Henri Matisse: Brittany, Corsica, Toulouse, Saint-Tropez, Collioure

Henri Matisse was born in northern France, not far from the Belgian border.

I was born in my grandmother's house, in Cateau-Cambrésis, on December 31, 1869. My father was a seed merchant not far away, in Bohain.

I found no interest in all the careers offered to me. I remained indifferent. I asked my parents for permission to move to Paris to study painting. Seriously. I went to the Académie Julian and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts.

I spent my days inLouvre. I studied the great artists in it, according to my inclinations, as students of literature study the great writers. I went from the Dutch to Chardin, but I was forced to copy with submissive obedience, not with wisdom.

Henri Matisse initially lived on the Quai Saint-Michel, on the banks of the Seine River, at 19 quai Saint-Michel, next door to the painter Émile Auguste Wéry. The two painters became close friends and together they traveled to Belle-Île-en-Mer, in Brittany.

First trip to Bel-Il-en-Mer

When I was studying at the School of Fine Arts, I lived on the Quai Saint-Michel (literally: Quai Saint-Michel, A.L). The painter Verry lived next door. In the summer we went to Belle-Ile-en-Mer (literally: Beautiful Island in the Sea, A.L). My first trip was, then, toBrittany. That was the first stage in my development. We lived near the wild coast.

Matisse learned to paint according to classical codes. His first paintings, from Brittany, are therefore still marked by the academic palette, neither intense nor pure.

Clotilde, a waitress in the modest and typical café that Matisse frequented in Brittany, leans over the table on which are placed fruit, bread and three bottles of wine. The wine was served generously and abundantly. This is Matisse's last salute to the Dutch artists and to Chardin. The colors are still dim, but it seems that soon the light will come, breaking through the open door and illuminating the white tablecloth and the bare walls even more intensely.

My palette consisted only of dark browns and earth tones, while Lévrier had an impressionistic palette. I began to paint like him, from nature. As I painted next to him, I noticed that Lévrier was able to achieve more brightness with his primary colors than I was able to with my classic colors.

Second trip to Bel-Il-en-Mer

In the summer of 1896, Matisse returned to Belle-Ile-en-Mer and met another painter who had lived there for about a decade, the Australian John Peter Russell, one of the first Post-Impressionists and a close friend of Van Gogh and Monet. Russell fell in love with the light of the place, built a house on Gulfport Bay and lived there for twenty happy and fruitful years, from 1888 until the death of his beloved wife in 1908. The Australian painter used six pure colors that he applied to the canvas with broad, vigorous brushstrokes.

I was quickly captivated. The radiance of pure color enchanted me. I did not come to my search for color from observing works of art but from the outside, that is, from the revelation of light in nature.

During this second stay on the island, Matisse began to explore the theme of openings, doors and later windows, an arrangement that would become dear to his heart.

No still life, no human figures, a minimal landscape, geometric lines framing the heart of the picture – the light that emerges, the fleeting light, still fragile, to be grasped and expressed. This painting is surprising in its modernity.

Brittany has an intimate and refined side that you have to know how to penetrate. Its aura is especially silver and its sky is like a shell.

I returned from Brittany with an idea for a new palette. Slowly I began to paint as I felt, I was redeemed. To follow the path your nature directs you to, this is the meaning of freedom. Freed from the influence of the Louvre, I chose the colors that suited me. In this state of mind I painted Shulchan Aruch.

In this painting, Matisse pays homage to Gustave Moreau. As in the painting “Breton Maid,” here too a country woman in traditional dress leans over a table on which fruit and wine are placed. Matisse borrowed the expensive glasses and dishes, as well as the chairs, from the wife of one of his cousins. He spent a lot of money on the fruit and flowers, beyond his means. To keep them fresh in the Parisian winter, Matisse worked while wearing a coat and with his hands covered in gloves.

