Matisse, speaking of abstract painting, being executed, not the statue of Buffon.
remarked to Escholier : 'Starting as I do from direct I 6 The painter Eugene Carriere ( I 849-I 906).
contact with nature, I have never wanted to be con­ I7 Jean Puy ( I 876- I 96o), Pierre Laprade ( I 875-
fined inside a doctrine whose laws would prevent me I 932), Auguste-Elisee Chabaud ( I 882- I 955).
from getting health and strength through contact with I8 The original is 'Attention! V'la l'degel! Idiomatic­
the earth ; like Antaeus.' (Escholier, I 956, p. 95 .) ally, the phrase also connotes a loss of innocence. In
Matisse discussed this relationship with Gaston Diehl this context, Matisse is chiding Laprade for acquiring
('Les nourritures terrestres de Matisse', XXe Siecle, a glib facility, which resembled that of Carriere's soft
2, I 8 October I 945 , p. I ) : 'If it were only a matter of (melted) forms .
arranging some flowers, for example, in a vase, in I 9 Jean-Louis Forain ( I 85 2-I 93 I) was an Academic
order to make a motif for drawing or painting, art painter a�d a critic. The allusion is to the hazy forms
would be quite an easy thing. In reality there is a much in Carriere's painting.
168 Notes
20 Auguste Pegurier (I856-I 936). secretly labours to produce a perfect painting ; after
2I The painter Henri Lebasque (I 865-I 937) bad ten years of work on the canvas, he shows it to two
left Paris in I 900 for reasons of health. Matisse later young painters who find it incomprehensible. Kurt
(I9I7-I8) visited Renoir at Cagnes. Badt (The Art of Cezanne, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
22 Pintre, a variant of pinter, 'to tipple', a pun on I 965, pp. 202-o5) relates the story to the whole pro­
peintre, 'painter'. blem of 'realization' that has confronted modem
23 Annuaire Almanach du commerce et de l'industrie painting since the nineteenth century. Although
(Didot-Bottin), the commercial directory found in Carco's comparison seems unfair, Matisse during the
French post offices and cafes. early I 940s was in fact having very great problems
24 Both painters did several pictures of these views. with the 'realization' of his works. The nature and
See Barr, pp. 68-9, 309. intensity of his feelings at this time are well described
25 Berthe Weill owned the first private gallery to in a letter to Pierre Bonnard (I 3 January I 940) : 'Your
exhibit Matisse (February I 9o2). Albert Sarraut (I 872- letter has found me knocked out this morning, com­
I 962), an acquaintance of several Paris School person­ pletely discouraged . . . . For I am paralysed by some­
ages, was a well-known politician and connoisseur, thing conventional which keeps me from expressing
and author of many pieces on modem art. myself in painting as I would like. My drawing and
26 Frank Harris (I 854-I93 I), the novelist, dramatist, my painting are separated.
biographer, and bon vivant. 'My drawing suits me, for it renders my particular
27 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, p. 37· Matisse feelings. But I have a painting, bridled by new con­
denied this statement in Testimony Against Gertrude ventions of flatness through which I should express
Stein, p. 4· myself entirely, exclusively in local tones, without
28 Louis Mreterlinck (I 846-I926), painter and art shading, without modelling, which should react with
historian ; also director of the Musee de Grand. one another to suggest light, spiritual space. This
29 Probably Nature morte rouge au magnolia (Figure hardly goes with my spontaneity which makes me
4I). balance a large work in a minute because I reconceive
30 Eugene Fromentin (I 82o-I 876), painter, novelist, my picture several times in the course of its execution
and author of a classic treatise on seventeenth-century without knowing where I am going, relying on my
Dutch and Flemish painting. instinct. I have found a drawing which, after the pre­
3 I Leopold Zborowski (I 889-I 932). liminary work, has the spontaneity which empties me
32 Fran�oise Gilot (Life with Picasso, New York­ entirely of what I feel, but this means is exclusively
Toronto-London, 1 964, pp. 99-I oo) notes their for me, artist and spectator. But a drawing by a colour­
lasting rivalry, as well as their mutual respect ist is not a painting. He must produce an equivalent
(pp. 26I-4). in colour. It is this which I do not achieve.' ('Corres­
33 A reference to Balzac's short story 'Le chef­ pondence Matisse-Bonnard, I 925-46', La Nouvelle
d'reuvre inconnu', in which the painter Frenhofer Revue Franfaise, XVIII, 2 I I, I July I97o, p. 92.)

19 ON TRANSFORMATIONS

I First Papers on Surrealism, New York, I 942, not

paginated. The letter is dated 7 June I 942.

20 MATISSE ' S RADIO INTERVIEW : FIRST BROADCAST

I This text is translated from a French transcript If I had painted in the north as thirty years ago, my
very kindly made available to me by M. Pierre painting would have been different : there would have
Schneider. been mists, greys, gradations of colour through per­
2 Excerpts from both broadcasts are published in spective. In New York the painters say, 'we can't
Barr, pp. 562-3. The first broadcast probably dates paint here, with this sky made of zinc ! ' In fact, it is
to mid-January I942 (the I3 March transcript says it admirable. Everything becomes clear-cut, crystalline,
appeared 'about two months ago'). precise, limpid. Nice, in this way, had helped me. You
3 In I 9 I 8 Matisse had written in a letter to Camoin must understand that what I paint are objects thought
(23 May I9I8) : 'What a lovely place Nice is l What of in plastic terms : if I close my eyes, I see the objects
light, soft and tender despite its brilliance.' And in better than with my eyes open, free of accidental
I 943, he told Aragon : 'Nice . • why Nice? In my
• detail ; that is what I paint . • ' (Louis Aragon,
• .

art I have tried to create a crystalline state for the 'Matisse-en-France', Henri Matisse dessins: themes et
mind : this necessary limpidity I have found in several variations, Paris, I943, p. 32.)
places in the world, in New York, in Oceania, in Nice.
 Notes 16 9

21 CONVERSATION WITH ARAGON [ON SIGNS ]

I Louis Aragon, 'Matisse-en-France', in Henri Jean Stewart), London-New York, 1 972. Trans­
Matisse dessins: themes et variations, Paris, I 943 ; re­ lation © Collins and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
printed in Louis Aragon, Henri Matisse (translated by

22 HENRI-MATISSE AT HOME

I Marguette Bouvier, 'Henri-Matisse chez lui', 4 The girl Annelies appears in a photograph with
Labyrinthe, 1, IS October I 944, pp. I-3 · Translated by Matisse on p. 2 of Bouvier's article.
permission of Albert Skira. s Cf. Aragon, Text 2 I , above, on the rendering of
2 A. Moorish carved and inlaid screen. trees.
3 These paintings (Femme endormie; Annelies, tulipes,
anhrumes, etc.) are illustrated in Bouvier's article ; cf
Barr, p. 492.

23 THE ROLE AND MODALITIES OF COLOUR

I Henri Matisse, 'Role et modalites de Ia couleur', chants. Bannard told me the same thing, and added
in Gaston Diehl, Problemes de la peinture, Lyons, I 945, that when he had seen the originals he found them a
pp. 237-40. bit disappointing. That is explained by the patina and
2 Escholier, I9S6, p. 97, notes that the young Victor the discolouration of the old prints. Perhaps if we had
Hugo first connected Chinese art with lngres in only had the originals to look at, we would not have
Conversation Litteraire, I 8 I 9, while speaking of the been as impressed as by the reprints.' (Cited in
lngres Odalisque. Schneider, p. I I?.)
3 Crepons : Brightly coloured Japanese prints on 4 Leon Bakst had done the settings for Diaghilev's
crepe paper. In a letter to A. Rouveyre ( I S February Scheherazade. For more on Bakst's designs see Deborah
I942) Matisse made an interesting observation on these Howard, 'A Sumptuous Revival : Bakst's Designs for
crepons : 'I knew and profited from the Japanese Diaghilev's Sleeping Princess', Apollo, XCI, 98 ; April
through reproductions, the poor prints bought on the I 970, pp. 30 I-o8.
rue de Seine in the boxes carried by the print mer-

24 OBSERVATIONS ON PAINTING

I Henri Matisse (Observations on Painting, untitled), 4 Cf. Matisse, Portraits, Text 44, below.
Verve, IV,I 3 ; December 194s, pp. 9-10 ; translated as s See Note 2 to Text 23, above.
'Observations on Painting', by Douglas Cooper, 6 Cf. Cezanne (letter to Camoin, 9 December 1904) :
Horizon, XIII, 7 S ; March 1 946, pp. I 8S-?· Retranslated 'Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only
here using Cooper's title. be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be
2 Probably Nature morte, bouteille de menthe. (Meyer anything but an imitator.' (John Rewald, ed., Paul
Schapiro, Paul Cezanne, New York, I9S2, p. 97.) Cezanne, Letters, London, 1941, p. 241 .)
3 Matisse clarifies this with his comparison of lngres
and Delacroix, below.

25 INTERVIEW WITH DEGAND

I Uon Degand, 'Matisse a Paris'' Les Lettres fran­ diplomat in Paris. Although begun in I 944, it was not
faises, 6 October I 94S, p. 7·
Translated by permission finished until 1 947. (See Barr, pp. 269-70, 493 .) At
of Les Lettres franfaises. the time of Degand's visit, the panel was provisionally
2 The panel was commissioned by an Argentine 'finished'.

26 BLACK IS A COLOUR

I Henri Matisse, 'Temoignages de peintres : Le colour instead of as an element of linear construction.

noir est une couleur', Derriere le miro£r, Paris : Maeght, 3 Dejeuner a l'ateUer, 1 868. The man in the black
December I 946, pp. 2, 6, 7· coat is Leon Koella. (Illustrated : Georges Bataille,
2 Matisse does not mean that he had given up the Manet, New York, I 9 S S , p. 79.)
use of black, but that he no longer used it merely for 4 Zacharie Astruc, 1 864 (Bataille, o-p . cit. , p. 2 1).
linear construction as in his earlier works. Actually at S Les Marocains, 1 9 1 6 ; Barr, p. 1 72 .
this time Matisse was making great use of black as a
1 70 Notes
27 HOW I MADE MY BOOKS

I Henri Matisse, 'Comment j'ai fait mes livres', in important thing is to create its substance. One lives
Anthologie du livre illustre par les peintres et sculpteurs with it in order to understand its demands, its possi­
de l'ecole de Paris, Geneva, I946, pp. 2I-4. For an bilities. Little by little one ventures forward, one per­
informative discussion of Matisse's illustrated books fects the rapports. These, in their turn, will permit me
see Barr, pp. 27o-5. to colour my blacks like my whites, to animate my
2 Matisse discussed his outlook on book illustration surfaces and therefore to give the image the interior
with Escholier ( I 956, p. I 5 3 ) : 'I agree with your dis­ rhytlun which corresponds to the expression of the
tinction between the illustrated and the decorated author.'
book. A book should not need completion by an S Pierre Reverdy, Visages, Paris, I 946 ; Florilege des
imitative illustration. Painter and writer should work Amours de Ronsard, Paris, I 948 ; Marianna Alcaforado,
together, without confusion, on parallel lines. The Les Lettres portugaises, Paris, I 946. For a full list of
drawing should be a plastic equivalent of the poem. I Matisse's illustrated books, see Barr, pp. 559-60.
wouldn't say first violin and second violin, but a con­ Matisse also gave an interesting account of the Ronsard
certed whole. ' illustrations to Marguette Bouvier, 'Henri Matisse
3 Matisse's first book, Poesies de Stephane Mallarme, illustre Ronsard', Commdia, 8o, 9 January I 943, pp. I , 6.
Lausanne, I932. It is interesting to note that Matisse 6 Speaking of these linoleum cuts, Matisse told Gas­
does not consider books illustrated by drawings not ton Diehl ('Avec Matisse le classique', Commdia, I02,
specifically done for them (such as Reverdy's Les I2 June 1 943, p. 6) : 'Three elements are in play : the
Jockeys camoufles of I 9 I 8) or even designs not related linoleum, the gouge, and the bonhomme. It suffices to
to the text (such as Joyce's Ulysses of I935), as his arrive at an accord between them, that is to express
'Illustrated books', but confines the term to books oneself according to the materials, to live with them.
which were the result of close collaboration between Gustave Moreau loved to repeat "The more imperfect
him and the publisher. The history of the Mallarme the means, the more the sensibility manifests itself".
book is given by Barr, pp. 244-6. And didn't Cezanne also say : "It is necessary to work
4 Henry de Montherlant, Pasiphlie: Chant de Minos with coarse means"? Here, to do things with such
(Les Cretois), Paris, I944· Matisse spoke of this book simple means, but at the same time in a very delicate
to Gaston Diehl, 'Matisse, illustrateur et maitre manner, it is necessary to feel deeply, the sensation
d'reuvre', Commdia, I 32, 22 January I944, p. I : 'The must burst forth definitively and totally.'

