Who was Henri Matisse?

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (1869–1954) is celebrated alongside Picasso as one of the defining figures of modern art. He believed that art should be like “a good armchair,” a place of rest and joy.

In this course we will explore the life and revolutionary vision of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists. We will examine his bold approach to color, his emphasis of line and form, his fascination with windows and interiors, his love of the figure, and his ongoing push towards “balance, purity and serenity.”

No prior art experience is required, only curiosity, a willingness to play, and the desire to see the world a little differently. Each module blends art history, critical looking, and hands-on studio practice so that you leave not just with skills, but with a genuinely deeper understanding of why Matisse still matters.

1869
Born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, northern France, son of a grain merchant.

1889
Given a paint box while recovering from illness—begins painting obsessively and decides to dedicate his life to art.

1895–1900
Studies under Symbolist paint Gustave Moreaus at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Forms lasting friendships with Albert Marquet and and other future Fauves.

1904–1905
Works alongside Paul Signac; experiments with Neo-Impressionist Pointillism before breaking free. Summer in Collioure with André Derain is electrifying.

1905
Fauvism explodes onto the scene. The Salon d’Automne exhibition shocks Paris. Critics call Matisse and his circle les fauves — “the wild beasts” — for their savage, non-naturalistic colour. Woman with a Hat scandalises and fascinates in equal measure.

1906–1913
Travels to Morocco and Algeria; Islamic geometric art and vivid North African light permanently transform his sense of pattern, decoration, and colour harmony. Paints the great series The Dance and Music for Russian collector Sergei Shchukin.

COLOR LANGUAGE

MATISSE’S SINGING PALETTE

The “singing palette” is a term used to describe the quality that results when colors in a painting seem to vibrate, resonate, or literally sing against each other rather than sitting inertly on the canvas.

Matisse described color less like a painter and more like a musician — talking about notes, chords, and harmony. The singing palette is essentially the visual equivalent of a chord: individual colors that, in combination, produce something greater than any of them alone.

The core idea comes from how certain color combinations create an optical and emotional intensity that no single color could produce alone. It's less about which specific colors you use, and more about the relationships between them.

What creates it:

Matisse understood that complementary colors (those opposite each other on the color wheel) placed side by side at full saturation, intensify each other dramatically. Each color makes the other appear more vivid than it would look in isolation. A red placed next to a green doesn't just sit there, it vibrates.

But a singing palette isn't simply “use complementaries.” Matisse added crucial nuance:

• Value is KEY. Firstly, Matisse’s “wild” Fauvist colors would often match the value of the original local color of the subject. Secondly, complementary colors of the same value vibrate more than colors of different values.

• Proportion matters. A small note of orange against a large field of blue creates more electricity than equal amounts of each. He controlled the ratio carefully.

• Temperature contrast adds to it. Warm colors (reds, oranges, yellows) placed against cool colors (blues, violets, cool greens) create a spatial tension. The warm colors appear to advance, and the cool to recede. This illusion adds to the vibrancy.

• Saturation must be managed. If every color is at full intensity all at once, the result is noise, not music. Matisse would include a quieter, more neutral passages for contrast and to give the eye a place of rest.

  See if you can spot these concepts of a “SINGING PALETTE” in this painting, “The Woman with the Hat.”

ESSAY: “Notes of a Painter” by Henri Matisse

Matisse eventually moved past the use of the Post-Impressionist “pointalist” ideas. He, instead, focused on using color to express emotion as you can see from the quotations below. Very aware that one color will always affect another he would often re-work canvases dozens of times to get the color relationships and proportions to his liking. Here are some of his thoughts about color from an essay he wrote in 1908, “Notes of a Painter.”

All color is relative. No color exists in isolation.
Every color is defined by its neighbors.

If you find color confusing, you are not alone. Watch this video to understand some reasons why and learn more about Color Relativity.

Video Password: Color
Video Length: 10:34 minutes

If you like the vintage look of the era of Matisse, simply search for “vintage photos of women",” or “vintage photos of women in hats.” etc. for more images. Below are examples of what you can find. Of course, feel free to use any of your own images that you might prefer.

Daily Drawing

When we talk about Matisse, we have to include a lesson on line as it was essential to his work.

Matisse loved to draw and did so every day. He aimed for efficiency and how to describe something with the fewest and the most expressive lines. This can readily be seen in the gallery of images below.

In the drawing on the right we see his process in finding the form and shape of the figure. Lines are drawn, rubbed out and drawn again until he was satisfied with the overall expression. He perfectly captures the woman’s lean into the pillow (sofa?) and shoulder turn as she glances backwards. Her hands are both resting and active. You can feel how she moved and adjusted into this pose.

Here is the image I used for the first drawing. Feel free to use this or use one of your own. Even better work from observation of the real objects instead of a photo. ⇨

A Painting Ahead of its Time

Was “The Red Studio” Always Red?

Matisse treated his interior paintings as a world he could arrange and rearrange, where floors, walls, fabrics, and objects merge into a unified decorative whole.

