Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The first volume of Spurling's magisterial biography, The Unknown Matisse, covered his evolution into a painter. This second volume opens with his adjusting to the status—albeit controversial—of master. At 40, Matisse found himself with both the freedom to paint and the burden of a reputation that drew enemies, disciples and skeptics into his working life. This shift from obscurity to notoriety had less impact on Matisse's work than on his personal relationships, especially his marriage to the single-minded Amélie, a bond that became saturated, for better and worse, with his achievements. Matisse's other relationships—with his daughter, Marguerite, his son, Pierre, his model and factotum Lydia Dylectorskaya and his patron Etta Cone among others—were likewise compounded of dedication and turmoil. The work, meanwhile, took its own course, whether mutating through a single epic piece or proliferating in new media, through two world wars and an absolute transformation in the tenets of and expectations for art. Spurling's chief source is a huge but largely untapped collection of correspondence, on which she draws very deftly to convey the mood and tone of various sojourns in Paris, Nice, Tangiers, Tahiti and elsewhere. In addition to 24 pages of color plates, the book is peppered with b&w photographs, portraits and sketches. Spurling's rich, flexible style is well attuned to the rigors and flights of Matisse's creative life. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Although a sublime colorist and draftsman extraordinaire, Henri Matisse was wracked by doubts and infirmities throughout his long and brilliant career. In this riveting biography -- you can enjoy volume 2 without reading its predecessor, which covered the years 1869-1908 -- Hilary Spurling authoritatively recounts how the French artist persevered despite prolonged insomnia and frequent, sometimes life-threatening illnesses. Among the most painful of his afflictions may have been his fear that his reputation would not last. In 1935, he told his daughter, Marguerite, "The worry that haunts me is that I'll end up being forgotten." The large crowds who recently viewed "Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams" at London's Royal Academy and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art prove that he needn't have worried. Long after his death in 1954 at the age of 84, Matisse's popularity endures.

Just as Matisse transformed lithe models, narrow hotel rooms, swarming plants and flowers, and hand-colored papers into beguiling works of art, Spurling breathes life into what many had assumed was a humdrum story. The father of three children -- Marguerite and two sons -- Matisse along with his wife, Amélie, appeared to be a picture of conventionality. In 1913, a magazine reported, "the real Matisse . . . hurries to open the door in his gardening clothes when you ring the bell." He went to bed early, kept to a rigorous routine, made sure his son Pierre practiced the piano diligently. Of his visits to cafés in Tangier with a friend, the artist said, "I drank as many glasses of mineral water as he took of spirits." During various periods, Matisse swam laps, rode horses, took foxtrot lessons, rowed boats, went on diets and played the violin to relax. While he was painting "Dance," a masterpiece that now hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, he hummed dance-hall tunes. He owned a home with a telephone, bathroom and central heating when his fellow Fauves -- the phrase "wild beasts" was used to describe their expressive use of color -- were just getting by. He bought an automobile when they were a rare commodity.

His father, with whom he had a difficult relationship, wasn't impressed. After touring the beautifully appointed house and grounds in Issy, near Paris, Henri Matisse Sr. looked at the well-kept flowerbeds and said, "Why not grow something useful, like potatoes?"

Though he loved his home and family, Matisse had a penchant for traveling. He took trips to exotic locales -- Tahiti, Tangier, the Alhambra -- the way Pablo Picasso changed mistresses. He went abroad to experience different light effects and native colors. In North Africa, the artist studied motifs that had intrigued the incomparable French 19th-century Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix; in Tahiti, he found Paul Gauguin's unmarked grave and looked up Emile, Gauguin's son. In 1919, the year Auguste Renoir died, Matisse, 39 at the time, regularly visited the aged Impressionist.

As an artist, Matisse was single-minded, driven, desperate. It often took him years to complete individual paintings and sculptures. He frequently explained to Marguerite, Spurling writes, that "it was better to ruin a painting than to be satisfied with quick results." Matisse worked on "Bathers by a River," which he considered one of his five "pivotal" canvases, for seven years, and on "The Conversation" for at least four. It took him seven years to sculpt "Large Seated Nude." Today, like most of his work, they look, as if they had been effortless to create. It's unsettling, then, to learn that this 20th-century titan once commented, as if referring to himself, "A man who makes pictures like the one we were looking at is an unhappy creature, tormented day and night. He relieves himself of his passion in his pictures, but also in spite of himself on the people round him. That is what normal people never understand." Spurling details how, when Matisse was painting (which was a great deal of the time), he abandoned his family for months on end. Amélie Matisse had been forewarned. Soon after they met, her future husband told her, "I love you dearly, mademoiselle, but I shall always love painting more." This turned out to be true.