28 OCEANIA

I Henri Matisse, 'Oceanie, tenture murale', Laby­ 2 The Tahiti trip of I930. The tapestries were pro­
rinthe, II , 3 , pp. 22-3, December I946. The com­ duced by Ascher and Company, London, in a limited
positions are reproduced along with the text. edition of thirty.

29 JAZZ

I Henri Matisse, Jazz, Paris, I947· 4 See Barr, pp. 274-5.

2 The book was published on 30 September I 947· 5 For example, compare Matisse's 'Clown' (Frontis­
The plates were executed by Edmond Vaivel after the piece to Jazz) with the I 9 I7 photograph of Nicolas
decoupages of Matisse, using the same colours. The Zverew as the Acrobat in Parade (Douglas Cooper,
cover and manuscript pages were printed by Draeger Picasso theatre, Paris, I 967, fig. 78). For other striking
Freres. The edition consisted of 250 numbered copies parallels, see the Parade costumes of the Chinese
(and twenty copies, numbered I-XX, hors commerce) Conjurer (Cooper, figs. 83-4), the French and Ameri­
on vellum. All were signed by the artist. In addition can Managers (Cooper, figs. 85-7), and the Horse
IOO albums of plates only were printed. (Cooper, fig. 89), as well as the scenery (Cooper,
Matisse had done papiers decoupes for Verve, I, I ; figs. 99-I oo) .
December I 937, and in June I943 a Fall of Icarus for 6 For a detailed description of the Parade perform­
Verve, IV, I 3 ; December I 945, which is an early version ance, see Cooper, op. cit. pp. I 3-34 ; also Roger
of the Jazz plate 'Icarus'. Although Matisse had Shattuck, The Banquet Years, revised ed., London,
earlier used cut paper for the Barnes Murals and other · I 969, pp. I 56-8. (Shattuck, Zoe. cit.).
works, these were his first uses of the cut-out as a 7 In I 9 I 6 Picasso and Matisse had sponsored a
medium in itself. Granados-Satie concert. Matisse returned to Paris
3 The text to Jazz is divided into sixteen sections. from his first season in Nice in the late spring of I 9I 7.
Some sections are introduced by a title, others by an (Barr, p. I 83.) On I6 August I 9 I7 Satie, in a letter to
underlined opening phrase. Jean Cocteau, wrote : 'If you see Matisse give him my
Notes
best and fondest regards [dites lui mille choses de ma part, his students in I 908 (See 'Sarah Stein's Notes', Text 4).
et combien je l'aime].' (Cooper, p. 342.) I2 This section ends with the parenthetical note
8 In an interview with Matisse, Gaston Diehl ('La ' ( Tm. de JC)'. The reference to Jesus is of course a
le<;on de Matisse', Comcedia, I46-7, 29 April I 944, P· 4) general paraphrase on love. See, for example, I John 4 ;
notes that Matisse was working 'on a series of cut and Luke I O : 27.
pasted paper compositions which will form an album 1 3 Cf. Matisse's recollection of the lagoons in Tahiti
entitled "Circus" or perhaps "Jazz" ', and notes that in 'Oceania', Text 28, above : and ' Interview with
several of the compositions were 'already composed'. Verdet', Text 42, below. Three of the plates in Jaz:t
9 Jazz music came to Paris in I 9 I 8 when an American (XVI I-XIX) are entitled 'Lagoon'.
Negro orchestra played at the Casino de Paris. Satie's 14 Cf. Matisse to Aragon (Text 21, above) : 'Perhaps
use of jazz was its first concert treatment in French after all, without knowing it, I believe in a life to come,
music. (See Shattuck, op. cit. p. I S S · ) in some paradise where I shall paint frescoes . . . '
10 This section is a condensation of two of the themes I S Angele Lamotte, Teriade's collaborator on Veroe,
of 'Exactitude is Not Truth', Text 32, below. had died early in I 94S ·
1 1 So did Matisse ; he also passed this advice on to

30 ANDR E MARCHAND : THE EYE

1 Andre Marchand, 'L'ffiil', in Jacques Kober, ed. , organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half­
Henri Matisse, Paris : Pierre a Feu (Maeght), 1 947, pp. tone or quarter-tone the surfaces represented by
S I-3 · Translation by permission of the publisher colour sensations. (So that light does not exist for the
Marchand, a somewhat eclectic painter, was active in painter. )' John Rewald, Paul Cezanne, Letters, London,
Paris after World War I I. I941, p. 243 ·
2 Cf. Cezanne (letter to Emile Bernard, 23 Decem· 3 Matisse was in Corsica in 1 898.
her 1 904) : 'An optical impression is produced on our

31 THE PATH OF COLOUR

I Henri Matisse, 'Le chemin de Ia couleur', Art driven on by something, I do not know what, by a
Present, 2, 1 947, p. 23. force which I see today as something alien to my normal
2 See C. R . Morse, 'Matisse's Palette', Art Digest, life as a man.' (Escholier, 1 9s6, p. I 8.)
VII, I S February 1 933, p . 26. 4 Brightly coloured Japanese prints o n crepe paper.
3 Upon the opening of the Le Cateau Museum in See 'Role and Modalities of Colour', Text 23, above.
I 9S2, Matisse recalled when he first realized his s There were two important exhibitions of Islamic
vocation as a painter : 'I was constantly aware of my art that Matisse seems later to have confused. (Barr,
decision, and despite the certitude that I had found p. 90, n. s.) The first was in Paris in 1 903, the second
my true vocation, one in which I was in my own e}e.. in Munich in 1 9 10. Although the 1 903 exhibition
ment and not hemmed in as in my earlier life, still I seems to be the one referred to here, Matisse could
was frightened, realizing that there was no turning well be actually referring to the later exhibition, since
back. So I plunged headlong into the work at hand, that period in his art was as revolutionary as the
following the principle that I had had dnunmed into developments of 1 903, especially in terms of spatial
me all my life, which was "Hurry up l " Just like my conception.
parents, I got on with my work as quickly as possible,

32 EXACTITUDE I S NOT TRUTH

I Henri Matisse, 'Exactitude is not Truth', in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The text was written
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henri Matisse : Retro­ in May 1 947. The title phrase comes from a saying of
spective, Philadelphia, 1 948, pp. 33-4. Translation by Delacroix.
Esther Rowland Clifford, reprinted by permission of

33 LETTER TO HENRY CLIFFORD

I Henri Matisse, 'Letter from Matisse to Henry Henry Clifford. The French version of the letter
Clifford', in Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henri published in Henri Matisse : Les grandes gouaches
Matisse : Retrospective, Philadelphia, 1 948, pp. I S-I6. decoupees (Paris, 196 1 ), is not a true copy, but rather
The present text is translated from a copy of the a translation into French of the English version pub·
original letter, which was very kindly sent me by Mr. lished in the Philadelphia catalogue. It is interesting
 Notes
to note that, contrary to edited versions of the letter, impotence of his execution?' (Linda Nochlin, ed. ,
Matisse actually suggested that the letter be published Realism and Tradition in Art, z848-zgoo, Englewood
in 'the explanatory part' of the Philadelphia catalogue. Cliffs, 1 966, p. I O.)
2 There is a striking similarity between certain parts 3 Cf. Cezanne (letter to Emile Bernard, 25 July
of Matisse's letter and some of Bouguereau's remarks 1 904) : 'To achieve progress nature alone counts, and
in an address to the Institut de France in 1 885, in the eye is trained through contact with her.' (John
which he stresses the importance of studying to Rewald, Paul Cezanne, Letters, London, I 94 I , p. 239.)
acquire technical skill, for ' . . . can greater misery be 4 Correggio's statement, 'Anch'io son pittore', is sup­
conceived than that experienced by the artist who posed to have been uttered by the artist before the
feels the fulfilment of his dream compromised by the Raphael St. Cecilia at Bologna.

34 INTERVIEW WITH R. W. HOWE

I Russell Warren Howe, 'Half-an-Hour With judge fairly what follows one's own work. One can
Matisse', Apollo, XLIX, February I 949, p. 29. judge what has happened before and what comes along
2 Matisse nevertheless had a great deal of regard for at the same time. And even among those who follow,
Delacroix, especially as a draftsman. (But see also when a painter hasn't completely forgotten me, I
Text 8, note 4.) understand him a little bit, even though he goes
3 A gracious way of implying that he disapproves. beyond me. But when he gets to the point where he no
Matisse reportedly enlarged on this in a conversation longer makes any reference to what for me is painting,
with Picasso around this time. Having received some I can no longer understand him I can't judge him
.

catalogues with reproductions of American Abstract either. It's completely over my head.' Matisse then
Expressionist Paintings, he noted : 'I have the went on to say that Renoir had felt the same way about
impression that I'm incapable of judging painting like him (Fran�oise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York­
.

that for the simple reason that one is always unable to Toronto-London, 1964, pp. 268-9.)

35 HENRI MATISSE SPEAKS TO YOU

I 'Henri Matisse vous parle' , Traits, 8, March 1 950, 3 One of Le Corbusier's drawings of the statue is
p. 5· reproduced in Traits on the page facing Matisse's
2. The plaster cast, presently at the Musee Matisse article.
in Nice-Cimiez, is of an Argive Greek kouros. The
original, which is identified as Cleobis by an inscription,
is in the Museum at Delphi.

36 THE TEXT (PREFACE TO THE TOKYO EXHIBITION ]

1 Henri Matisse, 'Le Texte', in Tokyo National Chapel and several of his sculptures had been shown
Museum, Henri Matisse, Tokyo, I 95 1 , p. [2] . for the first time.
2 In 1 950, at which the maquettes for the Vence

37 THE CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY

1 Henri Matisse, 'La Chapelle du Rosaire', in labour and it represents the result of my entire active
Chapelle du Rosaire des Dominicaines de Vence, Vence, life. I consider it despite its imperfections, to be my
1 95 I . masterpiece . • an effort which issues from a life con­
.

2 In his letter to Bishop Remand for the conse­ secrated to the search for truth. ' (L'Ar t sacre, I I-I2,
cration of the Chapel, Matisse said of it : 'This work I 95 I , pp. [2-3].) Interestingly, Matisse scrupulously
has taken me four years of exclusive and assiduous avoids religious references in both these texts.

