50 Fun Facts About Henri Matisse

Matisse led which movement, named after the French for 'wild beasts'?

The label came from a 1905 jibe about 'Donatello among the wild beasts'.

What medium did Matisse turn to when illness stopped him painting?

He called his final years a 'second life', wandering gardens in the form of cut-outs.

What did Matisse's mother bring him during his appendicitis convalescence in 1889?

He discovered 'a kind of paradise' and abandoned law, deeply disappointing his father.

What had Matisse studied in Paris before he took up painting?

He worked as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after qualifying.

In which northern French town was Matisse born on New Year's Eve 1869?

His father was a wealthy grain merchant; the town now has a Matisse museum he founded in 1952.

Under which Symbolist teacher did Matisse study at the École des Beaux-Arts?

Moreau pushed students to 'follow their visions' and is called the Fauves' inspirational teacher.

Which Australian painter introduced Matisse to Impressionism on Belle Île in 1896?

They met on Belle Île in 1896; Matisse said Russell explained colour theory to him.

Which Cézanne painting did Matisse buy and hang at home as his main inspiration?

He went into debt buying work, including a Gauguin and a Rodin bust.

Which financial scandal of 1902 ensnared Matisse's parents-in-law?

It left Matisse sole breadwinner for an extended family of seven.

Who was Matisse's friendly rival and co-leader of the Fauves?

They painted together at Collioure in the summer of 1905.

Which critic coined 'Donatello chez les fauves' in Gil Blas in 1905?

Camille Mauclair added that 'a pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public'.

Which painting, singled out for condemnation in 1905, did Gertrude and Leo Stein buy?

They paid 500 francs; the model was Matisse's wife Amélie.

Who is the sitter in Woman with a Hat?

A green line divides her face; the hat is pure invention.

Which US city's modern-art museum received Woman with a Hat by bequest in 1990?

Elise Haas bequeathed it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with 36 other works in 1990.

In which seaside town did Matisse paint with Signac and Cross in summer 1904?

Luxe, Calme et Volupté is the key neo-Impressionist work from that year.

Which Russian collector commissioned Dance and Music for his Moscow staircase?

He bequeathed them to the Hermitage; a 1909 study hangs in MoMA as Dance (I).

How many dancing figures appear in Matisse's Dance?

They are strong red against a simplified green landscape and deep blue sky.

Which Picasso painting is Le bonheur de vivre paired with as a pillar of early modernism?

It outraged the 1906 Salon des Indépendants with its cadmium colours.

Which engraver's Love in the Golden Age is suggested as a source for Le bonheur de vivre?

Its circle of dancers in the background prefigures Matisse's Dance.

Which Matisse painting was burned in effigy at the 1913 Armory Show in Chicago?

The 1907 Blue Nude was a souvenir of his trip to Biskra in Algeria.

Which New York institution holds The Red Studio of 1911?

A 2004 poll of 500 experts ranked it the fifth most influential modern artwork.

Which object sits roughly at the centre of The Red Studio as its vertical axis?

Yellow lines outline furniture in a sea of rusty red.

How many years younger than Matisse was Picasso when they met around 1906?

Gertrude Stein's salon at 27 rue de Fleurus brought them together.

At which Paris address did Gertrude Stein hold the Saturday salons Matisse attended?

Stein said the salons began because people kept coming to see the Matisse paintings.

Which Baltimore family's two sisters became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso?

Claribel and Etta's hundreds of works are now in the Baltimore Museum of Art.

In which years did the Académie Matisse operate?

The Steins and Hans Purrmann helped set up the private, non-commercial school.

Which North African country did Matisse visit in 1912 and 1913, painting in Tangier?

Odalisques and goldfish in aquariums became recurring themes afterward.

To which suburb of Nice did Matisse relocate in 1917?

He is buried there in the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez cemetery.

Which American collector commissioned the mural The Dance II, finished in 1932?

He had cardboard templates of the odd wall shapes made for Matisse's Nice studio.

Who was Lydia Delectorskaya?

Amélie ended their 41-year marriage over her in 1939; Lydia shot herself, survived, and returned.

Which country was Matisse about to flee to in 1940 before deciding to stay in Nice?

'If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?' he wrote to his son.

What was Matisse diagnosed with in 1941, leading to the surgery that left him bedridden?

Three months in bed led to the new art of paper and scissors.

Which nurse-turned-nun inspired Matisse's chapel at Vence?

She answered his ad for 'a young and pretty nurse' and became Sister Jacques-Marie.

To which religious order is the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence dedicated?

Matisse, aged 77 at the start, called the chapel his masterpiece.

Which of Matisse's children was tortured by the Gestapo and escaped a camp-bound train?

She hid in the woods until rescued by fellow resisters.

What did Matisse's son Pierre do in New York?

His 1942 'Artists in Exile' show became legendary; he helped Jewish artists escape France.

What was the title of Matisse's 1947 artist's book of stencil prints from cut-outs?

Its introduction warns an artist must never be 'prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation'.

Which Stravinsky opera's decor in 1919 was Matisse's first recorded use of cut paper?

More cut-outs followed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1937–38.

Which London museum owns The Snail, the 1953 spiral of coloured paper?

Its alternative title is La Composition Chromatique; it measures nearly three metres square.

Which two 1946 cut-out murals evoked Matisse's earlier trip to Tahiti?

Lydia pinned silhouettes of birds, fish and marine plants straight onto the studio walls.

Which of the four numbered nudes in Matisse's cut-out series was made first?

It took a notebook of studies and two weeks of cutting; the pose traces back to Le bonheur de vivre.

What did one colour signify to Matisse, according to the account of his nude cut-outs?

The cut-outs were inspired by his African sculpture collection and his Tahiti visit.

Matisse's final design was a stained-glass window for a church near which family's estate?

David Rockefeller said the maquette was on his bedroom wall when he died in 1954.

How old was Matisse when he died of a heart attack in November 1954?

He had used cut paper as his sole medium since finishing his last painting in 1951.

Which was the first Matisse painting bought by a public collection, in 1912?

The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich acquired it.

On which planet was a crater named after Matisse in 1976?

Mercury's craters are named for artists, writers and composers.

Who played Matisse in the 1996 film Surviving Picasso?

Yves-Antoine Spoto played him in Midnight in Paris in 2011.

Which Matisse cut-out, a Brody commission, hangs as a ceramic in LACMA?

It was shown at the Salon de Mai in 1954, months before his death.

Which old master's paintings did Matisse copy four times in the Louvre as a student?

Chardin was one of the painters he most admired, alongside Poussin and Watteau.

On whose advice did Matisse go to London in 1898 to study Turner?

He then went on to Corsica before settling back in Paris in 1899.