Henri Matisse A Folio of Notecards

The still lifes composed by Henri Matisse in the first decade of the 20th century reveal the artist’s liberation from his Impressionist predecessors. In the two paintings of this folio, it’s evident that Matisse adored the changing light of the Mediterranean, which permeates each scene. He included a plaster figure in Dishes and Melon that recalls a small cupid that Cézanne had used in several late still lifes. But the jabbing application of paint, the splendidly expressive colors, and the presentation of ceramics brought back from a recent trip to Algeria lend both of these canvases a distinctly personal quality. Contains five each of the following notecards: Dishes and Melon, 1906 / 1907 Blue Still Life, 1907

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) was born into a family of weavers and was trained as a lawyer before turning to art in his twenties. His youthful exposure to textiles helped shape his love of color and texture. Although his early artwork paid homage to influences such as Paul Cezanné and Edward Manet, Matisse was a modernist through and through and spent most of his career experimenting with diverse media, techniques, and styles. He was a draftsman, printmaker, and sculptor but is best known as a painter. Some of his most acclaimed paintings were created in the early 1900s, when he found his place at the leading edge of the Fauvism movement. Matisse is now widely considered to be the supreme colorist of the 20th century.