38 THE CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY (ON THE MURALS AND WINDOWS]

1 Henri Matisse, 'Chapelle du rosaire des Domini­ also more literally descriptive than the final, expressive
caines de Vence', France Illustration, 3 20, I December . ones. See Barr, pp. 52o-I .
1 95 1 , pp . [56 I -70] ; reprinted as 'La Chapelle de 3 The Stations of the Cross panel is in fact one of
Vence, aboutissement d'une vie', xxe Siecle, special Matisse's most violent departures from the art 'devoid
number, 'Hommage a Henri Matisse' (I 97o), pp. 7 I - of troubling or depressing subject matter', that he had
73 · stated as his goal in 'Notes of a Painter', and throughout
2 The early studies for the Stations of the Cross were his career.
Notes 1 73

39 MATISSE SPEAKS

t E. Teriade, 'Matisse Speaks', Art News Annual, 7 Matisse refers here to the 1 9 1 5-17 variation of his
2 1 , 1 952, pp. 4e>-7 1 , reproduced by permission of Art 1893-5 copy of the De Heem painting. (See Barr,
News. pp . 17o-1.)
2 At St . Quentin Matisse had worked under a 8 Barr, p. 3 1 5.
Professor Croise at the Ecole Quentin-Latour, primarily 9 Of 19 16. (Barr, p . 1 72.)
a school for textile and tapestry designers. xo The so-called 'Moroccan Triptych' of 1 9 1 2
3 Actually Philbert-Leon Couturier ( x 823-190I), a (Barr, pp. 386--7 ).
student of the history and genre painter Fran�ois 1 1 In fact, Cezanne mentioned only spheres,
Picot ( 1 786-x 868). cylinders, and cones.
4 Auguste Joseph Trupheme ( 1 836-1 898). 1 2 Now the Musee de !'Homme.
5 See Escholier ( 1 937, pp. 30-1) for an elaboration. 13 Les baigneuses (Barr, p. 408) and the Lefon de
6 The critic Roger Marx (x 859-19 1 3) had defended piano are two of Matisse's largest and most austere
the Louvre copies of Matisse and other Moreau early works.
students and pleaded their case before the Purchase 14 James Tissot ( x 83 6-1 902), a painter of exotic
Committee. Marx later {winter 190 1-o2) introduced Eastern scenes.
Matisse to Berthe Weill.

40 TESTIMONIAL

I Maria Luz, 'Temoignages : Henri Matisse' xxe 6 The figure referred to is not part of one of Matisse's
'
Siecle, n.s. 2 ; January 1952, pp. 55-7. Translated by compositions, but one of the several Chinese ceramic
permission of XX6 Siecle. figures he owned.
2 This 1940 picture, which had been repainted 7. The painter Othon Friesz (x 879-1949) , of whom
several times, seems to have been a favourite of Matisse had a low opinion. In 1935 he had written to
Matisse. Camoin describing a Friesz exhibition, which he called
3 The work referred to is Poissons chinois, 195 1 . 'shabby' . (Escholier, 1956, p. 237 . )
(Pierre Reverdy and Georges Duthuit, The Last Works 8. An excellent description of an essential difference
of Henri Matisse, New York, 1958, p. 3 1.) between the conception of things in even his latest
4 Table de marbre rose, 19 17. (Barr, p. 407.) paintings and the cut-outs.
5 The dugong is, of course, a sea-dwelling mammal ;
there is a line drawing of it in the Nouveau Larousse
illustre, the popular French encyclopaedia.

41 INTERVIEW WITH CHARBONNIER

I Georges Charbonnier, 'Entretien avec Henri go. It was in me like a rhythm which carried me along.
Matisse', Le Monologue du peirztre, vol. II, Paris, 1960, I had the surface in my head. But once the drawing
pp. 7-16 © Editions Julliard 1960. This interview was finished, when I came to colour it , I had to change
was recorded on tape in August 1950 and broadcast in all the pre-arranged forms. I had to fill the whole thing,
January 1 95 1 . and give a whole that would remain architectural. On
2 The Shchukin painting (Figure 21). the other hand, I had to stay in strict conjunction with
3 This is an expansion of the same story that Matisse the masonry, so that the lines would hold their own
told Carco in 194 1 (see Text x 8) Georges Duthuit and against the enormous, projecting blocks of the down­
Edward Steichen, however, have suggested folk origins curving arches, and even more important, that the
for the dance theme. (See Barr, p. 1 35.) lines would follow across them with sufficient vitality
4 Cf. 'Notes o f a Painter', above, where Matisse also to harmonize with each other. To compose with all
discusses repose and movement in works of art. that and to obtain something alive and singing, I could
5 See Matisse's letter to Romm (14 Feoruary 1 934), only proceed by groping my way and continually
Text 1 1 , above. modifying my compartments of colours and blacks.'
6 In 1 946, Matisse told Gaston Diehl (Les Arts et les 7 Matisse spent a lot of effort on the design of this
lettres, 19 April 1946) : ' I had conceived this Danse long spire. In 1 950 he told D. W. Buchanan that the spire
before, and had put it in the Bonheur de vivre, then in was being changed because it looked 'too fragile', and
my first big dance composition. This time, however, would harmonize better with a heavier base. See
when I wanted to make sketches on three canvases of Donald W. Buchanan, 'Interview in Montpamasse',
one metre, I couldn't get it. Finally, I took three can­ Canadian Art, VIII, 2, 1950- x , pp. 6 �-5 .
vases of five metres, the very dimensions of the panels, 8 Barr (p. 28 1 ) recounts that when the poet Louis
and one day, armed with charcoal on the end of a Aragon, a Communist, visited Matisse shortly after the
bamboo stick, I set out to draw the whole thing at one first model of the Chapel had been constructed, Aragon
 1 74 Notes
said of the model : 'Very pretty-very gay-in fact, tion of my ideas. I changed my method, and worked in
when we take over we'll turn it into a dance hall.' clay in order to have a rest from painting where I had
Matisse replied : 'Oh no, you won't. I've already taken done absolutely all that I could for the time being.
precautions. I have a formal agreement with the town That is to say that it was done for the purpose of
of Vence that if the nuns are expropriated the Chapel organization, to put order into my feelings and to find
will become a museum, a monument historique J ' a style to suit me. When I found it in sculpture, it
9 Or, i t is implied, like late Matisse. Matisse always helped me in my painting. It was always in view of a
kept his torment veiled from the outside world, and complete possession of my mind, a sort of hierarchy of
this reference to El Greco is an interesting statement all my sensations that I kept working in the hope of
of his evident belief that one's 'torment' could be finding an ultimate method.' (Jean Guichard-Melli,
sublimated and produce imagery like his own. Matisse, New York, I 967, p. I68.)
IO Matisse told Pierre Courthion : 'I took up sculpture I I Alain was the non de plume of the French philoso­
because what interested me in painting was a clarifica- pher Emile-Auguste Chartier (I 868-I 95 I).

42 INTERVIEW WITH VERDET

I Andre Verdet, 'Entretiens avec Henri Matisse, ' in I956, unpaginated, printed in an edition limited to
Prestiges de Matisse (Paris, I952), pp . 37-76. 35 copies) in which Matisse is quoted as having said : ' I
2 'EUe est l'elan passionnel qui gonjle ses dessins.' Pun told Picasso : yes, I pray, and you too, and you know it
on elan which means 'moose' or 'elk' as well as 'impulse' very well : when all goes badly, we throw ourselves
or 'enthusiasm'. Cf. Gustave Moreau (Cahier IV, p. 23, into prayer to refind the climate of our first communion.
as cited in Ragnar van Holten, Gustave Moreau, Paris, And you do it, you too. Don't say no' (March I949) ;
I960) : 'Art is dead when, in composition, the reason­ 'One is led, one doesn't lead. I am only a servant.'
able combination of the mind and good sense come to 'Death is not at all final, it is a door which opens'
replace, in the artist, the almost purely plastic (March I 952).
imaginative conception-in a word, the love of the 8 The Ecole des Beaux-Arts was for Matisse a symbol
arabesque.' of a certain kind of stupidity. In I942 Matisse devoted
3 The reference is to the series of blue cut-out female most of a radio broadcast to the subject. In that
figures Matisse was then working on (see Figure 46). interview he asked 'couldn't one give "travelling
4 A revealing example of Matisse's concern with scholarships" to artists • • so that they could go in
•

Gestalt impressions, as opposed to Cezanne's concern freedom to study abroad, or in our Colonies or even in
with detailed analysis of visual sensations. France, anywhere they feel that there is a possibility to
5 Cf. Matisse (in a radio interview, I 942, Text 20, develop and enrich themselves?' (Barr, p. 563.)
above) : 'An artist has no greater enemies than his bad 9 A recurrent theme in Matisse's later statements.
paintings.' I O Trepang, o r sea cucumber.
6 The reference is probably to Les legumes, I 95 I I I Matisse, recalling his I 907 visit to Italy, told
(signed I 952). Pierre Reverdy and Georges Duthuit, Escholier, around the same time as the Verdet inter­
The Last Works of Henri Matisse, New York, I958, view : 'In front of the primitives of Sienna, I thought
p. 20. "Here I am in Italy, the Italy of the primitives which I
7 Matisse's Chapel had indeed roused a good deal of loved. When, in Venice, I came to the great Titian,
speculation about his return to Catholicism. On Veronese, those wrongly termed Renaissance masters, I
25 June I95 I , the day of the consecration of the Vence saw in them superb fabrics created for the rich, by
Chapel, a Reuters dispatch stated untruthfully that those great sensuous artists of more physical than
Matisse had 'sent a message to the Bishop declaring spiritual value. " ' (Escholier, I956, p. 86.)
that building the chapel had renewed his faith in God', I2 La Reunion (Reunion Island), east of Madagascar.
and that Matisse had told the Bishop 'I started this I 3 Gustave Geffroy defended Cezanne in Le Journal,
work four years ago, and as a result I know now I I6 November I 895· He also sat for an excellent
believe in God.' (Barr, p. 287.) The I 5 July issue of portrait by Cezanne. His review of Matisse's Femme au
La Vie catholique illustree published the story of the chapeau in the I 905 Salon d'Automne had been
chapel under the headline ' "EVERY TIME I WORK I unfavourable. In Matisse's I9I3 interview with Clara
BELIEVE IN GOD" ', a misleading transposition of MacChesney, Matisse had himself met this bourgeois
Matisse's somewhat less than religious statement in misunderstanding of both modem and Antique art
Jazz (Text 29, above). The attempt to align Matisse (see Text 6).
with the Church is also reflected in a curious little I4 Louis Valtat (I 869-I 952).
book composed of a few short quotations from Matisse I 5 Charles Estienne, L'Art abstrait, est-il un aca­
(Propos de Matisse : propos notes par le pere Couturier, . dhnisme?, Paris, I 950.
Notes 1 75

43 LOOKIN G AT LIFE WITH THE EYES OF A CHILD

I Henri Matisse, 'Looking at Life with the Eyes of a 2 This occurs in some works of the ic p ri d, su h
Child', Art News and Review, London, 6 February as Fenetre ouverte, 1 92 1 . (Schneider, p. 226.)
I 954, p. 3· Vence is misprinted as 'Venice' twice in this
article, and it is corrected in the version given here.