But apart from the bourgeois features, which are not found in the modest café of “The Breton Maid,” the difference in the color palette of the two paintings is striking. Matisse began painting “The Table Set for Dinner” in the dark, academic earth tones but was later surprised by the final result, which gave considerable space to color and light. The warm red of the wine gourd, the orange of some of the fruit, the brown shirt of the maid, the tones of the walls and chairs, all of these glorify the melancholy emanating from the scene depicted. The combination of brown and gray in pure colors foreshadows the brilliance that will flood and dazzle in the future.

For the sake of the anecdote, it will be told that the father of the young painter, Hippolyte Matisse, placed himself in a guard position next to his son's painting in the Salon of French Artists where it was exhibited. All day long, the father heard scathing criticism of the work. The son's response was: "I was right." Matisse sold his picture for 200 francs to Ambroise Vollard, who sold it a short time later for 1500 francs to an art lover from Berlin...

Corsica – a gateway to a new world that opens up to Matisse

In early 1898, Matisse married Amélie Parayre from Toulouse. With her, Matisse would discover South of FranceThe young couple spent part of their honeymoon in Corsica.

In Ajaccio I first experienced my great admiration for the South, which I had not yet known. During my visit to this wonderful land I got to know the Mediterranean. I was enchanted. Everything was radiant, everything was colored, everything was light.

What a transformation I experienced, the light shining on the paint! This experience guided me all my life, in all the pictures I was able to paint. With joy. In Corsica I felt how the passion for paint grew within me.

Amelie and Henri lived in an apartment on the outskirts of the city. Despite the pleasures of their honeymoon, the 29-year-old young painter devoted considerable attention to his art and worked hard, even diligently. The result is the painting called “The Sea in Corsica – Scud Beach”, from 1898 (it can be seen inLink this).

To paint this picture, Matisse climbed the hills overlooking the sea. The foam of the waves crashing onto the shore is studded with shades of bright red and emerald green. The clouds in the sky are colored by the sun's rays. Water and sky reflect each other in two versions of blue, connecting in a luminous strip of light. The bold, shimmering line frames the bay to the foot of the hill, extending in the shadow of its steep slope and uniting all the elements of the landscape.

The painter's brush extends the horizon and deepens the contrast between the dull tones of the coast and the blue of the sky. The green of the vegetation takes on a blue shade, the foliage softens. The lush palm tree on the right moves its palms, one can feel the wavy movement, expressing joy of life and the joy of creation. A palm tree that will appear frequently in Matisse's future works. An arched opening, a kind of gate, carved from another tree, heralds the importance of the arrangement of windows and doors that will also appear frequently in the future.

The trees on the left, dark spots, lean slightly toward the sea, which spreads and expands in pink and white toward the illuminated sky. Water and sky correspond in a unique way. The novice painter masters the technique and renews the view of the familiar landscape. The peaceful painting celebrates the beauty and serenity of the island. The entire landscape is illuminated by the moonlight of the twilight. The small picture glorifies the space with an infinity of distances and possibilities.

Nature encourages the imagination. But to improve its representation in a picture, the spirit of the landscape must be added.

The Corsican Territorial Council purchased the painting in Paris, at the Hôtel Drouot auction house, in December 2019, for 000 euros. It is no wonder that the Corsicans made all the necessary efforts to obtain the painting and display it on the island.

In Corsica, Matisse discovered trees and plants that were unknown to him until then: cacti, sabra bushes, palms, agaves, aloe plants.

Almonds bloom among silver olive trees. And the sea, blue, blue, so blue, you could eat it. The tall eucalyptus trees with feathery foliage, the orange trees with jewel-like fruit set with precious stones.

With its golden color, the light reminded me of ripe fruit. The air carried the mixed scents of the forest, the smoke of burning trees, the salt of the sea. A strong anesthetic seemed to invade my lungs as I breathed in the mist.

