Henri Matisse

“ Matisse himself has fed fuel to the fire. In his interview with newspaper men he indulged in much high jesting, and the remarks attributed to him were in many instances blague. Others, judging him by his words, have pinned on him the labels of charlatan and degenerate.338
The Cubists, misunderstood from the first, have been a source of ridicule rather than of contumely. Systematisers have sought to trace them to Dürer, forgetting that Cézanne once wrote: “Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere and the cone ”

“ Matisse who came later made281 of Cézanne’s still-lives a highly enjoyable decoration whose destiny can rise no higher than that of tasteful and complete ornament. Cézanne’s art is dynamic, while Matisse’s is exaltedly excitatory. The former bears the same relation to the latter that a Beethoven symphonic movement bears to a ballet by Delibes. One inspires thought: the other incites to action, to spontaneous admiration and joy. Matisse loves and knows colour in its harmonic relations. He and Gauguin, by the broad beauty of their work, have given an impetus toward large planes of pure pigment. ”

“ Something altogether lacking in grace has been made graceful and it would be worth while if people could come to understand that the boy who does that is a craftsman following a craftsman's impulse and is more important to the community than a dozen manufacturers of cheap novels, little tame verses or cheap magazine stories. He is meeting the aesthetic needs of his nature with the materials at hand, and a Cezanne, a Matisse, a Turgenieff or a Shakespeare could do no more than that. The artist is after all but the craftsman working more intensively in more complex and delicate materials. ”

“ I do not presume to judge between one method of creation and another; I shall not judge between Matisse and Picasso; but I do say that, as a rule, it is the intellectual artist who becomes, in spite of himself, schoolmaster to the rest. ”

“ Because, in addition to this magic power of creation, Matisse has been blest with extraordinary sensibility both of reaction and touch, he is a great artist; because he trusts to it entirely he is not what for a moment apparently he wished to be—a chef d'école.
Picasso, on the other hand, who never tried to be anything of the sort, is the paramount influence in modern painting—subject, of course, to the supreme influence of Cézanne. All the world over are students and young painters to whom his mere name is thrilling ”

“ Music seems to be where painting was in the time of Courbet; she is drifting through complex intellectualism and a brilliant, exasperating realism, to arrive, I hope, at greater purity. [26] Contemporary painting is the one manifest triumph of the young age. Not even the oldest and wisest dare try to smile it away. Those who cannot love Cézanne and Matisse hate them; and they not only say it, they shriek it. It is not surprising, then, that visual art, which seems to many the mirror in which they see realised their own ideals, should have become for some a new religion. ”

“ But because there were a number of ugly—ugly to the extent of being objectionable—pictures in the exhibition, that should not and does not detract from the merits of men who did not paint them.
An ugly work is a comment upon him who produces it and upon those who accept it. It is a golden opportunity, a touchstone to those who reject it.
There is a great deal of the ugly in the work of Matisse, mixed with a great deal of extraordinary technic. He is a good man to study, but a bad man to imitate—for that matter, the same, in a profounder sense, may be said of every man of ability. ”

“ So, by insisting on the fact that Matisse, Cézanne, Poussin, Piero, and Giotto are all in the tradition we insist on the fact that they are all artists. We rob them of their amusing but adscititious qualities; we make them utterly uninteresting to precisely 99.99 per cent. of our fellow-creatures; and ourselves we make unpopular.
The tradition of art begins with the first artist that ever lived, and will end with the last. Always it is being enriched or modified—never is it exhausted. The earliest artists are driven to creation by an irresistible desire to express themselves. ”

“ The works of even the smallest artists of that age enchant us now, because in that age any man of any talent could make a picture; but doubtless at the time critics and amateurs sighed for the first thrilling years of the movement—for the discoveries of Masaccio and Donatello—and were quite ready to welcome the novelties of the high renaissance when they came. The world moves faster nowadays; already we look regretfully back to the days when Matisse and Picasso were launching the movement, and another high renaissance may be nearer than we suppose. ”