44 PORTRAITS

I Henri Matisse, Portraits, Monte Carlo, 1 954. 5 Regarding this decisiveness, Matisse had told
2 See Escholier, 1 956, p. 1 93 . Aragon in 1 943 : 'When you slap someone, you ob­
3 Though Matisse had remarked (Text 20, above) viously don't do it with softness and uncertainty. o,
that ordinary portrait painters were being outdone by there is an impulse. And this impulse is not dec · i n,
good photographers. it is conviction. You slap someone with conviction . . . '
4 Rene Leriche, author of Philosophie de la Chirurgie, (Louis Aragon, 'Matisse-en- France' , Henri Matisse
who operated on Matisse in 1 94 1 , and to whom Matisse dessins: themes et variations, Paris, 1 943 , p. 1 3 .)
in gratitude wrote, 'I owe you these few years, since
they are a bonus . • ' (Escholier, 1 956, p. 207.)
• .
 Bibliography

For works on Matisse up to I95I the reader is referred to the excellent bibliography in
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: his Art and his Public, New York, I 95 I , and to Giovanni
Scheiwiller, Henri Matisse, 5th edition, Milan, I 947, pp. I 4-3 2.

General References
AcEVEDo, C. DE Dibutade; ou, La representation picturale des formes. Paris, I95I·
A.RNASoN, H. H. History of Modern Art. Englewood Cliffs, I 968.
AsHTON, D oRE A Reading of Modern Art. Cleveland and London, I969.
BADT, KURT The Art of Cezanne. Berkeley and Los Angeles, I 965.
Baltimore Museum of Art Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings in the Cone Collection.
Baltimore, I 967.
BARR, ALFRED H., Jr. Picasso : Fifty Years of his Art. New York, I946.
BARR, ALFRED H., Jr. Masters of Modern Art. New York, I 954·
BARRY, J osEPH A. Left Bank, Right Bank : Paris and Parisians. New York, n.d.
{I95 I ).
BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES La Vie et l'muvre d'Eugene Delacroix. Paris, I 928.
BERGSON, HENRI Creative Evolution. New York, I 9 I 1 .
BERNARD, EMIL 'Souvenirs sur Paul Cezanne et lettres inedites', Mercure de France, I and
I S October I 907.
BolME, ALBERT The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. London,
I 97 I ·
BRAQUE, GEORGES 'Pensees et reflections sur la peinture', Nord-Sud, December I9I7,
pp. 3 -5·
BROCKWAY, WALLACE Renoir to Matisse : The Albert D. Lasker Collection. New York, I 957·
BURGESS, GELETT 'The Wild Men of Paris', Architectural Record, May I 9 IO, pp. 400-I 4-
CARTIER-BRESSON, HENRI The Decisive Moment. New York, I 952. (Cover by Matisse.
French edition Paris : Verve.)
CHARMET, RAYMOND La Peinture fran;aise dans les musees russes. Geneva, I 970·
CHARTERIS, EvAN John Sargent. New York, I927.
CHIPP , HERSCHEL B., 'A Method for Studying the Documents of Modem Art', Art
Journal, XXVI, 4, Summer I 967, pp. 369-73 .
CHIPP, HERSCHEL B. Theories of Modern Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles, I 968.
CooPER, DouGLAS Picasso theatre. Paris, I 967.
CooPER, DouGLAS The Cubist Epoch. London, I 970.
CoURTHION, PIERRE Courbet raconte par lui-meme et par ses amis. Geneva, I 950.
CRESPELLE, JEAN PAUL The Fauves. London, I 962.
DENIS, MAURICE Theories, I8go-Igio, 4th ed. Paris, I 92o.
DUTHUIT, GEORGES The Fauvist Painters, New York, I 950.
FLANNER, JANET 'King of the Wild Beasts', in Men and Monuments. New York, I 957·
FRY, EDWARD F. Cubism. New York-Toronto, I 966.
FRY, RoGER 'Henri Matisse', Cahiers d'Art, VI, s-6, I 9 3 I , pp. 63 -JO.
 Bibliography
GAuss, CHARLES EDWARD The Aesthetic Theorles of French Art-ists from Realism to Sur-
realism. Baltimore, 1949.
GENET [J ANET FLANNER] , [Letter from Paris], The New Yorker, 30 May 1970, p. 86.
GIDE, ANDRE Journal, I. New York, 1 947·
GIEURE, MAURICE 'Constantes esthetiques de Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse et Braque', in
Initiation a l'reuvre de Picasso. Paris, 195 1 .
GILOT, FRANc;oiSE Life with Picasso. New York-Toronto-London, 1964.
GoLDWATER, RoBERT, and TREVEs, MARco, eds . Art-ists on Art. New York, 1 945·
GOUPIL, F. Manuel complet et slmplifii de Ia pelnture a l'hulle. Paris, 1 858.
GouPIL, F. Traite methodique et raisonne de Ia peinture a l'huile. Paris, 1 867.
GOUPIL, F. Manuel general de Ia pelnture a l'huile. Paris, 1 877·
GUERRISI, MICHELE 'L'arabesco di Matisse', in L'errore di Cezanne. Pisa, 1954.
HAFTMANN , WERNER Painting in the Twentieth Century, 2 vols. New York, 1 960.
HAMILTON, GEORGE HEARD Palnting and Sculpture in Europe, I88o to I940. Baltimore,
1967.
HAVARD, HENRY La decoratlon, 2nd ed. Paris, 1 892 ?
HERBERT, RoBERT L. Modern Artists on Art. New York, 1 964.
HERON, PATRI CK The Changing Forms of Art. London, 1955.
HoLT, ELIZABETH G. A Documentary H-istory of Art, I. Garden City, N.Y., 1957.
HoLT, ELIZABETH G. From the Classic-ists to the lmpresslonlsts: A Documentary H-istory of
Art and Archltecture. New York, 1966.
HoLTEN, RAGNAR VON. L' Art fantastlque de Gustave Moreau. Paris, 196o.
lZERGINA, A. N. The Ermitage, Leningrad: French 2oth-Century Masters. Prague, 1970.
KIDD, STEVEN R. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Memorlal Window. Pocantico Hills,
1956.
KoHN, HEINZ Neuer Meister aus dem Museum Folkwang zu Essen. Cologne, 1952.
LIBERMAN, ALEXANDER The Artlst in h-is Studio. New York, 196o.
MAN, FELIX H., ed. Eight European Art-ists. London, 1954.
MAYWALD, WILHELM Portrait-Atelier. Zurich, 1958.
MoRSE, C. R. 'Matisse's Palette', Art Digest, VII, 15 Feb ruary, 1 933, p. 26.
MoURLoT, FERNAND Les affiches originales des maltres de l'Ecole de Par-is. Monte Carlo,
1959·
M ULLER , JosEPH EMILE Fauvism. New York, 1 967.
Museum of Modern Art The School of Par-is: Paintings from the Florene May Schoenborn
and Samuel A. Marx Collection. New York, 1965.
NocHLIN, LINDA, ed. Real-ism and Tradition ln Art, I848-IfJOO . Englewood Cliffs, 1966.
NovoTNY, F. Cezanne. London, 1 96 1 .
OLIVIER, FERNANDE Picasso et ses am-is. Paris, 1933.
ORTEGA Y GASSET, JosE The Dehumanlzatwn of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture.
Garden City, N.Y., 1956.
PELADAN, M. J. 'Le Salon d' Automne et ses Retrospectives-Greco et Monticelli', La
Revue Hebdomadalre, 42 , 17 October 1908, pp. 360�8.
PERRY, LILLA CABOT 'Reminiscences of Claude Monet from 1 889 to 1 909' , The American
Magazlne of Art, XVIII, March 1927, pp. 120 ff.
PICASSO, PABLO 'Picasso Speaks', The Arts, May 1923, pp. 3 1 5-26.
PoLLACK, BARBARA The Collectors: Dr. Claribel and M-iss Etta Cone. Indianapolis, 1962.
PoTTER , MARGARET, et al. Four Amerlcans ln Paris, The Collection of Gertrude Steln and
Her Famlly. New York, 1970.
PUY, MICHEL L' effort des pelntres modernes. Paris, 1933.
REWALD, JoHN, ed. Paul Cezanne, Correspondance. Paris, 1937.
REwALD, JoHN, ed. Paul Cezanne, Letters. London, 194 1 .
Bibliography I 79

RosENBLUM, RoBERT Cubism and Twentieth Century Art. New York, 196o.
ScHAPIRO, MEYER 'Matisse and Impressionism', Androcles, I, 1, February 1932, pp. 2 1-36.
ScHAPIRO, MEYER Paul Cezanne. New York, I 952.
SHACK, WILLIAM Art and Argyrol: The Life and Career of Dr. Albert C. Barnes. New York
and London: 196o.
SHATTUCK, RoGER The Banquet Years, revised ed. London, 1969.
SIGNAC, PAUL D'Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionisme, new edition. Paris, 1 9 1 I .
SoBY, }AMES THRALL Modern Art and the New Past. Norman, Oklahoma, 1957.
STEIN, GERTRUDE The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York, 1955.
STEIN, LEO Appreciation : Painting, Poetry, and Prose. New York, 1947.
TscHUDI MADSEN, S. Art Nouveau. New York-Toronto, 1967.
UNTERMEYER, Louis Makers of the Modern World. New York, 1955.
WARNOD, ANDRE Les peintres, mes amis. Paris, 1 965.

