In 1891, Matisse left his hometown and moved to Paris to study art. In this section, we can see how he evolved from his early training in the academic style. The academy had a rigorous tutelage system, in which pupils spent years perfecting the basics of drawing and painting. First they learned by copying plaster figures to grasp the principles of drawing, such as contour, light, and shading. They would then progress to paint live models and reproduce the works of Old Masters. Only after rigorous training were students considered ready for a career as a painter.

The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture of France, established in 1648 during the reign of Louis XIV, is a prime example of the “academy” in Academism. After merging with the Academy of Music and Academy of Architecture at the end of the eighteenth century, it became the Academy of Fine Arts of France and held classes in the Louvre. In addition to lessons, the Academy of Fine Arts of France also organized annual salon exhibitions, which showcased artworks, connected artists and patrons, and facilitated art criticism and exchange. A benchmark for aesthetic trends, these exhibitions also played a regulatory role, similar to that of an industry association.

Matisse grew up during a period at the end of the nineteenth century known as the Belle Epoque, characterized by economic prosperity and technological advancement after the end of the Franco-Prussian War. It was a time of cultural and artistic evolution in France, a time to challenge traditions and innovate. While Academism still had influence, the rise of Impressionism detracted from its authority. When Matisse began studying art, the Impressionists were no longer outcasts who staged the so-called Exhibition of the Rejected, but an increasingly important movement organizing a number of exhibitions. Impressionism, with its use of light and color to capture ephemeral sensorial effects, appealed to the fledgling Matisse, and he attempted work in this vein. He also greatly admired Post-Impressionists artists like Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gaugin who reacted against the Impressionists, and he collected their artwork. Retrospectives for these three artists were held in Paris in the 1910s. In particular, Van Gogh’s show in 1903, which spotlighted the emotive quality of his vibrant palette and expressive brushwork, directly contributed to the birth of Fauvism.

The Salon d’Automne exhibition was conceived as a foil to the more mainstream and conservative Salon de Printemps, providing an important space for avant-garde artists. The first edition was held in 1903; the 1904 edition presented photography for the first time. The 1905 Salon is considered one of the most significant artistic events of the twentieth century for marking the birth of Fauvism. In Gallery 7 of this show, a sculpture in the style of Renaissance master Donatello was surrounded by artworks by Matisse, Vlaminck, Marquet, Derain, and Rouault, featuring vibrant colors and unruly brushstrokes. The gallery drew large crowds and generated widespread debate. Art critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote in his review, “It is Donatello among the wild beasts!” The five artists were thus dubbed the Fauvists, or wild beasts, and their work attracted even more attention.

Despite their sudden rise to prominence, the Fauvists were still a loosely organized group without a shared agenda. Its members were mostly friends with the same artistic philosophy who hoped to break from Impressionism and other more traditional forms of visual expression. They represented subjects and expressed emotions in a more subjective and improvisational manner. The group reached its peak in 1908, after which its members eventually turned to other styles. For example, Derain dedicated himself to Cubism, while Matisse continued his experimentation with color and decoration, developing a style entirely of his own.

Almost all of Matisse’s stylistic transformations were inspired by his travels. The artist loved to visit and work in different locales. In this exhibition, we see Matisse’s artworks from various places, each announcing a new stylistic change. While his Fauvist revolution was informed by his travels to Corsica in 1905, his two journeys to Morocco from 1911 to 1912 sparked a liberal use of decorative elements and a newfound creative freedom.

Before arriving in Morocco, Matisse already had a basic understanding of North African culture and Islamic art: in 1906, the artist traveled to Algeria, and in 1910, he visited Andalusia in southern Spain, a region with a rich Islamic cultural heritage. Regular exhibitions on Islamic art were held in Europe from 1903 onward, including a 1910 show in Munich that Matisse recorded in his studies of the exhibited works. His trip to Morocco further liberated the artist from the constraints of academic art and expanded his range of creative choices. In particular, Matisse finally discarded the hierarchy of genres and the division between art and craft. His works from Tangier feature unnaturally radiant colors, eschewing realism in favor of a more emotive response to the city’s culture. At the same time, his works from Morocco adopt a more decorative, flatter approach. Odalisques become an important theme in this period, recurring throughout the remainder of his career.

