Customer Reviews

The Unknown Matisse

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When I first heard that Hilary Spurling was planning to write Henri Matisse's biography I wondered what a literary English biographer could possible tell me about my intensely French artistic grandfather. Four years later the answer turned out to be a great deal more than I ever imagined.

Previous Matisse biographies have been written by art historians, art critics, and art lovers; all have skimmed quickly over the few facts that were generally known about his life in order to focus as quickly as possible on various aspects of his art. Ms. Spurling, on the other hand, approached Matisse's life as a professional biographer, and spent a great deal of time on original research.

The results are absolutely astonishing. For any one interested in Matisse's work, this book will be a revelation. It is beautifully written, excrutiatingly accurate, intensely documented, and filled with surprising and important insights about his life and work. It gives us a real understanding of what it was like to be this particular painter at the turn of the century in France. The book is almost like a mystery story, packed with surprising developments and clearly drawn characters. It is also beautifully illustrated with many family photographs as well as numerous black and white and color reproductions of his paintings, sculptures, and drawings.

Once started, this is a very hard book to put down. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

This is a genuinely inspiring biography, clearly written and deeply felt, powerfully communicating the revolutionary ideas of what painting could and should be that drove, and were driven by, Henri Matisse. Spurling vividly describes Matisse's struggles to balance his need to paint with financial reality and his society's disdain, often using the artist's own letters and recollections to depict his growing obsession with color and impatience with representation.

Although I eagerly await the second volume, the true measure of Spurling's success is my anticipation in revisiting Matisse's paintings -- my enjoyment of his work has been increased immeasurably by reading this book.

This account of the life of Matisse up until the age of 40 is a revelation. His early years in the dour industrial flatlands of northern France, the intensity of his struggle to find his own true artistic vision, the long years of poverty amd of sometimes crippling insecurity - all are described with sensitivity and narrative drive. Spurling's account of how the Humbert affair nearly destroyed Matisse is a triumph of historical detective work. And, set against all his trials, she movingly depicts the love and strength he derived from his marriage to Amelie. Finally, right at the end, we are in Paris in the first decade of the 20th century, when Matisse and Picasso between them revolutionized western art. It doesn't get any better than this.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) came from the somber northern region of France. The landscape of his youth was sketched in the somber colors of a provinical childhood. His family were seed merchants, sober and no nonsense in their approach to the realities of life. As Matisse grew his art expanded as he journeyed to Paris and to the South of France where he discovered the glories of coloration in his art. Matisse was the greatest of the Fauvist painters; the chief rival of Picasso and the grand old man of French painting.
In this first volume of her life of Matisse, Hilary Spurling the British born biographer draws France in the dawn of the 20th
century as we see Matisse struggle from poverty to stability. He was supported by a loving wife, good friends and a genius which
burst forth in all its glory as the great master continue to grow in his art.
The book is well illustrated, detailed in its description of Matisse's families, friends and opponents and well worth the reader's time.
With the current exhibition of Matisse-Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Mordern Art it is a pleasure to turn to Spurling's fine volume on Matisse to gain further insights into this giant of modern art. I recommend this book to everyone from art expert to the educated general reader seeking further insights into the evolution of a painter of genius.

What a book. Spurling writes a complete biography of Matisse, looking not just at his art and artisitc influences but at his entire life. Unlike Richardson in his biographies of Picasso, Spurling never stoops to cheerleading or excuse-making. (However, seeing as Spurling's book was written years after Richardson's first two Picasso volumes, I can't help but wonder how the two writers portray the Steins so differently. I wish Spurling had been willing to take on Richardson a bit more directly.) Instead she explains and enlightens. The pace of the text is perfect. Of particular fascination is Spurling's accounts of Matisse's artistic breakthrough, starting in the Fauve summer in 1905. This book is exciting, breath-taking, insightful and I can't wait for volume two. Quite possibly the best book I read in 1999.

THE UNKNOWN MATISSE is an exceptional biography. Moving beyond historical fact, Spurling sensitively imagines the human dimension of Matisse's life. She weaves historical detail, Matisse's writings and the writings of other artists, critics, conversations, all kinds of information into a seamless whole, ultimately bringing insight and understanding to his life's work. It's one of the rare biographies where the reader can feel "inside" along with the subject. I loved it. It's a wonderful book..