Matisse Writings, Statements, Quotations, Interviews, and Letters

(Arranged in Chronological Order)
APoLLINAIRE, GuiLLAUME 'Henri Matisse', La Phalange, II, 1 8, December I CJ0 7, pp.
481�5. (Text I, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Notes d'un peintre', La Grande Revue, LII, 24, 25 December 1908,
PP · 73 1-45. (Text 2, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Statement on Photography] Camera Work, 24, October I CJ0 8, p. 22.
(Text 3, above.)
EsTIENNE, C HARLES 'Des tendances de Ia peinture moderne : entretien avec M. Henri­
Matisse', Les Nouvelles, 12 April 1909, p. 4· (Text 5, above.)
M Ac CHESNEY, CLARA T. 'A Talk with Matisse, Leader of post-Impressionists', New
York Times Magazine, 9 March 1913. (Text 6, above.)
GUENNE, jACQUES 'Entretien avec Henri Matisse', L'Art vivant, 18, 1 5 September 1 925,
pp. 1-6 ; also in Portraits d'artistes, Paris, 1925, pp. 123-'7· (Text 7, above.)
TERIADE, E. 'Visite a Henri Matisse', L'Intransigeant, XXII , 14 January I 929 ; partially re­
printed as 'Propos de Henri Matisse a Teriade', verve, IV, 13, December 1 945, P · s6.
(Text 8, above.)
TERIADE , E. 'Entretien avec Teriade', L'lntransigeant, 20 and 27 October 1930. (Text 8,
above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Confrontations', Formes, I , January 1930, p. I I. (Partial reprint of
1907-29 statements.)
H oPPE, RA.GNAR 'Pa visit hos Matisse ( 1920 )', in Stiidter och Konstnarer : resebrev och
essaer om konst. Stockholm, I93 I , pp. 193-9· (Quotes Matisse.)
FLINT, RALPH 'Matisse Gives an Interview on Eve of Sailing', Art News, XXIX, 3 January
193 I , p. 3 · (Brief quotations of Matisse.)
CoURTHION, PIERRE 'Rencontre avec Matisse' , Les nouvelles littbaires, 27 June 193 1 , p. I.
(Text 9, above.)
JEDLICKA, GOTTHARD 'Begegnungen mit Henri Matisse', in Begegnungen : Kiinstlernovellen.
Basle, 1933, pp. 102-26. (Quotations of Matisse.)
'Matisse Speaks', Art News, XXXI , 3 6, 3 June I933, p. 8. (Quotes Matisse on art and the
public ; see Text 5 , n. 2, above.)
TERIADE, E. [Propos de Henri Matisse] Minotaure, 1, 3-4, I93 3 , p. 10 ; reprinted Verve,
IV, I3, December I945, p. 20. (Text 10, above.)
CoURTHION, PIERRE Henri Matisse. Paris, 1934. (Some quotations.)
DUDLEY, DoROTHY 'The Matisse Fresco in Merion, Pennsylvania', Hound and Horn, VII,
2, January-March 1 934, pp. 298-303. (Quotations on Barnes Murals.)
1 80 Bibliography
MATISSE, HENRI 'Dva pisma [Two letters to A. Romm]', Iskusstvo, 4, I 934, pp. I99-203.
(Text I I, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI Testimony against Gertrude Stein. The Hague, I93S (supplement to
Transition 23 , I934-s), pp. 3-8. (Rebuttal of Stein's statements concerning Matisse in
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'On Modernism and Tradition', The Studio, IX, so, May I93S, pp. 236--9.
(Text I2, above.)
BREESKIN, AnELYN D. 'Swans by Matisse', American Magazine of Art, XXVIII, Io; 9
October I93S, pp. 622-9. (Quotation on the Mallarme swan.)
TERIADE, E. 'Constance du fauvisme', Minotaure, II, 9, IS October I936, p. 3 ; partially
r-eprinted in Verve, IV, I3, December I94S, p. I3. (Text I3, above.)
EscHOLIER, RAYMOND Henri Matisse. Paris, I 937· (Recollections and statements, pp. 30-I,
77-8, 88, 9I-2, 97, I38, I4I, I68.)
HUPPERT, JANINE C. 'Montherlant vu par Matisse', Beaux-Arts, 243, 27 August I937·
(Quotations on book illustration.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Divagations', Verve, I, I, December I937, pp. 80-4. (Text I S,
above.)
M oNTHERLANT, HENRY DE 'En ecoutant Matisse', L'Art et les Artistes, XXXI II, I89, July
I938, pp. 336-9. (Text I6, above .)
PACH , WALTER Queer Thing, Painting. New York, I 938. (Some quotations.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Notes d'un peintre sur son dessin', Le Point, 2 I , July I939, pp. I04-IO.
(Text I7, above. )
MATISSE, HENRI 'In the Mail [extracts from 2 letters]', in First Papers on Surrealism.
New York, I942. (Partially quoted, Text I9, above.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'Henri Matisse le mediterraneen nous dit', Cotdmdia, 7, February I942,
p. I . (Quotations on colour and light.)
ARAGON, Louis 'Matisse-en-France', in Henri Matisse dessins: themes et variations.
Paris, I943 ; reprinted in Henri Matisse, roman. Paris, I 97I· (Text 2 I , above.)
BouviER, MARGUETTE 'Henri Matisse illustre Ronsard', Commdia. 8o, 9 January I943,
pp. I, 6. (Quotations on Ronsard illustrations.)
GILLET, LOUIS 'Une visite a Henri Matisse', Candide, 24 February I943· (Quotation on
vision.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'Avec Matisse le classique', Commdia, I02, I2 June I943, pp. I, 6.
(Quotations on Cezanne's Baigneuses, book illustrations, and drawings.)
DIEHL, GASTON, ed. 'Temoignage de Matisse' in Peintres d'aujourd'hui. Collection
Comredia-Charpentier, June I943· (Quotation on translation of emotion into formal
means.)
CARco, FRANCIS 'Souvenir d'atelier : conversation avec Matisse', Die Kunst-Zeitung, 8,
August I943 ; also in L' ami des peintres. Paris, I9S3, pp. 2 I 9-38. (Text I8, above.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'Matisse, illustrateur et maitre d'reuvre', Commdia, I32, 22 January I944,
pp. I , 6. (Quotations on Pasipluie illustrations.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'La le�on de Matisse7, Commdia, I46-7, 29 April I944, p. I ff. (Quota­
tions on Jazz.)
BoUVIER, MARGUETTE 'Henri-Matisse chez lui', Labyrinthe, I, IS October I944, pp. I-3 ·
(Text 22, above.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'Role et modalites de Ia couleur', in Problemes de Ia peinture. Lyons, I945,
pp. 237-40 . (Text 23, above.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'Les nourritures terrestres de Matisse', xxe Siecle, 2, I8 October
I94S, p. I. (Quotations on art and nature.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Observations on Painting] Verve, IV, I 3, December I945, pp. 9-IO.
(Text 24, above.)
Bibliography
DEGAND, LEON 'Matisse a Paris', Les Lettres franfaises, 6 October I945 , p. 7 ff. (Text 25,
above.)
DIEHL, GASTON 'A Ia recherche d'un art mural', Paris, les arts, les lettres, 20, I9 April
I 946, pp. I -3. (Quotations on Barnes Murals.)
PURRMAN, HANs ''Ober Henri Matisse', Werk, XXXIII, 6, June I946, pp. I 85-g2. (Quota-
tions.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Comment j'ai fait mes livres', Anthologie du livre illustre par les peintres
et sculpteurs de !'ecole de Paris. Geneva, I946, pp. xxi-xxiii. (Text 27, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Temoignages de peintres ; Le noir est une couleur', Derriere le miroir,
December I 946, pp. 2, 6, 7. (Text 26, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Oceanie : tenture murale', Labyrinthe, II, 3, pp. 22-3, December I946,
(Text 28, above.) •

MARCHAND, ANDRE 'L'ffiil', in Jacques Kober, ed., Henri Matisse. Paris, I947, pp. 5 1-3.
(Text 30, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI Jazz. Paris, I947· (Text 29, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Le chemin de Ia couleur', Art Present, 2, I947, p. 23. (Text 3 1 ,
above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Exactitude is Not Truth' , in Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henri
Matisse. Philadelphia, I948, pp. 33-4. (Text 32, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Letter from Matisse (to Henry Clifford)', in Philadelphia Museum of
Art, Henri Matisse. Philadelphia, I948, pp. I 5-I 6. (Text 33, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Letter to Marc Vaux, 5 July I948] Carrefour des Arts, 3, Summer
I948, p. 3· (Letter on 'la nuit de Montparnasse'.)
BARRY, JosEPH A. 'Matisse Turns to Religious Art', New York Times Magazine, 26
December I 948, pp. 8, 24. (Brief quotations.)
BERNIER, RosAMUND 'Matisse Designs a New Church', Vogue, I 5 February I949, pp. 76,
I 3 I-2. (Statements by Matisse on drawing, etc.)
HoWE, R. W. 'Half-an-hour with Matisse' , Apollo, XLIX, February I949, p. 29. {Text 3�
above.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Statement on Art and the Public] Transition Forty-Nine, 5, I949, p. I I8.
(Quoted in full, Text 5, n. 2, above.)
[MATISSE, HENRI] 'What I Want to Say; Work on the Dominican Chapel at Vence',
Time, 24 October I949, p. 70. (Brief quotations.)
BucHANAN, D. W. 'Interview in Montparnasse', Canadian Art, VIII, 2, I950, pp. 6I-5.
(Brief quotations ; statement on Vence chapel.)
PERNOUD, R:EGINE 'Nous manquions d'un portrait de Charles d'Orleans . . . Henri Matisse
vient d'en composer un' , Le Figaro Litteraire, I 4 October I950. (Interview on illustra­
tions for the poems of Charles d'Orleans.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Henri Matisse vous parle', Traits, 8, March I950, p. 5· (Text 35, above.)
BARR, ALFRED H., J r. Matisse : his Art and his Public. New York, I95 I . (Numerous
quotations via questionnaires, correspondence, reminiscences, etc.)
STEIN, SARAH 'A Great Artist Speaks to His Students I9o8', in Alfred H. Barr, Jr.,
Matisse: his Art and his- Public. New York, I95 I , pp. 55o-2. (Text 4, above.)
'Matisse's Radio Interviews, Winter, I942', in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: his Art and
his Public. New York, I 95 I , pp. 562-3 . (See Text 20, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Le Texte' in Tokyo National Museum, Henri Matisse. Tokyo, I95 I ,
p . [2]. (Text 36, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'La Chapelle du Rosaire', in Chapelle du Rosaire des Dominicaines de
Vence. Vence, I 95 I . (Text 37, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Letter to the Bishop of Nice] L'Art Sacre, I I-I 2, I95 I , pp. 2-3.
(Quoted Text 37, n. 2, above.)
 Bibliography
LEJARD, ANDRE [Interview with Matisse] Amis de l' Art, n.s. 2 , October I 95 1 . (Statement
on technique of late cut-outs.)
T:ERIADE, E. 'Matisse Speaks', Art News, L, 8, November 195 I , pp. 40-7 I ; Art News
Annual, 2 I , I 952, pp. 40-7 I. (Text 39, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'La Chapelle du rosaire des Dominicaines de Vence', France Illus­
tration, 320, I December I95 I , pp. [56I-7o] ; reprinted as 'La Chapelle de Vence,
aboutissement d'une vie', XXe Siecle, special number ( I 97o ), pp. 7I-3 . (Text 38,
above.)
VERDET, ANDRE 'Entretiens avec Henri Matisse', in Prestiges de Matisse, Paris, I 952,
pp. 37-76. (Text 42, above.)
Luz, MARIA 'rfemoignages : Henri Matisse ' , xxe Siecle, n.s., January I 952, pp. 55-7·
(Text 40, above.)
BRIDAULT, YVEs 'J'ai passe un mauvais quart d'heure avec Matisse', Arts, 37I, 7-I 3
August I 952, pp. I , 8. (Includes statement on art and politics.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Letter to Lancelle, 9 June I896] Arts, 37 I, 7-I 3 August I 952, p. I .
(Letter to Matisse's cousin concerning Salon de la Nationale, I896.)
DIEHL, GASTON Henri Matisse. Paris, I 954· (Numerous unpublished quotations.)
MATISSE, HENRI Portraits. Monte Carlo, I954· (Text 44, above.)
MATISSE, HENRI 'Looking at Life with the Eyes of a Child', Art News and Review.
London, 6 February I954, p. 3· (Text 43 , above.)
PuRRMANN, HANs, ed. Farbe und Gleichnis. Gesammelte Schriften. Zurich, I 955· (Reprints
fourteen of Matisse's writings, with introduction-memoir by Purrmann.)
Es cHOL IER, RAYMOND Matisse, ce vivant. Paris, I 956. (Many unpublished quotes, letters,
etc.)
MATISSE, HENRI Propos de Matisse: propos notes par le pere Couturier. Paris, I956. (State­
ments on faith ; quoted Text 42, n. 7, above.)
RoUVEYRE, ANDRE 'Matisse evoque', La Revue des Arts, VI, 2, June I 956. (Quotations of
Matisse.)
MATISSE, HENRI [Letter on Leda panel, 6 March I 946] Derriere le miroir, 107-9, I 958,
PP · I4, I8.
DAUBERVILLE, J. and H. 'Une visite a Matisse', in Chefs-d'reuvre de Matisse, Paris, I 958.
(Some quotations.)
CHARBONNIER, GEORGES 'Entretien avec Henri Matisse', in Le Monologue du peintre, n,

Paris, I 96o, pp. 7-I 6. (Text 4I , above.)

