First published 1998
Henri Matisse emerged from a family of shopkeepers in northern France to become a master of twentieth-century art, but the man behind the colorful canvases remained largely unknown until Hilary Spurling's investigation. Spurling traces Matisse's journey from his birth in 1869 in a textile town through his struggles against his father's expectations and fifteen years of poverty in Paris. She follows his artistic education under mentors like Signac and Pissarro, his marriage to Amélie Parayre, and his discovery of the Mediterranean light that would transform his work. Spurling's most striking revelation concerns the mysterious period in 1902 when Matisse abandoned his breakthrough style and returned to dark colors. She uncovers the reason: his in-laws' involvement in the massive Humbert Affair, a financial scandal that nearly toppled the French government and brought disgrace to Matisse's family. This biography combines detective work with deep knowledge of fin-de-siècle Paris to show how personal crisis and artistic vision intersected in Matisse's life.
Genres: biography, art, french-literature, 20th-century, european-literature, art-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, literary-fiction
Setting: France, Paris
Period: Fin-de-siècle, Twentieth Century
480 pages · Hardcover · Knopf