Visiting NYC for two weeks coincident with the limited exhibition of Matisse's work at the Museum of Modern Art, I was finally driven to begin reading the two volume biography by Spurling. This comment follows completion of the first volume. Tomorrow on to the second. It has been quite useful to have both the fine MoMA exhibition and additional works from its permanent collection available as well as the classics at the Met, while reading the book. A fair proportion in both settings were created during the period covered by the book. It is commonplace to base discussions of Matisse, less so with Picasso, on the comparison with Picasso. There is no doubt from the sources, that much of their careers involved awareness of the others existence and reaction to that fact. In this volume, Picasso enters onto the scene only near the end as both he and Matisse produce seminal works, Picasso's Brothel and Matisse's Dance. My own take on their lives, enlightened by this excellent biography of Matisse, is that, whatever may be ones conclusions as to their work, Picasso had by far the easier road to his achievements in the first decade of the 20th century than did Matisse. Picasso was born to an artistic family and was always the golden boy, as far as they and many friends were concerned. At 19, he was doing highly professional and generally accepted work, although too derivative for his taste and desire to be recognized as what he always knew he was meant to be: the greatest artist in Paris- which meant, to him, the greatest artist in the world. Matisse was born into a family and social setting which abhorred the idea of art as a way of life, had few who thought him even talented, and, at the age of 31 (in 1900), was still struggling to survive as an artist and to be judged as worthy of the title. His story is the classic one of the desperate struggle of an Original, against all odds, to support himself and his family, while going his own way against the tide.
This book tells the story with clarity and literary skill so as to make the book almost un-put-downable. It is mandatory reading for any layperson seeking to understand Matisse and his work. It is recommended reading for anyone seeking to know Matisse better than any other source will allow (to understand his life and where the work stands within it; there are other, very fine monographs, focussed on the art-work itself, which must be read for a fuller picture of the whole man).
A point about the book production: the paperbound copy of this volume which I read fell apart in the process; whether a fluke of the assembly line or a common risk, I do not know. I have the hardbound version of the second volume.

Matisse has always suffered from bad press. In his home town he was known as a triple failure: He couldn't take over the family seed store, he didn't make a career in law work and he threw away a chance to be a popular Salon artist. When people saw his latest paintings, they were often overwhelmed and unprepared for what they saw. Only a few visionary collectors and fellow artists understood his ground-breaking efforts. Picasso and those who supported Picasso felt that they had to run down Matisse to help their own cause . . . despite having "borrowed" heavily from Matisse. Later, most of Matisse's early masterpieces were hidden away in foreign, private collections while crowds jeered at his latest work.

The pain of all this was immense for Matisse. But his private sorrows were made even greater by the difficulties he had in developing his style, the birth of an illegitimate child whom he acknowledged who suffered from serious health problems, and the poverty that dogged him until he was around 40. What is less well known is that his in-laws became embroiled in one of the most celebrated scandals of all time in France, and Matisse found himself drawn into saving them.

Ms. Spurling does well in capturing the agony of being Matisse.

Her style though leaves something to be desired. Much of the information is superficial rather than revealing. In many cases, I felt like I was reading someone's unreflective daily diary. An exception was the material on the Humbert Scandal which Ms. Spurling has also written about quite well in La Grande Therese.

Ms. Spurling also could have included more about Matisse's art in this book.

But you will learn a lot about Matisse from this book that you won't find in most other sources.

I found the recent companion volume, Matisse the Master, to be much more rewarding. If you decide to read only one of the two books, I suggest that one. But you may decide to come back and read this one later, as I did.

i loved this book - many new insights on matisse, the preeminent modern artist - very well researched and written -

I read this book last year and have been anxiously awaiting the next volume. A marvelous examination of Matisse's start, the development of his passion for art and the complex personal life that made the journey extraordinary and, at the same time, ordinary. The images of his parents, their scandalous employers, his wife, his children, and his remarkable artistic peers remain very vivid for me, as each are really intriguing in and of themselves. Spurling is enormously engaging as a writer, and this book takes you to France at the turn of the 20th century and present time and place in a way that stays with the reader. It's a fantastic work.