“Odalisque” is the French transliteration of the Turkish word for maid or servant. It could also mean wife or concubine in an Ottoman household. In Ottoman homes, women had a separate living area referred to as the harem. In odalisque paintings, women are often surrounded by luxurious fabrics in a languorous and intimate setting. This pictorial theme is often an Orientalist fantasy from the Western male perspective, and one closely related to European colonialist propaganda at the time. The theme was common among French painters in the nineteenth century, which coincided with the Second French Empire’s colonization of Algeria. If we look back to Matisse’s engagement with this theme, we find that he traveled to Morocco and started painting odalisques in 1912, the same year when France coerced Morocco into signing the Treaty of Fes and officially turned Morocco into a French colony.

Although Matisse’s odalisques were met with criticism and misunderstanding in his time, a closer look at these works reveals that he was not following an aesthetic trend, nor were they an attempt at commercial success; rather, he saw it as a vehicle to explore the human body and experiment with the decorative. In this section, one finds other motifs interwoven with the theme of the odalisque, such as the juxtaposition of different decorative materials and their textures, the reclining nude, and the goldfish tank, as well as many variations on these themes. Toward the end of the 1920s, Matisse had almost exhausted his inquiry into the odalisque, and he would soon leave it behind.

Though Matisse is best known as a painter and sculpter, he was also an exceptional printmaker. For Matisse, the practice of printmaking was closely connected to sketching. It offered him a welcome interruption from long periods of oil painting. Matisse would chose the most appropriate printmaking technique and ground based on the subject he was depicting, and chief among them was the lithograph. Lithography is a planographic printmaking process in which a design is drawn onto a flat stone (or prepared metal plate, usually zinc or aluminum) and affixed by means of a chemical reaction. To explore this process, this exhibition includes Matisse’s lithography stone next to a finished lithograph by the artist. For Matisse, black-and-white lithography could retain the same sense of spontanaeity and intimacy as his pencil sketches. Matisse preferred lithography for this reason. The artist eventually installed a printing press in his own studio.

Located in the center of the South Pacific, Tahiti is the economic, cultural, and political center of French Polynesia. Volcanic activity on the island created a mountainous environment surrounded by coral reefs on all sides. When Tahiti became a French colony in 1880, the island attracted an influx of artists and writers, most famously Gauguin and writer Pierre Loti, who wrote the autobiographical novel The Marriage of Loti based on his romantic experiences there. Fine art, along with many photographs and postcards, helped to build the collective imagination of a tropical paradise.

Matisse’s journey to Tahiti was undoubtedly influenced by his artistic predecessor Gauguin. But while Gauguin sought refuge from modern civilization in this so-called “primitive” paradise, Matisse’s journey more resembled a therapeutic vacation, where he rediscovered color and light. On his trip, Matisse met the German avant-garde silent film director F. W. Murnau, who shot his romance film Tabu centered on the Maori people. Many of the photos of Matisse on display in this section were also taken by Murnau. The subject of much cultural interest during this period, Tahiti attracted artists to interpret its life and culture through a different lens.

In a lengthy essay on Matisse’s Interior with Bars of Sunlight, poet Louis Aragon wrote, “Here, description becomes a mere reminder, a sign of things. As always, the window is on the right, flanked by its two shutters, the blue one closed over the room, over the flowing blue air in the room, and the green one opening behind the seated woman and the armchair. […] The most peculiar thing about this artwork is the sunlight. The yellow light that tints the stone of the windows, the woman’s face, and the stele behind her; it outlines a pot of flowers that has not been painted in, the same way that the figure is only contoured; the light spills over to the floor, striped with dark lines of an inexplicable shade of brown. Without Matisse’s remarks on these three dark stripes, we would not have understood that they are the effect of overexposure to sunlight. To the painter, light yellow seemed insufficient to express the luminosity of the interior under September’s violent light: as the painting’s title suggests, these large dark patches must be seen as stripes of sunlight, an expression of this fierce brutality.

