Henri Matisse

 

From his youth, Henri Matisse displayedboldness and perseverance. Born in the region of Le Cateau-Cambrésis in the north of France in December 1869, intending to become a notary clerk, it was during a long convalescence that he began to paint and there discovered his passion: "(...) For me it was Paradise found, a place where I was completely free, alone, quiet, tranquil, whereas I was always a little anxious, bored and worried in the different things that I was made to do" ¹.

In spite of his father's objections, Henri Matisse left for Paris to enroll at the Académie Julian in the hopes of entering the École des Beaux Arts. His failing to pass the entrance exam did not dissuade him; it only encouraged him to find other paths towards his destiny: that of becoming one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Informally admitted to the studio of Gustave Moreau, he also attended evening classes at Paris’s École des Arts Deco where he spent time with Albert Marquet with whom he would capture the urban scenes of the capital, horse-drawn carriages and passers-by. Drawing allowed him to experiment and to differentiate himself from his peers, a reflection of who the man would be all his life, resolute and optimistic, undeterred by failures and life’s uncertainties. His early years reveal an iconoclastic capacity to break the codes of the rather traditional training as a painter, which Gustave Moreau would recognize when he told him: " ou are going to simplify painting" ².

This quest for simplification, both aesthetic and philosophical, was above all a quest for universalism, something he attained at the end of his life with the Chappelle de Vence: " This chapel is for me the culmination of a whole life’s work for which I was chosen by destiny at the end of my journey and which I continue in accordance with my ideals, the chapel giving me the opportunity to secure them by bringing them together."³.