Henri Matisse opened the doors to a new world that he would deepen and discover a few years later. “Corsica was the Orient,” he would say. In no more than six months on the island, Matisse painted fifty-five pictures, most of them in shades of pink, sapphire, emerald, and crimson, creating an explosion of colors that, for the first time in his work, vibrated the Mediterranean light.

Toulouse – Matisse continues to paint the South

Henri's wife is pregnant and must return. Amelie decides to give birth near her parents, in Toulouse, and the couple spend the last months of 1898 in that city. In 1899 Jean is born and in 1900 Pierre is born.

An opportunity to continue exploring the South.

Matisse's oranges shine brighter and brighter. Later, Apollinaire would compare Matisse's work to an orange, a fruit that emits a radiant light.

Paris, 1899 to 1903, dark years. Matisse's source of inspiration dried up. To renew himself, he traveled with Amelie and their eldest son Jean to Saint-Tropez.

Saint Tropez – Live

In the house of the painter Paul Signac in Saint-Tropez, in the summer of 1904, Matisse came back to life. Signac fell in love with the sky-blue fishing village, which was still unknown. He planned to stay there for only one night but ended up staying for twenty years… In 1898 he purchased the villa “La Hune”, a word that refers to the platforms (sicarias) mounted on the mast of a ship.

Each of the sicarias has a sail hanging from it and they also serve as observation points. Signac's comfortable villa, from which there is, indeed, a magnificent sea view, included a workshop on the first floor, a garden and a guest pavilion. Signac made it available to his many guests, including:

Henri-Edmond Cross, Théo Van Rysselberghe, André Dunoyer de Ségonzac, Charles Camoin, Albert Marquet, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Francis Picabia, André Derain, Pierre Bonnard, Moïse Kisling…

Almost all the important painters of the period made a pilgrimage to Signac's villa. Thus, Saint-Tropez became the capital of underground art, the center of Neo-Impressionism and Fauvism, until tourists came in droves and drove the painter away.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. In the meantime, Signac invited Matisse to his home and thus rescued him from his misery in dreary Paris. In 1904, as mentioned, Henri Matisse arrived in Saint-Tropez with his wife Amelie and his eldest son Jean. Signac made the pavilion near the villa, “La Cigèle,” the cricket, available to them. From the very first days, the southern light restored Henri Matisse's passion for painting.

I worked in a sitting position on the painting “The Terrace in Saint-Tropez,” which actually depicts the boathouse of Paul Signac’s house.

During this stay, Signac introduced Matisse to a new technique, pointillism, which he also called divisionism, the use of dots, round or square, next to each other. Matisse tried his hand at it.

For forty years, the work adorned the living room wall at Villa La Inn. The strong light of the setting sun, which will soon disappear, is concentrated in yellow on the left side of the picture, in the sky and the sea. But the presence of the summer evening light radiates, nevertheless, over the entire picture and vibrates its colors.

Matisse prepared several sketches for the painting and devoted a lot of time to the new experience. The title of the work refers to the chorus of Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem, “Invitation to a Journey.” The message of the painting, a journey to an ideal and exotic place, in accordance with the content of the poem, is anchored in Matisse’s spirit, but the new technique did not suit the artist’s temperament.

I then executed the large composition “Splendour, Calmness and Delight.” The picture was painted in the pure colors of the rainbow. But all the paintings of this school, Divisionism, created the same effect: a little pink, a little blue, a little green, a very limited palette with which I did not feel very comfortable.

This brought me to the idea of ​​arranging the colors, next to each other, with each one expressing a wholeness, like the different notes of a chord.

Matisse deviated from the theory of pointillism by demarcating the areas of color and almost avoiding mixing. But although he took liberties, the result did not satisfy him. Therefore, he changed his technique and moved to painting with uniform areas of color.

Collioure, the birth of fauvism

In 1905, in a small port on the border with Spain, Collioure, Matisse's palette was unleashed even more. It was not only Amelie who accompanied the 36-year-old Matisse on his trip to Collioure. The young painter André Derain, 25, joined the couple and his presence was very significant.