I would like to add that, in the approach undertaken by the artist in 1942 to create this painting, there is a sort of prediction of his later cut-out gouache works—what would ultimately become Matisse’s greatest compositions. In this respect, this artwork, which has long been hidden from us, is particularly important to trace the evolution of Matisse’s painting. Paintings like this elucidate that that Matisse’s bold creations from later periods are not improvisations, but rather the natural consequence of long reflections on color and light, which trace back to the Fauvist period and beyond, to the artist’s earliest explorations.”

In the 1954 introduction to his drawing folio Portraits, Matisse wrote, “The human face has always greatly interested me. I have indeed a rather remarkable memory for faces, even for those that I have seen only once. In looking at them, I do not conduct any psychological interpretation, but I am struck by their individuality and profound expression [...]They probably retain my attention through their expressive individuality and through an interest that is entirely of a plastic nature [... ]Each face has its own rhythm, and it is this rhythm that creates the likeness [...] The art of portraiture is the most remarkable”

The cutout process, by its very nature, creates positive and negative space. As you cut a shape, a piece stays in your hands, while the surrounding pieces fall to the floor. In Matisse’s cut paper works, you can see his interest in this dynamic. In the page Forms from the book Jazz, you can see how the left and the right are the same piece of cut paper, but showing positive and negative space. Through variations in color, Matisse structures a sense of space and a formal rhythm. In this way, he presents the conceptual underpinning of his cut forms: even though the positive space, or the shape of the object itself, is the focus of the image, the negative space that envelops it is just as interesting. If the viewer looks and compares them closely, they can appreciate Matisse’s ingenious use of these similar or mirrored shapes.

After Matisse began focusing on paper cut-outs, paper in every shape and form started to overtake the walls of his studio. He used the walls as his canvas and created compositions directly on these surfaces. Following his direction, Matisse’s assistants would nail pieces of paper on the wall or take down others down, constantly shuffling the composition. If you look closely at the surface of Matisse’s cut-out works, you’ll see several pinholes, which act as records of his process.

When making his cut-outs, Matisse was particularly attuned to the relationship between colors in addition to form and space. These works feature many subtle variations in color—for the color orange alone, he used seventeen different shades. Gouache, a highly opaque and vibrant medium, assisted with these effects, as gouache completely conceals the ground upon drying. Some colors came out of the tube; others required mixing. Recounting Matisse’s creative process, studio assistant Jacqueline Duhême recalled, “We would use this kind of brush in large sweeping movements to get a good tint. Then, we had to see if he liked it. With blue for instance, sometimes he would add a hint of garnet or a dark red to get a specific kind of blue. The hard work would then be to calculate the right quantity. We would usually obtain a different color first and he would exclaim, ‘No, I want this color!’ He was harsh. But he was right!”

In July 1943, fearing that Nice would be bombed, Matisse moved to Vence, a small town 20 kilometers away. He would live there until 1948. It was in Vence that Matisse reunited with Monique Bourgeois, the nurse who took care of him after his cancer surgery in 1942 and later modeled for him. This encounter renewed their friendship, though Monique had since joined the Dominican Order as Sister Jacques-Marie. The Order was planning to build a chapel, and Sister Jacques-Marie invited Matisse to design the stained glass windows. However, fellow Order member and modern art enthusiast Friar Rayssiguier persuaded Matisse to take over the design of the entire chapel in collaboration with architect Auguste Perret and stained glass artist Paul Bony. This project would be the culmination of Matisse’s lifetime of artistic pursuits. The project began in 1948 and concluded in 1951, during which time Matisse filled his studio at the Ancien Hôtel Régina with life-sized sketches of the chapel.

Situated on a hill, the Rosary Chapel of Vence is L-shaped, only 15 meters long and 6 meters wide. Its exquisite architecture consists of a minimalist white facade, blue-and-white tiled roofs, and a bell tower. In total, Matisse designed three stained-glass windows composed of three colors—bright yellow representing the sun, green the local vegetation, and blue the Mediterranean Sea and the Virgin Mary. The two windows that flank the altar feature depictions of the Tree of Life. Matisse also created three tile frescoes of Saint Domonic, the Madonna and Child, and the Way of the Cross. Furthermore, he designed a complete set of liturgical objects, including brightly colored chasubles. Every detail of these ritual items echoes the light and color of the chapel space.