Again and again he returned to the same questions: how do pattern and color interact across a flat surface? How does a window or a vase become as visually alive as a human figure? Works like The Red Studio, Harmony in Red, and Interior at Nice each answer those questions differently, through a single blazing dominant color, through layered pattern on pattern, or through the luminous quiet of a sun-filled room.

In this project, you'll paint your own interior, a corner, a window, a tabletop, using his approach as your guide. You might choose a bold dominant color and let it govern the entire composition. Consider treating wallpaper, flooring, and objects as equal pattern elements rather than separate items in space. Resist the pull toward shadow and depth; embrace the flat and the decorative.

Watch as I work through my own version in acrylics, making decisions out loud so you can see the thinking behind each choice.

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Gertrude Stein’s Salon

They met around 1906, introduced through Gertrude Stein's Paris salon, at a moment when both were at pivotal points in their careers. From the start, they recognized each other as the only true peer either had. Picasso reportedly said that only he and Matisse were the painters who mattered, and by most accounts he meant it as a compliment as much as a competitive declaration.

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“Music” — by Matisse

There is no doubt that the mutual admiration and rivalry of these two artists inspired some of their greatest works.  Matisse worked slowly, methodically, through color and decoration and sensual pleasure. Picasso worked in explosive bursts, through form, disruption, and psychological intensity. They looked at each other's work constantly and responded to it.

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“Seated Woman” — by Picasso

When Matisse began flattening space and using bold pattern in his interiors, Picasso was watching. When Cubism fractured the picture plane, Matisse absorbed the challenge and found his own answer.

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“Jug, Bowl and Lemon” — by Picasso
(chosen by Matisse)

They exchanged paintings and kept them. Matisse had Picassos on his wall; Picasso ended with 10 of Matisse’s works.

These two paintings are the first that they exchanged. Regarding these two, Gertrude Stein, ever the provocateur, said each had opted for the worst example of the other's new work, but in fact, learning was the driving motivation. Matisse, whose own still life of lemons had recently been criticized in the press, saw how Picasso was pushing the genre toward Cubism.

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“Marguerite” — by Matisse
(chosen by Picasso)

Picasso chose Marguerite. This seemingly simple painting has deep historical references that few people would know. There are references to both Velazquez and Edouard Manet which Picasso would have seen and understood.

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“Respect”

In their later years, when Matisse was largely bedridden and working on his cut-outs, Picasso would visit and they would talk for hours. By then the rivalry had mellowed into something closer to tenderness. Two old men who understood that no one else could quite grasp what the other had attempted. When Matisse died in 1954, Picasso is said to have wept and told friends that now he would have to carry on alone

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Searching for the Essence

Matisse never treated the figure as an isolated anatomical subject. He thought of the human form as one element within a larger decorative whole, as much a shape, a color mass, or a rhythmic element as the patterned wallpaper or the vase beside it. The figure earned its place in the composition by contributing to the overall harmony, not by demanding special attention as a human presence. He wanted neither figure nor background to dominate; both should carry equal visual weight.

These concepts led him to think in terms of masses rather than anatomy. Where academic training taught artists to understand and render the body's structural logic, Matisse worked to dissolve that specificity, finding the essential silhouette, the weight, the gesture, and letting the rest go. His famous pen and ink nudes are extraordinary precisely because so little information produces such a vivid sense of a body.

His guiding principle, if there was one, was feeling over correctness, and nowhere is that more evident than in how he approached the figure: not as a problem to be solved technically, but as an emotional presence to be found.

A Closer Look at Henri Matisse’s Bather

Join two top experts at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for an in-depth look at this painting and Matisse’s process. Click on the link below to read the full article. It is well worth reading (or at least skimming) to fully understand his process.

In 1941, Matisse underwent major abdominal surgery for cancer, leaving him largely bedridden and unable to stand at an easel for the rest of his life. Rather than ending his career, this forced confinement opened what he called his “second life.”

Working from a bed or wheelchair, Matisse began cutting shapes from sheets of paper that assistants had painted with vivid gouache, then directing their arrangement into compositions of extraordinary color and rhythm. He described this practice as “drawing with scissors,” a way of carving form directly from color rather than applying color to a pre-drawn line.

Far from a diminished late style, the cut-outs are now considered among the most radical and influential works of his career, anticipating the flat planes and graphic clarity that would shape design and abstraction for decades to come.

How a book of collage work became another major turning point in modern art.

⇣ Use the arrows on either side to scroll through the pages ⇣

The Tate Museum’s Exhibition

Video Length: 4:19 minutes

Matisse: A Cut Above the Rest

Video Length: 29:29 minutes

Feel free to print out the PDF below and use it for this project.
I do recommend that you also design and cut your own shapes too.

Matisse painted his papers with gouache. I used store bought colored paper. If you prefer to purchase your colored papers, click on the button below to go to the MATISSE COURSE PRODUCTS page to purchase.