Nevertheless, when in Nice or traveling abroad, Matisse, wrote long letters to Amélie, Marguerite, Pierre and friends such as the painters Pierre Bonnard and Simon Bussy. It's Spurling's treatment of this correspondence, which she suggests combines "a diary's scope and freedom with the frankness of the confessional," that makes this biography so illuminating. Putting aside up to an hour or more in the evening, the artist described in great detail what he saw or did or hoped to achieve. The self-proclaimed "hermit of the Promenade des Anglais" in Nice was in constant contact with his wife and children. At first, his family didn't mind the sacrifices they were asked to make. Whenever Matisse sent new pictures to his house, it was Christmas in July. As his severest critics unwrapped them, they mostly oohed and aahed. But at a certain point, the situation soured. After running studio and business affairs for years, Amélie Matisse withdrew her services not long after being distressed by a portrait for which she sat twice a day for three months. To no avail, the painter described the canvas as "the one that made you cry, but in which you look so pretty."

Marguerite then took over until she married. After that, things got dicey. Lydia Delectorskaya, a 22-year-old Russian émigré hired as a studio assistant while Matisse, then in his sixties, was painting the mural "Dance," became the ailing Amélie's companion; and then left that position to oversee Matisse's studio and life. The wife demanded that the golden-haired, blue-eyed manager be fired, insisting, "It's me or her." "I was sacked," Delectorskaya told Spurling years later. "Madame wanted me to leave, not from female jealousy -- there was no question of adultery -- but because I was running the whole house." When Madame Matisse demanded a divorce anyway, the painter rehired Delectorskaya. Amélie Parayre walked out on Matisse after 31 years of marriage. Delectorskaya stayed at her employer's side for two decades.

"Matisse felt his family no longer had faith in him, or in his latest painting," Spurling writes, "which came to the same thing." As his factotum, Delectorskaya tirelessly supported all his efforts. During the spring of 1941, the 71-year-old painter seemed to be living on borrowed time. Suffering from fever, dizziness and palpitations, he could not even hold a pencil (previously, during years when he was too weak to paint, he drew copiously). At the height of World War II, his Russian aide kept the studio running, which was tantamount to keeping the artist alive.

Early in 1945, Matisse "told his daughter he had gone as far as he could with oil painting." And so he had. In the remaining years of his life, though bedridden, he spent four years designing the glorious Chapel of the Rosary at Vence and ended his career with a flourish by fashioning seductive, wall-sized cut-outs with a pair of scissors, lots of straight pins, paste and hand-painted sheets of color. Next month marks the 100th anniversary of the Salon de Automne exhibition, where paintings now accepted as masterpieces once unsettled the critics and public. It is now seen as the moment when the Fauve master entered the history of art with his daring, unorthodox use of color. Spurling's absorbing biography celebrates a chronic insomniac who shocked the art world at the beginning of his career and then, as death approached, continued to create transcendent, life-affirming work.

Reviewed by Phyllis Tuchman
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (October 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375711538
• ISBN-13: 978-0375711534
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #372,416 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In living colour..., September 9, 2005

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954 (Hardcover)

The life of Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse is a remarkable one - author Hilary Sprung has spent years in careful and caring research to bring to life in pages this master of painting. Matisse is one of the giants of modern art; Picasso long considered him is only true rival. As the title of this volume indicates (volume 2 of a set, the first one published a few years ago dealing with the first 40 years of Matisse's life), he is noted for bold and original use of colour in his paintings. His influences include Van Gogh, Gaugain and Cézanne, so how could he not be so directed?

In a time when the world's attention is focused upon New Orleans, it is worthwhile to mention Matisse's own connection, with his work 'Jazz', a title inspired by the improvisational, free-and-easy style that Jazz musicians performed in response to the world around them. This was done during a period of severe illness, and Matisse used a collage method for this work because he was too weak to paint.

This volume follows Matisse from his maturity as an artist to the time of his death. The decline of the Fauvist movement did not hurt Matisse, whose productivity continued in Paris and the Riviera. Spurling includes his artistic life, his personal and family life, as well as his relationships with other artists and professionals in her sweeping narrative.

Spurling had generous access to Matisse's letters and private papers - he devoted nearly an hour a day at some points in his life to carrying on correspondence, and much of this has been preserved. Spurling also conducted countless hours of interviews with people, and was able to bring this large mass of material together in an entertaining and inspiring way. Matisse himself once commented that if the truth of his life were written down, it would astonish people, and this biography helps to validate that claim.

There are beautiful colour plates here, in addition to well over a hundred black-and-white images scattered throughout the text. If I had one wish for this two-volume set, it would be the inclusion of more colour - there is something ironic and a bit depressing to see Matisse in black and white!

