Henri Matisse
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.[1] Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.[2][3][4][5] Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.[6] His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.[7]__
_Main article: Fauvism
Woman with a Hat, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Fauvism__ as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions.[19][20] The leaders of the movement were Matisse and André Derain.[19] Matisse’s first solo exhibition was at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in 1904,[16] without much success. His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionists Signac and Henri Edmond Cross.[15] In that year he painted the most important of his works in the neo-Impressionist style, Luxe, Calme et Volupté.[15] In 1905 he travelled southwards again to work with André Derain at Collioure. His paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and use pointillism in a less rigorous way than before.
Matisse and a group of artists now known as “Fauves” exhibited together in a room at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject’s natural colours. Matisse showed Open Window and Woman with the Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase “Donatello parmi les fauves!” (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them.[21] His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage.[19][21] The exhibition garnered harsh criticism—”_A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public”_,_ said the critic Camille Mauclair—but also some favourable attention.[21] When the painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, the embattled artist’s morale improved considerably.[21] Les toits de Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia****
