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Rating: 
Summary: Meet Matisse and Enter His Landscape for Reading Pleasure
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Meet Matisse and Enter His Landscape for Reading Pleasure
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful artist biography
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful artist biography
Review: The narrative quality, even of a historical biography, is what keeps us reading. Only so many details can be digested before the reader bloats and stalls out in his efforts to follow the story the writer is trying to tell us. Ms. Spurling, from her style, apparently comes from an academic background, for this book is written seemingly in the fear some expert will come along and point out an omitted detail. To her credit, I found none. But neither did I find a tremendous critical faculty for weeding out the mundane from the significant. I am generally opposed to abridgements, but the tedium in this book would greatly benefit from that process. Much as I love Matisse, I am not that interested in what he had for breakfast.
Rating:
Summary: Matisse's Colors
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Best art biography I've read
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: disorganized. difficult for the newcomer to matisse
Review: 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.
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