A glorious book.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars See New Dimensions of Matisse's Work, December 27, 2005

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954 (Hardcover)

Those of us who live today are spoiled in one sense that we don't realize: We can see Matisse's work on display and appreciate its evolution. That wasn't possible until just the last few decades. Until then, many of his most powerful works were locked up in the Soviet system and not on display or were in the hands of reclusive collectors.

That's an important point to remember when you wonder why Picasso has gotten so much more attention than Matisse, you could always see Picasso's work and Picasso courted attention.

Matisse, by comparison, found that it took all of his energies just to create art. There was very little time left over for his family and the rest of the world. He also wasn't inclined to seek out those who could explain and defend his work. As a result, he was widely misunderstood and underappreciated during his lifetime. This book corrects many of those problems.

Of particularly interest is the finding that although Matisse spent his life painting voluptuous nudes, he didn't indulge in having sexual relations with his models. Rather he used the sexual tension the models created in him to help inspire a better work. The models did become, ultimately, the undoing of his marriage . . . but not for the reasons you expect.

As fascinating as he is as an artist, he even more interesting as a creative person and head of a family. Matisse saw his family's role as being there to serve art. Although in a crisis, he would show up to encourage and aid family members and friends . . . usually he was off painting or sculpting by himself in sunnier climes. The rest of the time, they were doing administrative tasks, critiquing the works, staying out of his way and helping him enjoy a tranquil existence.

Anyone who wants a deeper appreciation of Matisse's work will learn from this volume. Although the book would have been better with more color plates, the pages are generously illustrated with black and white reproductions to give you a sense of his focus and development.

For artists, the book's many insights into the pros and cons of relationships with collectors and dealers will make the volume a "must have" item.

I didn't know the background of many of his best works, such as Jazz. It was a pleasure to better understand why he did them.

In particular, you will come away with a new appreciation for Matisse's use of color to capture emotion. Think of The Red Studio and the Conversation.

I seldom savor biographies as much as I did this one. I plan to go back now and read the first volume in the series, The Unknown Matisse.

Ms. Spurling's extensive use of Matisse's letters (and especially reproducing the funny little cartoons he liked to put in them) made the book a special joy.

Nice work, Ms. Spurling!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art is the Air That I Breathe, November 20, 2006

By	Sandy Frazier "www.sandrafrazier.com" (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954 (Hardcover)

"Artists are like plants whose growth in the thickets of the jungle depends on the air they breathe, and the mud or stones among which they grow by chance and without choice." Matisse's words coupled with his life as proof of what van Gogh said about the love of art making one lose real love make the reader feel the pain, the joy and the rich colours of his life all that much more. He made us understand.

Hilary Spurling's masterpiece (savoured by me for endless months, days and hours) has been an extraordinary experience I never wanted to end - both volumes. And now her biography is all locked in my mind - hopefully, to be recalled again and again in painting after painting and life experience after love experience - thanks to all the years of her hard work and research.

I am now filled with the colours of the Master - just as he'd installed 'The Tree of Life' in "a change of key that brought an extraordinary clarity, serenity and stillness to the music of the chapel." If the student of art, the student of life might only read pp. 455-456, he/she would be amazed at one whose talents were mocked ("any child could paint better than Matisse." ... "...his inventions seemed not simply monstrous but blasphemous as well.") and would ache to have had the chance to be a simple fly on the wall in those last years of his life when the many energies swirled about his taxi beds and many wond'rous studios ever-changing, metamorphosing, revealing and displaying, nurturing, teaching... revolutionary!

Let us not forgot his bedrocks - the women who made all his successes possible are miraculous and astonishing... Lydia, Matisse's remarkable genius manager (we should all be so lucky to know such a dynamo); Amelie, his extraordinary wife and her 'nine lives'; of course, Marguerite, his daughter, whose amazing vitality and strength of character resounds on almost every page of his life story; she was one (by her great courage) who humbled him more than anyone else could; and the countless models and interns...

As a side note... I remember in January 2006 when Hilary Spurling "scooped one of Britain's most prestigious literary awards," Whitbread Book of the Year prize, just as the big scandal exploded about Oprah's book club "author" protégé/scam artist James Frey was exposed. I thought to myself, "There is still a god!" What kind of mindless person would turn to Oprah for advice on what to read in the first place?! What does she know about literature?

I am humbled at Hilary Spurling's great accomplishment and would love to meet her one day so I could sing her the song I wrote about Matisse and the story of his blue butterfly. [...]

"The blue of that butterfly and Cezanne
made you more of a spiritual man."