CouTURIER, MARIE-ALAIN Se Garder Libre (Journal I947-I954) Paris, I 962. (Various
quotations, many on faith and on the Vence Chapel.)
WARNoD, ANDR:E Les peintres, mes amis. Paris, I 965 . (Quotation on Mrican sculpture and
early career, pp. 42-7.)
B REZIANU , BARBu [Correspondence Matisse-Palady] Secolul 2o, 6, I 965 .
Gu iCHARD - MElLI , }EAN Henri Matisse. Paris, I 967. (Some unpublished quotations.)
MATISSE, HENRI [I934-5 Letters to A. Romm, et al.] Matiss. Zivopis, skul'ptura, grafika,
pisma. Leningrad, I 969. (Text I I , above.)
ScHNEIDER, PIERRE Henri Matisse, exposition du centenaire. Paris, I 970. (Quotations from
unpublished letters.)
'Hommage a Henri Matisse' , XXe Siecle (special number), I97o. (Quotations recalled
by Courthion, on the Danse, pp. 45-:7, on Tahiti, pp. 56, 62 ; by Verdet, general re­
marks, pp. I I 3-I 5. Statement by Matisse on Vence Chapel, pp. 7I-3.
CLAIR, }EAN, ed. 'Correspondance Matisse-Bonnard ( I 925/46) ' , La Nouvelle Revue
Franfaise, XVI I I , July I 970, pp. 82-IOO ; August I 970, pp. 53-70.
1\'IoRRIS, GEORGE, L. K. 'A Brief Encounter with Matisse', Life, 28 August I 970,
pp. 44-47. (Brief quotations on training of the artist, etc.)
Bibliography
GIRAUDY, DANIELE, ed. 'Correspondance Henri Matisse-Charles Camoin', Revue de
l'Art, 12, Summer 197 1 , pp. 7-34.
CACHIN-NoRA, FRAN<;OISE. 'Matisse et Signac (inedits annotes et commentes).' (To be
published.)

Monographs since I95I

AlmENBERG, THEODOR Goteborg Konstforening. Henri Matisse ur Theodor Ahrenbergs
Samling. Goteborg, 1960.
ALPATOV, MIKHAIL VLADIMIROVIC Matiss. Moscow, 1969.
ARAGoN, Louis Henri Matisse, roman. 2 vols. Paris. 197 1 . English edition : Henri Matisse.
London-New York, 1972.
BARR, ALFRED H., Jr. Matisse: his Art and his Public. New York, 195 1.
Bordeaux, Musee des Beaux-Arts Hommage a Henri Matisse. Bordeaux, 1970.
BoWNESS, ALAN Matisse et le nu. Paris-Lausanne, 1969.
BRILL, FREDERICK Matisse. London, 1967.
CASsou, }EAN Henri Matisse, Carnet de dessins. Paris, 1955.
DIEHL, GASTON Henri Matisse. Paris, 1952.
DIEHL, GASTON Henri Matisse. Paris, 1954.
DIEHL, GASTON Henri Matisse. Paris, 1970.
DurnuiT, GEORGES Matisse: Periode fauve. Paris, 1956. English edition : Matisse, Fauve
Period. New York, 1956.
ELSEN, ALBERT E. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. New York, 1972.
EscHOLIER, RAYMOND Matisse, ce vivant. Paris, 1 956. English edition : Matisse from the
Life. London, I 96o.
FERRIER, JEAN-LOUIS Matisse I9II-I9JO. Paris, 1961.
FIALA, VLASTIMIL Henri Matisse. Prague, 1967.
Galerie Jacques Dubourg Henri Matisse, aquarelles, dessins. Paris, 1 962.
GEORGE, WALDEMAR Matisse. Arcueil, 1955.
GowiNG, LAWRENCE Henri Matisse : 64 Paintings. New York, 1966.
GREENBERG, CLEMENT Henri Matisse. New York, c. 1953.
GuiCHARD-MElLI, }EAN Henri Matisse, son muvre, son univers. Paris, 1 967. English trans-
lation : Matisse. New York, 1967.
Hamburg, Kunstverein Matisse und seine Freunde, les Fauves. Hamburg, 1 966.
HILDEBRANDT, HANs Henri Matisse : Frauen, 32 Radierungen. Leipzig, 1953.
'Hommage a Henri Matisse', XXe Siecle (special number), 1970.
Includes articles by : Jean Cassou, Pierre Courthion, Jean-Louis Ferrier, Roger Fry, Jean
Guichard-Meili, Gotthard Jedlicka, Jean Leymarie, Herbert Read, San Lazzaro, Yvon
Taillandier, Andre Verdet and Pierre Volboudt.
HUMBERT, AGNES Henri Matisse: Dessins. Paris, 1 956.
HUNTER, SAM Henri Matisse, r869-I954. New York, 1956.
]EDLICKA, GoTTHARD Die Matisse Kapelle in Vence; Rosenkranz Kapelle der Dominm-
anerinnen. Frankfurt, c. _1955 ·
]EDLICKA, GoTTHARD Henri Matisse. La Coiffure. Stuttgart, 1 965.
KAMPIS, ANTAL Matisse. Budapest, 1959 ·
LAMBERT, SusAN Thirty-four Recently Acquired Lithographs and Aquatints by Henri
Matisse. London, 1968.
LAMBERT, SusAN Matisse lithographs. London : Victoria and Albert Museum, 1 972.
LASSAIGNE, jACQUES Matisse. Geneva, 1959.
LEvEQUE, }EAN-}ACQUES Matisse. Paris, 1968.
LEYMARIE, }EAN Matisse. Paris, 1 970.
 Bibliography

LIEBERMAN WILLIAM S. Etchings by Matisse. New York, I955·

:
LIEBERMAN WILLIAM S. Matisse: 50 Years of His Graphic Art. New York, I956.
London The Arts Council of Great Britain. Matisse, z869-I954· London, I968.
Luzi, MARio L'Opera di Matisse, dalla rivolta fauve all'intim
ismo (I904-I928). Milan,
I97I.
MARCHIORI GuiSEPPE Matisse. New York, n.d. [c. I967].
MATISSE, HENRI Henri Matisse, dessins et sculptures ineditese Paris, I958.
Matiss, Zivopis, skul'ptura, grafika, _pisma. �enin �ad, I969. .
MouLIN, RAouL-}EAN Henri Matzsse desstns. Pans, I968 ; Enghsh translation : Henri
.

Matisse' Drawings and Paper Cut-outs. New York and London, I969.
MouLIN, RAouL-JEAN Chatillon des Arts presente le jardin de Matisse. Chatillon,
I970.
NEGRI, RENATA Matisse e i Fauves. Milan, I 969.
OKAMOTO, KENJIRO Bonnard-Matisse. Tokyo, I 968.
OKAMOTO, KENJIRO, and XANAHAIRA, ISAKU Matisse-Rouault. Tokyo, I967.
0RIENTI, SANDRA Henri Matisse. Florence, I 97I·
PAcH, WALTER Henri Matisse, a Gallery of Women : Portfolio of Sketches. New York,
c. I954·
PERLs, FRANK Frank Perls Art Dealer presents Six Sculptures by Henri Matisse. Beverley
Hills, I 968.
REvmmY, PIERRE, and DuTHUIT, GEORGES The Last Works of Henri Matisse, I95D-I954e
New York, I958. (English edition of Verve, 35-6.)
RussEL, JoHN, and the Editors of Time-Life Books The World of Matisse, z869-I954-
New York, I969.
St.-Paul, Fondation Maeght A Ia rencontre de Matisse. St-Paul, n.d. [ I969].
SCHNEIDER, PIERRE Henri Matisse. Exposition du centenaire. Paris, I970.
SELZ, JEAN Matisse. New York, I 964.
TRAPP, FRANK ANDERSON 'The Paintings of Henri Matisse : Origins and Early Develop­
ment, I8go-I9I7' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, I952).
University of California, Los Angeles Art Council Henri Matisse, Retrospective I966.
;Los Angeles, I 966.
VERDET, .ANnR.E Prestiges de Matisse, precede de visite a Matisse, entretiens avec Matisse.
Paris, I952.
WHEELER, MONROE The Last Works of Henri Matisse: Large Cut Gouaches. New York,
I96I.

