Craving Color

Charing Cross Bridge

 Andre Derain

Artist of the Week and ABC Wednesday, Letter M - Matisse

Henri Matisse 

(1869 – 1954) 

 

Self-Portrait

1900

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso, as one of the two seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. 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. 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.

 Woman Reading

1894

He first started to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it,^[ and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.

 The Maid

1896

Nude with a White Wash Towel

1902-03

            "What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure."

 Blue Nude

1905

Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) 

1905-06

                   "Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance."

 Marguiritte

(the artist's daughter)

1906

Madame Matisse

(the artist's first wife)

1907

 Dance I

1909

"When I put a green, it it not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky."

Dance II

1910

Seville Still-Life

1910-1911

"Expression, for me, does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has its share."

 The Goldfish

 1912

                                             "I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish."

 The White Feather

1919

Odalesque with Red Pants

1921

Odalesque with Gray Pants

1927

"Creativity takes courage."

The Romanian Green Blouse

1939

"The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model."

Still-Life with Shellfish

1940

"I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime, which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me...."

 1944

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

Anfitrite

(guouace on paper cut and pasted) 

1947

                           
                              "Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving."
 

La Gerbe

1953

Matisse Paper Cut-Outs

Blue Nude

1952

The Drawings

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence."

 1932

 1948

1948

1950

1951

Sources

 Matisse:  Life and Painting

Wikipedia

The New York Times

Huntfor.com

BrainyQuote

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ABC Wednesday

visit Roger for more interpretations

The Friday Evening Nudes

Raoul Duffy

Fauvist

Maurice Denis

 Symbolist

Armande Guillaumin

Impressionist

The Delvaux below meets a request by libhom, who loves the Surrealists

Paul Delvaux

 A Modern Olympia

Paul Cezanne 

Post Impressionist

The Friday Evening Nudes (On Saturday)

Hi, All, 

This post was scheduled to appear last night but something went awry with the time stamp. Sorry 'bout that. Enjoy!

click on images for extra voluptuousness

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

1782-1806

Frédéric Bazille

1841-1870

Annie Swynnerton

1844- 1933

Cupid and Psyche 

Evelyn Pickering de Morgan

1855-1919

Henri Lebasque

1865-1937

Suzanne Valadon 
1865-1938

Jacqueline Marval

 1866-1932

 Karl Hofer
1878-1955

The Friday Evening Nudes

Tonight's fine art nudes are all by Kees Van Dongen, whom the girls and I discovered at an exhibit at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona this summer. The three of us were smitten. I hope you will be too.

In 1897 he lived in Paris for several months. In December 1899 he returned to Paris to join Augusta Preitinger ("Guus"), whom he had met at the Academy. They married on July 11, 1901 (they divorced in 1921). He began to exhibit in Paris, including the controversial 1905 exhibition Salon d'Automne,^[1] in a room featuring Henri Matisse amongst others. The bright colours of this group of artists led to them being called Fauves ('Wild Beasts'). (He was also briefly a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke.) In these years he was part of an avant-garde wave of painters - Maurice de Vlaminck, Othon Friesz, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay, Albert Marquet, Edouard Vuillard, - that incarnated hopes of a renewal in painting stuck in Neo-impressionism. In 1906 the couple moved to the Bateau Lavoir at 13 rue Ravignan, where they were friends with the circle surrounding Pablo Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande Olivier.

The painting above was on exhibit when we visited the Picasso Museum

The painting above was also on exhibit when we visited the Picasso Museum