Henri Matisse: Art and Life
Painting Matisse in Words: A Journey into Matisse's South of France
Henri Matisse's paintings are filled with the color and light he found in Nice, Cimiez, Vence and St Tropez. Laura McPhee's book captures his art and his life in France
Henri Matisse's art, whether it be paintings, cut-outs, sculptures or even his famous Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence (which he regarded as his masterpiece), overflows with the colors he found in Provence and on the Cote d'Azur in the South of France. Award-winning journalist Laura McPhee follows the artist as he moves from Paris to St Tropez, Collioure, Nice, Vence and finally Cimiez, where he lies buried.
Laura McPhee's book, A Journey into Matisse's South of France, is part biography and part travel guide, in the excellent ArtPlace series from Roaring Forties Press. The author lives and works in Indianapolis, a long way from the blue Mediterranean and the medieval villages of Provence, where Henri Matisse spent almost all the latter part of his life. Nevertheless, she has a visual style to her writing, good at evoking color and place, painting her own word pictures.
'Henri Matisse spent his entire life moving southward,' she writes, 'toward color and light.' She describes the 'teal skies, emerald hills, red soil, and indigo seas of the Mediterranean,' where Matisse often wore dark glasses while painting for fear he might go blind by staring so long at such intense colors.
Matisse's story is also a love story too, and the book lets us know what it must be like to be married to someone obsessed by his art. 'I love you dearly,' he wrote to the woman he was about to marry in 1898, 'but I shall always love painting more.' The woman, Amélie, was by his side until they eventually separated in 1939. At one stage she pawned an emerald ring (a wedding present from her mother) in order to buy Matisse a Cezanne painting he craved, because she knew how important it was to him.
A few errors have crept into the book, notably on page 22 where the author says Menton is a small village between Monaco and Nice. It's a large town, on the far side of Monaco from Nice. And on page 80 she describes a road leading out of Vence and into the Alps towards Grasse. The two towns are only about 15 miles apart, both in the foothills of the Alps – you don't go into the Alps to get from one to the other. The whole area is hilly rather than mountainous. Vence is also a town, not a village. The author describes the cathedral in Vence, and villages don't have cathedrals.
That apart, the book is a thoroughly enjoyable and – to this reader – revealing book about Matisse's art and life. The section on his creation of La Chapelle du Rosaire is fascinating and moving, as he battled against old age to create what he would regard as 'my masterpiece.' With dozens of photographs of the people and places Matisse knew, and with numerous examples of Matisse's paintings and other works of art, A Journey into Matisse's South of France is a good way to capture some of that Provencal color and light for the coffee table, and a stimulating read.
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A Journey into Matisse's South of France costs $21.95 in the USA and $27.95 in Canada. It is published by Roaring Forties Press in their ArtPlace Series of books, which also include
- · A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York
- · A Journey into Steinbeck's California
- · A Journey through Ireland's Literary Revival
- · A Journey into Flaubert's Normandy
Read a review of A Journey into Ireland's Literary Revival by clicking here.
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In the UK A Journey into Matisse's South of France is also available at £12.95 from Gazelle Book Services Ltd. For more details, click here.
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