We worked incessantly, it stimulated it, in the same way. The methods of painting employed by our predecessors could no longer, under any circumstances, express the true representation of our feelings. We therefore sought new methods.

I placed a first touch of color on the canvas. I added a second touch of color to it. Instead of correcting, when the second touch didn't seem right to me the first time, I placed a third touch that was supposed to coordinate the first two touches. And so I had to continue until the final feeling of achieving complete harmony in the work and freedom from the excitement that motivated me to begin it.

A window wall does not, to my sense, create two different worlds. From the horizon to my studio room, the space is the same space. The passing ship exists in the same space as the personal objects that surround me.

The play of reflections in the panes of the wide-open window allows for a cross-connection between the green, which dominates the left side of the picture, and the red, which dominates the right side. These two complementary colors, of equal value, create a tension between two equal forces. In combining them, Matisse joins the tradition of Titian, Veronese, Delacroix, and Van Gogh.

The intersection of green and red appears, on the other hand, in oriental art, in carpets, paintings, Persian miniatures. Matisse, even if he was not yet directly influenced by the latter, was attracted by their use of color, which takes on its own autonomy, outside the natural world, and radiates an inner light that emanates from the figures and objects themselves.

To Collioure, the small and enchanting fishing village, between sea and mountain, Matisse returned every year until the constraints of war in 1914. The castle, the fortress, the bell tower, the narrow streets crowded with houses with red tiled roofs, the vineyards that covered the hillsides with green, the pine trees, the olive trees, the rosemary bushes, the fishing nets, the sailing ships billowing back and forth in the wind, the smells of tar and ropes, the play of strong golden light and bright shadow, the friendly anchovy fishermen who introduced him to the local painters and dignitaries – all of these drew him year after year to the Catalan paradise.

The Hall 7 scandal that gave rise to the word “favism”

At the Salon d'Autumn of the same year, 1905, in which Matisse discovered Collioure, from October 17 to November 27, in the Grand Palais (Grand Palace) in Paris, in Hall 7, Henri Matisse and André Derain exhibited the paintings they had painted in Collioure. Ten paintings by Matisse, nine by Derain. The young painters also exhibited in the same hall:

Charles Camoin, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, Pierre Girieud, Ramon Pichot,

And in the middle of it were two classical marble statues in the Florentine style, by Albert Marque. On October 17, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles published a critical article on the Salon d’Automne in the supplement to the journal “Gilles Blatt” and moved from room to room. Louis Vauxcelles, born Louis Mayer (Jewish), was the most influential Parisian art critic of the early 19th century.

Vossel appreciated the painting talent of Henri Matisse but, conservative in temperament, was wary of innovations. This is probably why he criticized the paintings of Matisse, Deran and the other exhibitors and called them “foubs,” translated in Hebrew as “wild animals.” “Donatello among wild animals,” he wrote in his article, referring to the refined and innocent figurines of Albert Marek and the paintings surrounding them, the “orgy of pure colors” that they celebrated defiantly.

And perhaps Louis Vaucel was influenced by Henri Rousseau’s painting, “A Hungry Lion Pouncing on an Antelope,” which was displayed near Hall 7, along with other works by the rainforest artist. Word of mouth spread about the jungle in the Grand Palace. What inexperienced painters, indiscriminately throwing paint on the canvas like excited children, or what young anarchists, shouting their hatred of bourgeois morality, had infiltrated the venerable palace?

It should be noted that in the early 19th century, the image of wild animals as an illustration of instinctive, individual, and revolutionary power was very common as a contrast to the urban bourgeois order that it sought to overthrow. Things went far. The then president of the country, Emile Loubet, horrified by the rumors about the 39 blatant paintings in Hall 7, the heart of the exhibition, refused to come to inaugurate the third Salon d'Automne. A real scandal.

