1869 - 1954
His time in the Alpes Maritime
“When I put colours together, they have to join a living chord, like a musical chord or harmony.” Matisse
After 20 years in Paris where he became the acknowledged leader of les fauves - wild beasts - Matisse moved south.
After the first world war Matisse started to spend his winters on the Riviera and by the early 20s was mostly resident in and around Nice. As with many successful painters at that time his work became less daring and relaxed into a form of ‘modernised classicim’ which aimed to please an art public which had tired of earlier shock tactics. Despite this he was no less prolific and hard working. He produced sets and costumes for a Diagilev ballet, returned to sculpture and developing his interest in etching, drypoint, lithography and printmaking techniques.
In the late 30s he became increasingly active as a graphic artist and illustrated a number of books - largely using black and white techniques - throughout the 40s. In 1947 he published ‘Jazz’ a book in which he expressed his own reflections on life and art. The illustrations in this book were by contrast brightly coloured and utilised his new technique of ‘drawing with scissors’ where he created motifs cut from brightly coloured paper which he then pasted together.
Between 1943 and 1948 Matisse lived in a villa in Vence, and during this period he started work on the Chapelle du Rosaire for the Dominican nuns which was completed in 1951. Although he originally only agreed to design the windows, he ended up also painting the murals and designing everything else inside and out - including liturgical objects and vestments. To the end of this period he started working on huge paper cut-outs based on the illustrations in jazz. At this time he lived in a large studio in the Old Hotel Reginea overlooking Nice. Here, often bedridden, he would work from his studio bed using a crayon on a pole to access his mural sized projects and although his health deteriorated further due to asthma and heart trouble, his work shows no flagging of energy and his latest works were amongst the most daring, accomplished and optimistic of his career. He died in 1954.