The decorative is a key thread in Matisse’s work. In this exhibition, we can see that decorative elements, especially textiles, evolved from their initial role as accessories in still life or figure paintings into tools that flatten space and mobilize color. This exhibition also looks at Matisse’s relationship with textiles in a new light: Matisse as a designer. Starting in the 1940s, Matisse participated in a variety of design projects linked to the revival of the traditional French decorative industry, which was a key strategic component of postwar cultural recovery. On several occasions, Matisse collaborated with the state-run Mobilier National as well as the historic Manufacture de Gobelin to design tapestries. He also worked with commercial brands to create design products, such as this silk scarf inspired by the Oceania paper cut-outs.

This abstract and dynamic figure, one of Matisse’s most well-known works, was featured as the first and last page of the book Jazz. It was also used for the cover he designed for Verve magazine. The image is of the Greek myth of Icarus from Ovid’s first-century masterpiece the Metamorphoses. In the story, Icarus and his father Daedalus, the creator of King Minos’ Labyrinth, are both trapped inside the labyrinth by order of the king. Daedalus creates a pair of wings with wax-bonded feathers; their only flaw was that they would melt if they got too hot. Impassioned by his first flight, the young Icarus disregards his father’s warning and soars too close to the sun, melting his wings and causing him to crash into the sea and drown. This rich allegory has been depicted many times throughout art history. Here, Matisse depicts Icarus during his fall: despite the tragedy of the moment, the body’s movement betrays a sense of unfettered freedom and lightheartedness. The bright monochrome background serves as both sky and sea, perhaps a symbol of Icarus’s fearlessness and passion, even as he careens toward his death. It could also be seen as a self-portrait by an artist who, despite approaching 80 years of age, still overflowed with creative ambition.

Guan Liang (1900-1986) began his art education learning oil painting. He traveled to Japan in 1917, where he studied at the Taiheiyo Art School in Tokyo. Under the tutelage of artists including Nakamura Fusetsu and Fujishima Takeji, Guan worked in realism but also deeply admired Monet, Van Gogh, and Matisse. His early paintings are characterized by strong and vibrant colors, minimalistic lines, and expressive brushwork. In these, one can see traces of the influence of Fauvism. At the same time, his lucid palette and sense of composition recall the expressive freehand brushwork tradition of Chinese ink painting, specifically that of the artist Shitao. After 1949, he turned his focus to traditional Chinese ink-wash painting depicting characters from Peking opera.

Ting Yin Yung (1902-1978) studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts between 1919 and 1925, where he was deeply influenced by Fauvism and Expressionism. Upon his return to China, he promoted Western modern art and taught Western painting at art schools in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Chongqing. His early oil paintings are characterized by bold brushwork and intense colors. Due to his affinity with Fauvism, he was dubbed “Ting-tisse” by his contemporaries. After moving to Hong Kong in 1949, he shifted his focus to ink painting. Influenced by Bada Shanren’s freehand style, he brought the colors of Fauvism to ink line work and seal engraving.

The development of Japanese art served as an important reference point for modern Chinese art. Many Chinese artists first encountered Matisse, Fauvism, and other Western modern artists and styles through the Japanese painting scene. Between 1905 and 1937, Chinese art students flocked to Japan. More than 600 Chinese students studied at almost 20 Japanese art education institutions, with the Tokyo Fine Arts School being of particular importance. It was one of the most open and diverse periods in the history of modern Japanese art. As new European styles flowed into the country, Matisse and other Fauvists made a great impact. Matisse’s art was featured in a 1921 exhibition of French modern painting and many subsequent shows in Japan, allowing Chinese artists to view his original works. Guan Zilan (1903-1986), one of the most famous female Chinese artists of the twentieth century, studied in Japan under Nakagawa Kigen (1892-1972), who had studied under Matisse in Paris. Umehara Ryūzaburō (1888-1986), the leading representative of Japanese Fauvism, not only mentored many Chinese artists who were living in Japan but also visited China multiple times between 1920 and 1940.