Louis Vaucel was indignant and wept over what he saw, at the time, as rudeness and exaggeration, while the general public mocked and laughed at what they saw as hypocrisy, ignorance, or madness. Louis Vaucel’s successful expression, “Donatello among the wild beasts,” appealed to the art-loving public, who continued the image and defined Hall 7 as a “cage of wild beasts.” Thus was born, absorbed, and left in history, under Louis Vaucel’s sharp pen, the epithet Fauvism… He came to visit and was found welcoming.

And perhaps Vossel wrote his article only to create buzz? To promote Henri Matisse, whose paintings he had seen a year earlier in Bert Weil's gallery? And didn't he praise his audacity then? And why is he suddenly pretending that he is only discovering Matisse now? Isn't this a connection that tied Louis Vossel and the other organizers of the Salon together, in a premeditated scandal?

It should be noted that Louis Vossel showed much more understanding than is commonly thought about the new style of painting that was named “Fauvism.” Throughout his career as an art critic, Louis Vossel never stopped following the painters of the various movements. In 1939, he even published the title “Fauvism", a fascinating 150-page essay that allows us to understand the essence of the experience of Fauvism, a brief but extremely significant moment in the development of modern art.

In any case, the word Fauvism was born. Matisse, who was reluctantly crowned the leader of the movement, the main “Fauvist,” expressed his reservations about the definition. “We never accepted that title,” he said. “To us, it was nothing more than a title circulated by art critics.”

The painting “Woman in a Hat,” a portrait of Matisse’s wife in bourgeois attire, particularly drew the ridicule of the people: What is this huge hat that is trampling her face, what is on it, feathers or flowers? The colors are eye-popping, her hands are not those of a woman, and she is so ungraceful, perhaps she is not a woman at all…

Amelie didn’t dare show her face in the living room while Henri, on the contrary, came to the infamous room number 7 every day and listened intently so as not to miss any criticism, any derogatory epithet. “Why are you torturing yourself?” Amelie asked him.

The bright colors, the splashes of green, blue, pink, orange, and yellow on her face and the light radiating from them were not understood by the public at the time. Gertrude and Leo Stein, Americans in Paris, were willing, however, to buy the picture but stood their ground. The depressed Matisse agreed to lower the price but Amélie demanded that he stand his ground: “The buyers will pay you whatever you demand. With the difference we will buy warm clothes for Margot.” Margot, Marguerite, was Matisse’s daughter from a previous affair whom Amélie raised as her own.

Amelie was right. Gertrude and Leo Stein, who would also become famous as major players on the cultural scene of those days, bought the painting for 450 francs and hung it in their apartment in the 6th arrondissement, at 27 rue de Fleurus, where Matisse would meet Picasso two years later.

In early 1906, Matisse continued his defiant journey of liberation in a painting that would become one of his most characteristic works, “Joy of Life.” Dancing, music, and sensuality in an idyllic paradise, the painting celebrates the beauty of the body, colors, and arts. “Joy of Life” is similar in theme to “Splendid, Calm, and Pleasure,” but the technique is completely different. The pure colors illuminate the painting with a supernatural light. Influences from Ingres, Gauguin, Cézanne, yes, but Matisse sought and found his own uniqueness. This painting is a repository of motifs that Matisse would develop in future works.

When I put green on the canvas, it doesn't mean grass. When I put blue on the canvas, it doesn't mean sky. I had to get out of imitation, even of light. I used color as a means of expressing emotion, not as a copy of nature.

Fauvism came from placing ourselves as far away from imitation colors as possible and from the fact that we achieved stronger reactions with pure colors.

Leo Stein also bought this picture, but he soon preferred Picasso. For now. What does it matter? Matisse is not interested in wallowing in the dust of rivalries. His soul thirsts to discover new landscapes, more distant, more exotic, overseas. And here he is again on the road, his first contact with the East, which he always loved, according to him, and to which he was always drawn.