Articles since I95I

ALAZARD, JEAN 'Deux peintres : Henri Matisse', Revue Mediterrannee, xv, 1955, pp. 405-
409.
ARAGON, Louis 'Le second siecle de Matisse commence', Les Lettres franfaises, I330,
I j-2 I April I 970, PP· 3-9 ; 2 s -J O.
A.RNASON, H. H. 'Motherwell : the Window and the Wall ' , Art News, LXVIII, Summer
I969, p. 50.
AUBREY, P. 'Golberg et Matisse', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, LXVI, December I96s,
pp. 343-4·
BALLOU, M. G. ' "Interior with Etruscan Vase" by Matisse', Cleveland Museum Bulletin,
XXXIX, December I952, pp. 239-40.
BAYNES, K. 'Art and Industry', Architectural Review, CXL, November 1966, p. 36o.
BAZAINE, JEAN 'Clarte de Matisse', Derriere le miroir, 46-7, May I952.
BELL, CLIVE 'Henri Matisse', Apollo, LX, December I954, pp. I S I-6.
Biblt"ography
BERNIER, R. 'Le Musee Matisse a Nice', L'(Eil, lOS, September 1963, pp. 20-<).
BLUNT, ANTHONY 'Matisse's Life and Work', Burlington Magazine, xcv, December 1953,
PP· 399-400.
BoWNESS, A. 'Four Drawings by Modigliani and Matisse', Connoisseur, CL, June 1962,
PP · I 16-20.
BREESKIN, A. D. 'Matisse and Picasso as Book Illustrators', Baltimore Museum News,
XIV, May 195 1 , pp. 1-3.
BREESKIN, A. D. 'Accolade to Henri Matisse', Baltt"more Museum News, xv , May 1952,
PP · 1-4.
BURGESS, G. 'The Wild Men of Paris' [first published 19 10], Archltectural Record, cxr.,
July 1966, p. 237·
BURR, J. 'Hymn of Hedonism : Arts Council's Retrospective', Apollo, n.s. , LXXXVI II ,
July 1968, p. 62.
BURR, J. 'Lithographs and Aquatints at Lumley Cazalet Gallery', Apollo, n.s., LXXXVIII,
August 1968, p. 138.
BURR, J. 'Exhibition in London', Apollo, n.s., XCI , May 1970, p. 394·
BuTLER, J. T. 'Matisse as a Draughtsman at the Baltimore Museum of Art', Connolsseur,
176, April 1971, p. 289.
CARLSON, E. G. 'Still Life with Statuette by Henri Matisse', Yale Unz"versity Art Gallery
Bulletin, XXXI , 2, Spring 1967, pp. 4-1 3.
CARLSON, V. 'Some Cubist Drawings by Matisse', Arts, 45, March 1971. pp. 37-9 ·
CASsou, JEAN 'Henri Matisse, coin d'atelier', Quadrum, s, 1958, pp. 68-9. (English sum-
mary, p. go.)
CHAMPA, K. s. 'Paris : From Russia with Love', Arts, XXXIX, September 1965, p. 56.
CHANTELOU 'Les Matisse disperses de 195 1 a 1970', Le Monde, 4 November 1970.
'Chapelle de Vence', L'Art sacre, I I-12, July-August 195 1 · 32 pp., ill.
'Chapel of the Rosary, Vence', Magazine of Art, XLIV, November 195 1 , pp. 27 1-2.
CHASTEL, ANDRE 'Le visible et l'occulte, Matisse et Klee', Medecine de France, 61,
1955, PP· 41-2.
CHATELET, A. 'Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lille : quatre annees d'acquisitions d'reuvres
contemporaines', Revue du Louvre, XVIII, 6, 1968, p. 424.
CLAIR, JEAN 'La Tentation de I' Orient', La Nouvelle Revue Franfaise, XVIII, 2 1 1 , July
1970, pp. 65-72.
CLAIR, JEAN 'L'Influence de Matisse aux Etats-Unis', xxe Slecle, 35, December 1970,
pp. 1 57-60.
COCTEAU, JEAN 'Matisse et Picasso', Habltat, 73, September 1963, pp. 58-6o.
CoGNIAT, RAYMOND 'Henri Matisse', Goya, II, Madrid, 1955-6, pp. 28-33.
'Coming Auctions', Art News, LXIX, October 1970, p. 74·
CoMTESSE, ALFRED 'Le troisieme grand livre d'Henri Matisse', Stultifera Navis, VII ,
1955, pp. 87-<JO ·
CooKE, H. L. 'Henri Matisse's Lorette Acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washing­
ton, D.C.', Burllngton Magazlne, cvn, September 1965, p. 488.
CooPER, DouGLAS 'Matisse Museum', New Statesman and Nation, LXV, February 1963,
p. 1 62.
CosTEsco, ELEONORA 'Trois dessins de Matisse', Art Rep. Pop. Roumalne, XIV, 1957,
pp. 67-70 (two variants of 'La blouse roumaine', Bucharest Museum).
'La Cote : Derain et Matisse', L'CEil, 1, January 1955, pp. 40-1 .
CoULONGES, HENRI 'Matisse et le paradis', Cannaissance des Arts, 2 1 4, December 1969,
pp. 1 14-21 .
CouLONGES, HENRI 'Les Premiers collectionneurs d e Matisse', Jardln des Arts, I 86, May
1970·
1 86 Bibliography
'
CouRTHION, PIERRE 'Les grandes etapes de l'art contemporain, I 907-I 9I7 ' xxe Siecle,
n.s., XXVIII, May I966, p. 79 ff.
CouRTHION, PIERRE 'Le papier colle du Cubisme a nos jours', and 'Les papiers decoupes
d'Henri Matisse', XXe Siecle, n.s., 6, January I 956, pp. 3-6o.
CuTLER, C. 'The House of Mourlot', Art in America, LIV, May I 966, p. Ioo.
'Dance and Drama in the Sale-room' , Apollo, n.s., xc, October I969, p. 359 ·
DANIEL-ROPS 'L'acte de foi de Matisse', Jardin des Arts, I7, I 956, pp. 257-6I.
DAURIAC, J. P. 'Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Paris : chefs-d'reuvre de Matisse a !'occasion de
son centenaire' , Pantheon, XXVIII, May I 970, P · z s 6.
DAVAL, J. L. 'Marlborough et Matisse conquierent Ia Suisse', Art International, xv,
Octob er I97I , pp. 49-5 I .
DAVIS, F. 'The Elegant Pen of Matisse', Country Life, I SO, 4 November I 97 I , pp. I 2o-6.
DE FoRGES, M. T., and ALLEMAND, G. 'Orangerie des Tuileries : Ia collection Jean Walter
-Paul-Guillaume', Revue du Louvre, XVI, I , I 966, p. 57·
DEGAND, LEON 'Pour une revision des valeurs ; Matisse, un genie?', Aujourd'hui et
Architecture, 11, Io, November I 956, pp. 28-3 I .
DESCARGUES, P. 'Matisse parmi les expressionistes', Connaissance des Arts, 220, June
I 970 ' PP · I oo-o7.
'Dessins recents dans !'exposition a Ia Galerie Maeght', Cahiers d'Art, XXVII, I, I 952,
PP · ss -66.
'Deux faux tableaux de Matisse', Cahiers d'Art, XXVII, I, I 952, p. 94 ·
'Deux grandes retrospectives a Paris : Fernand Leger et Henri Matisse', XXe Siecle,
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DoRIVAL, BERNARD 'Fauves : The Wild Beasts Tamed', Arts News Annual, 22, I952,
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DoRIVAL, BERNARD 'Matisse' , Bull. Soc. Amis Musee de Dijon, I958-6o, pp. 69-73.
Do RIVAL, BERNARD 'Musee national d'art moderne : le legs Gourgaud' , Revue du Louvre,
XVII, 2, I 967, p. 95 ·
DUFY, RAouL 'Hommages a Matisse' Les Lettres fran[aises, 2 December I 952.
'
DUNLOP, I. 'Lefevre Gallery, London' , Apollo, n.s., XCII, December I970, p. 480.
Du PLESSIX, F. 'The Albert D. Lasker Collection', Art in America, LVI, March I968,
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DuTHUIT, GEORGES 'Matisse and Courbet', Ark, I4, I 955, pp. I 2-I3.
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DuTHUIT, GEORGEs 'Le Tailleur de lumiere', Verve, 35-6, I 958.
ELDERFIELD, J. 'The Language of Pre-Abstract art ; Three Good Museu1n Shows Illumi­
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Artforum, VII, September I 968, pp. zo-g ; 'II : Old Problems and New Possibilities',
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EscHOLIER, RAYMOND 'Matisse et le Maro c', Jardin des Arts, 24, I 956, pp. 705-I 2.
EsTEBAN, CLAUDE ' Une limpidite necessaire', La Nouvelle revue franfaise, XVIII, 2 I I , July
I 970, pp. 72-7 •

'Exhibition at La Boetie Gallery', Art News, LXIX, May I 970 , p. 70.

'Exhibition at Loeb and Krugier Gallery', Art News, LXVI, January I 968, p. I S·
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 List of Illus trations

Except where otherwise stated, all works are oil on canvas

I Livres et chandelier Private Collection, France

I 890.
2 Life study. Inscribed (right) Matisse H. eleve de M. M88• Bouguereau et Ferrier
and (below, in Matisse's hand) Dessin execute pour le coucours d'entree a l'Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, a ete l'objet d'un refus. I 89 I . Charcoal. Le Cateau-Cambresis,
Musee Henri Matisse
3 Nature morte apres de Heem I 893 · Nice, Musee Matisse
4 Marine a Goulphar I 896. Private Collection, France
5 La desserte I 897· The Stavros S. Niarchos Collection, Paris
6 L'olivier I 898. Madame Marquet Collection, Paris
7 La malade I 899· Baltimore, Museum of Art, Cone Collection.
8 Buffet et table I 899· Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington, D.C.
9 Cezanne : Trois baigneuses I 879-82. Paris, Musee d'Art Modeme de la Ville
IO Nu debout I 9oo. Private Collection, New York
II Notre-Dame: fin d'apres-midi I9o2. Buffalo, N.Y., Albright Knox Gallery;
gift of Seymour H. Knox
I2 Nature morte au purro, I I904. The Lazarus and Rosalie Phillips Family
Collection, Montreal
I3 Luxe, calme et volupte I904. Private Collection, France
I4 Fenetre ouverte, Collioure I905 . Mr and Mrs John Hay Whitney Collection,
New York
I5 La guitariste I 903 . Private Collection, New York
I6 Portrait a la raie verte I 905 . Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst
I7 Bonheur de vivre I 905. Illustration © I 973 The Barnes Foundation, Merion
IS Nu bleu I907. Baltimore, Museum of Art
I9 Les joueurs de boules I 908. Leningrad, Hermitage Museum
20 Harmonie rouge I908-9. Leningrad, .Hermitage Museum
2I La danse I 909. Leningrad, Hermitage Museum
22 La musique I 9 I O. Leningrad, Hermitage Museum
23 La famille du peintre I9I I . Leningrad, Hermitage Museum
24 La fenetre bleue I 9 I I . New York, Museum of Modern Art
25 Cezanne : Le vase bleu I 88 3 -87. Paris, Louvre
26 Madame Matisse I 9 I 3 · Leningrad, Hermitage Museum
I 94 List of Illustrations
27 La lefon de piano I 9 I 6. New York, Museum of Modern Art
28 L'artiste et son modele I 9 I 6. Paris, Musee Nationale d'Art Moderne
29 L' atelier du quai Saint-Michel I 9 I 6. Phillips Collection, Washington
30 L'artiste et son modele I 9I9. Private Collection, New York
3I Intbieur au violon I 9 I 7-I8. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst
32 Intbieur a Nice I 92I . Chicago, Art Institute
33 Femme au turban I 929-3 0. Private Collection, Paris
34 Jeune fille en jaune I 929-3 I . Baltimore, Museum of Art, Cone Collection
35 Jeunes filles au paravent mauresque I 92I . Philadelphia Museum of Art
36 La danse, II I932-3 3 . (Photomontage) Illustration © I 973 The Barnes
Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania. Mural painting
37 Le dos, IV I929-30. London, Tate Gallery
38 Nu rose I 935· Three stages : I {3 May) ; I I {20 June) and I S { I S· September)
and finished work. Baltimore, Museum of Art, Cone Collection
39 Grande robe bleue, fond noir I 937· Collection Mrs. John Wintersteen, Phila­
delphia
40 Le reve I 94o. Private Collection, France
4I Nature morte rouge au magnolia I 94 I . Paris, Musee Nationale d'Art Modeme
42 Oceanie-la mer I 947. Panel designed for Ascher and Co. Silk screen printed
on natural linen
43 Icarus I 947· Illustration from Jazz, written and illustrated by Matisse.
Lithograph
44 Grand interieur rouge I 948. Paris, Musee National d'Art Modeme
45 Interior of the Dominican Chapel at Vence, showing the windows, mural and
altar cross designed by Matisse in I 95 I . Photo : Helene Adant
46 Nu bleu : Ia chevelure I952. Private Collection, Paris. Gouache decoupee
47 Nu bleu, III I 952. Private Collection, France
48 L'escargot I953· London, Tate Gallery. Gouache decoupee
49 Matisse at work on the Cruc ifix for the Chapel at Vence I95 I . Photo : Helene
Ad ant

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT :

Frontispiece : The Swan. Illustration for Poesies de Stephane Mallarme. Etching.

L ausanne, Skira, I 932
p. Io8 : Linoleum cut illustration from Henry de Montherlant, Pasiphae, Chant de
Minos. Paris, Fabiani, I 944
p. I I 8 : Four self-portrait drawings made in O ctober I 939· Collection of Madame
Marguerite Duthuit
 Index

PROPER NAMES
Alain 141 Charbonnier, Georges 1 3 8-41
Angelico, Fra 1 40 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Simeon 39, 52,
Appollinaire, Guillaume 3 1-2, 5 5 , 83 , 89 54, 65, 7 1 , 72, 82, 1 14
Aragon, Louis 93-5 Chevreul, M. E. 58
Astruc, Zacharie 1 o6 Claude Lorrain 94
Clemenceau, Georges 89
Badt, Kurt 24 Clifford, Henry 1 7, 1 20, 1 22, 1 26, 142
Bakst, Leon 98, 99, 1 1 6 Cormon, Fernand 3
Balzac, Honore de 89 Corot, Camille Jean Baptiste 52, 56, 76
Barnes, Albert C. 4, 6, 67 Correggio, Antonio Allegri 1 2 1
Barr, Alfred H. 7, 41 Courbet, Gustave 40, 56, 1 26, 1 44
Barres, Maurice 78 Courthion, Pierre 64-5
Beethoven, Ludwig van 1 40 Couturier, Paul Louis 1 3 1
Bergson, Henri 3 3 Croce, Benedetto 3 3
Bernard, Emile 3 5 Cross, Henri-Edmond 4 � 58, 72, 87, 1 3 2
Besnard, Albert 52
Blanc, Joseph 77 D 'Annunzio, Gabriele 78
Blanche, Jacques-Emile 3 5 David, Jacques�Louis 1 23
Blumenthal, Mrs. George 4 Debray 86 ,
Bonnard, Pierre 5 , 123, 1 46 Degand, Leon 1 03-6
Bonnat, Leon 77 Delacroix, Eugene 32, 38, 54, 55, 65 , 70,
Bouguereau, Adolphe William 3 , 17, 19, 76, 95, 99, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 105, 1 06, 1 23 ,
54, 77, 130, 1 3 1 133
Bouvier, Marguette 96-8, 1 1 4 Denis, Maurice 3 5 , 1 3 3
Braque, Georges 9, 28, 1 32, 1 34 Derain, Andre 4 , 2 1 , 72, 86--7, 88, 1 3 2
Breal, Michel 77 Desvaillieres, Georges 3 5 , 47
Brook, Alexander 64 Diaghilev, Sergei 5
Bruegel, Pieter, The Elder 77 Diehl, Gaston 1 8 , 98
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc 86 Druet, Antoine 56, 87
Dufresne, Charles 64
Camoin,. Charles 3, 5 Dufy, Raoul 1 3 1 , 1 32
Caracci, Annibale 5 1 , 1 3 1 Durer, Albrecht 52, 99
Carco, Francis 82-90
Carriere, Eugene 86 El Greco 59, 65, I o i , 1 40
Cezanne, Paul 3 , 1 0, I I , I2, I 4, 23 , 24-5, Esc holier, Raymond 6, 7 5
26, 27, 3 1 , 3 3 , 3 5 , 38, 39, 46, 52, 5 3 , Estienne, Charles 47-9, 94, 1 47
5 5 , 56, 6 s , 7 s , 76, 83, 84, 88, 99, Io i ,
102, I 14, 1 22-3 , 1 24, 1 2 5 , 1 26, 1 3 3 , Ferrier, Gabriel 3 , 1 9, 54
1 39, 143, 146-7, Figs. 9, 25 Forain, Jea n-Louis 86
Chabaud, Auguste-Elisee 86 Fremiet, Emmanuel 40
Champaigne, Philippe de 65, 1 3 2 Friesz, Othon 1 3 2
 Index
Fromentin, Eugene 88 MacChesney, Clara T. 49-53
Fry, Roger 7 1 Macy, George 6
Madsen, Tschudi 21
Gallieni, Joseph 79 Maeght, M . 1 o6
Gauguin, Paul J, 4, 58, 61-2, 88, 99, Maeterlinck, Maurice 88
102, 122, 1 2J, 144, 147 Maillol, Aristide 4, 104, 1 33
Gauss, Charles Edward 33 Mallarme, Stephane 107
Geffroy, Gustave 1 46 Manet, Edouard 22, 39, 52, 106, 1 14
Gerome, Jean-Leon 77 Manguin, Henri Charles 3, 132
Giotto 4, 38 Mantegna, Andrea 99
Goethe 78, 79 Marchand, Andre 1 14-1 5
Goncourt brothers 1 1 3 Marque, Albert 73, 1 32
Goupil, Frederic-Auguste-Antoine J, Marquet, Albert 5, 54, 56, 84, 87, ·124,
18, 19 IJ2 .
Gowing, Lawrence 27 Marx, Roger 4, 1 3 I
Goya y Lucientes 52, 54, 65, 101 Massine, Leonide 5, 6
Gris, Juan 5 Matisse, Pierre 5, 6, 7, 90, 91
Guenne, Jacques 53-6, 57 Michelangelo 52, 69, 79
Guerin, Charles 3 5 Modigliani, Amedeo 89
Guignon 1 3 1 Monet, Claude 22, 23, 36, 46, 52
Monfreid, Daniel 4
Harris, Frank 88 Montherlant, Henry de 6, 78-9, 107,
Havard, Henry 20-1 1 14
Heem, David de 65, 1 32 Moreau, Gustave J, 19, 20, 42, 54, 55,
Hokusai 76 65, 72, 93, 101, I JO, I J I , I J2, I S I
Howe, R. W. 122-4 Morosov 5, 1 33
Hugo, Victor 78 Mourlot, Fernand 1 50
Huyghe, Rene 122
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 124
lngres, Jean Auguste Dominique 32, 76,
77, 99, 102, 105
Ortega y Gasset, Jose 17 .
Jacob, Max 83, 89
}ambon 87, 124 Pagnol, Marcel 104
John, Augustus 53 Pegurier, Auguste 87
Joyce, James 6 Peladan, Merodack Josephin 39, 40
Pellerin, Jean 89
Kuniyoshi 123 Picasso, Pablo 5, 6, 9, 25, 26, 28, 64, 83,
89, I I I , 1 34
Lamotte, Angele 1 13 Pissarro, Camille J, 22, 101, 1 14
Laprade, Pierre 86 Poussin, Nicolas 19, 5 1 , 71, 72, 83 , 94,
Laurencin, Marie 91 101, 102, 125, 126, I J I
Lebasque, Henri 87 Purrmann, Hans 4, 133
L e Corbusier 1 25-6 Puvis d e Chavannes, Pierre 49, 143
Lenepveu, Jules-Eugene 77 Puy, Jean 86, 132
Leonardo da Vinci 32, 39, 40, 76, 77
Leriche, Rene 1 53 Raffaelli, Jean Fran�ois 52
Linaret, Georges Florentin 3 Raphael 39 , 54, 69, 7I, 72, 99, 105, 1 19,
Loti, Pierre 133 I J I , 144, 1 5 1
Luce, Maximilien 87 Redon, Mme Odilon 87
Luz, Maria 1 36, 142 Rembrandt van Rijn 52, 59, 82, 101,
Lyautey, Louis 79 I 19, IJS, 140, 1 5 1
Index I 97

Renoir, Pierre Auguste 5, 22, 39, 59, 70, Tanguy, Julien 56

76, 77, 87, I I I , I 39, I 46-J Teriade, E. 57-64, 66, 73 -4, I I 3 , I 3o,
Rockefeller, Nelson I 5 I47
Rodin, Auguste 3 , 39, 40, 77 Tissot, James I 3 5
Romano, Giulio 54 Titian 39, 88
Romm, Alexandre 67-70 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de I 2 I , I 45
Rosenberg, Paul 6 Trapp, Frank Anderson 2 I
Rouault, Georges 3 , I 3 I Trupheme, Auguste Joseph I 3 I
Rousseau, Henri 63 Turner, J. M. W. 3 , 22, 82, I 22
Rubens, Peter Paul 88
Russell, John 3 Utamaro I 23
U trillo, Maurice 89
Sainsere, Olivier 87
Salmon, Andre 89 Valadon, Maria 89
Sarraut, Albert 87 Valtat, Louis I46
Satie, Erik I I I Van Dongen, Kees 86
Schapiro, Meyer 22, 23 Van Gogh, Vincent 3 , 56, 58, 76, 99,
Sembat, Marcel 4 I02, I I 6, I22, I44
Seurat, Georges 57, 58, 72, I 39, I44 Vauxcelles, Louis 73 , 87, I 3 2
Shattuck, Roger 25 Velasquez, Diego Rodriguez d e Silva
Shchukin, Sergei Ivanovich (Stschou- 59, 65, I 22
kine) 4, 5, 67, 69, I 33, I 3 5 Verdet, Andre I42-7
Shostakovitch, Dmitri 6 Veronese, Paolo 54, I 88
Signac, Paul 4, 3 5, 38, 58, 87, I 23 , I 3 2 Vlaminck, Maurice I 24, I 3 2
Sisley, Alfred 23 , 3 6, I 32 Vollard, Ambroise 3, 5 6 , 7 5 , 87, Io i ,
Stein, Gertrude 4, 83 , 88, 89, I34 I 3 3 , I46-7
Stein, Leo 4
Stein, Michael 4 Watteau, Antoine I 9
Stein, Sarah 4, 4I -6 Weill, Berthe 5 6, 87
Stendhal 79 Wery, Emile (Very) 3 , 54, I 3 2
Stieglitz, Alfred 40
Stravinsky, Igor 5 Zborowska, Mme. 89
Swane, Leo 5 Zborowski, Leopold, 89
 WORKS BY MATISSE
L'artiste et son modele ( I 9 I 6) I 4 ; Fig. Fleurs et ceramique I 4
28 The gate of the Casbah I 33
L'artiste et son modele { I 9 I 9) I 4 ; Fig. Grand interieur rouge I S ; Fig. 44
30 Grande nature morte aux aubergines I 4,
L'atelier du peintre I4 2I
L'atelier du quai Saint-Michel I4, 25 ; Grande robe bleue, fond noir I S ; Fig.
Fig. 29 39
Greta Prozor I4
Baigneuse 2 5 La guitariste I 1 ; Fig. 15
Baldassare Castiglione 65
Le bocal aux poissons rouges I 4 Harmonie rouge I 2-I 3, 2I ; Fig. 20
Bonheur de vivre 4, I I , I 2, 2 I , 22, 25,
69, I 36 ; Fig. 17 lnterieur a Nice I 4 ; Fig. 32
Buffet et table I o, 23 ; Fig. 8 lnterieur au violon I 4 ; Fig. 31
L' italienne I 4
Carmelina 24
Chambre a Ajaccio 3 L e jardin I 46
Christ mort 6 5 Le jardin d'hiver I S
Compotier et fleurs 5 Jazz 6, 9, I I o- I 3 , I I 7, I 47 ; Fig.
La conversation I 3 43
J eunes filles au paravent mauresque I 4 ;
La danse 4, I2, I 3 , 20, 67�0, 86, I 33 ; Fig. 3 5
Fig. 21 Jeune fille en jaune I4-I 5 ; Fig. 34
La danse II 6, I S, 20, 25, 67-70 ; Fig. 36 Joie de· vivre see Bonheur de vivre
La desserte 3, I o, I 2, 1 3 , 22, 5 5 , 65 ; Joueurs de boules I 2, 2I ; Fig. 19
Fig. 5 Les joueurs de dames 24
Le dos 25
Le dos IV 57 ; Fig. 37 Le�on de piano I4, 27, I 34 ; Fig. 27
Livres et chandelier Fig. 1
Le Luxe I I 2
Luxe, calme et volupte 4, I I , 25, 132 ;
La famille du peintre I 3 ; Fig. 23 Fig. 1 3
La femme au chapeau 4, I I
Femme au tabouret I4 Madame Matisse I 4 ; Fig. 26
Femme au turban 57 ; Fig. 33 La malade I o ; Fig. 1
Femme et poissons rouges I4 Marine a Goulphar Fig. 4
La fenetre bleue I 3-I4, 24 ; Fig. 24 Marocains I 07
Fenetre ouverte, Collioure I I ; Fig. 14 The Moroccans on the terrace I33
Figure decorative sur fond omemental La musique 4, I 2, I 3 , I S , 20, 67, 70,
57 I 3 3 ; Fig. 22
Index 1 99

Nature morte a contre·-jour 23 L'olivier 1 o ; Fig. 6

Nature morte a 'la danse' 1 3
Nature morte apres de Heem 6 s ; Fig. 2 Portrait a la raie verte 4, I I ; Fig. 16
Nature morte apres de Heem (second Portrait de Mademoiselle Yvonne
- version) 1 3 2 Landsberg 1 4
Nature morte au purro I 1 1 , 24 ; Fig. I2
Nature morte au purro II 1 1 L a raie 5 1 , 54, 65
Nature morte bleu 1 2, 24 Le reve IS, 1 03 , 1 36 ; Fig. 40
Nature morte rouge au magnolia 1 03 , Le riffain 1 4
1 49 ; Fig. 4I
Notre-Dame fin d' apres-midi 1 1 ; Fig. I I St.-Tropez : l a baie 24
Nu bleu : la chevelure Fig. 46 Sarah Stein 1 4
Nu bleu (souvenir de Biskra) 4, 1 2 , 24,
The terrace a t St.-Tropez 1 3 2
49 ; Fig. I8
Tete ochre 1 5
Nu bleu III Fig. 47
Tete rose et bleue 1 4
Nu de bout 1 1 ; Fig. IO
Nu rose I S ; Fig. 38 Window at Tangiers 1 3 3

Oceanie-la mer 1 09- 1 0 ; Fig. 42 Young girls by the river 1 34

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