“ Marchand is neither a doctrinaire nor a timid Conservative. He is familiar with the work of Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and the whole Cubist school; and if by simplification, distortion, or what men of science would call "flat absurdity," he can in any way improve his composition, he does not hesitate to simplify, distort, or fly in the face of facts. He wants to create significant form, and all means to that end he finds good. But he is no doctrinaire. He never distorts or makes his pictures look queer on principle. ”

“ MATSYS (Massys or Metzys) , QUINTIN (1466–1530) , Flemish artist, was born at Louvain, where he first learned a mechanical art. During the greater part of the 15th century the centres in which the painters of the Low Countries most congregated were Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. ”

“ The plague of original masterpieces became epidemic.
Item: Every art dealer in Vienna received, on the same day, twenty-five different paintings by Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. Each was subsequently established as being fully authentic, to the consternation of those museums and private collectors in a dozen countries who had acquired, at enormous cost, the originals. ”

“ There is no man alive who knows one-half as much about the strategical position of Metz and the surrounding country as General von Heeringen. Often on stormy, bitter cold winter nights, sentries on outposts stationed and guarding the approaches of Metz are startled to find a gaunt, limping figure, covered in a gray army greatcoat with no distinguishing marks, stalking along. ”

“ Mad Mathesis interrupted. "In fact, you'd be the better, I'm certain!"
"Neither does our excellent preceptress approve of puns," said Clara. "But we'll have a match, if you like. Let me choose my train," she added after a brief mental calculation, "and I'll engage to meet exactly half as many again as you do."
"Not if you count fair," Mad Mathesis bluntly interrupted. "Remember, we only count the trains we meet on the way. You mustn't count the one that starts as you start, nor the one that arrives as you arrive." ”

“ Mattie was at work at the fireside; she had taken to dress-making again, amongst a new connection of chapel-goers introduced by her father, and Mr. Gray was busy at his lithography. He was working hard into the night, doing extra work, in order that he might have all the next week free for a preaching expedition amongst the colliers, and he did not turn from his work to express his opinion; on the contrary, bent more earnestly over it.
"It's no good hoping, my dear, I have made up my mind; he hasn't acted fairly by you—he hasn't made atonement—I must talk to him presently." ”

“ The king heard their shouts with a beating heart. It is a great thing to be beloved by one’s country. His English courtiers complimented him upon his reception. “Yes,” said he, “but the shouting is nothing to what it would have been if Mary had been with me!”
While Ben was looking at the portraits, Mynheer van Gend was giving the boys an account of a recent visit to Antwerp. As it was the birthplace of Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith who for love of an artist’s daughter studied until he became a great painter, the boys asked their host if he had seen any of Matsys’ works. ”

“ I like him even more to-day, because he recalls to me, in his venerable and touching candor, the old cobbler to whom you were speaking so kindly this morning."
"Ah," she said, "I have forgotten his name. When we talk with Monsieur Choulette we call him Quentin Matsys, because he resembles the old men of that painter."
As they were turning the corner of the church to see the facade, she found herself before the post-box, which was so dusty and rusty that it seemed as if the postman never came near it. She put her letter in it under the ingenuous gaze of St. Mark. ”

“ But, Matson, let me tell you one thing," and he spoke more earnestly, as they walked along a corridor to the lobby of the hotel. "You mustn't imagine that you're going in right off the reel and clean things up. You'll have to go a bit slow. ”

“ I can do nothing to stop it—to show him that I am as honest as the day."
"Patience, Mattie, dear," said Harriet, "we will soon prove that to him, if he require proof. If I have come at his wish, it was at my own, too, and you are exaggerating the reasons that have brought me hither."
"I wonder why I stop here now," said Mattie, thoughtfully. "I, who am a young woman, and can get my own living. If he is tired of me, I have no right to stop."
"You will stop for the sake of those who love you, and who have trust in you, Mattie; you will not think of going away." ”

“ He fancied that he could read a struggle for something better and more pure in Mattie's life, and that Fate was against her and drawing her back to the shadows from which she, as if by a noble instinct, was endeavouring to emerge.
He felt curious concerning her.
"What do you intend to do now?"
"Lor, sir, I don't know. It depends upon what turns up."
"You will not thieve any more?"
"Not if I can help it—but if I can't help it, sir, I must go to school at Simes's. He teaches lots of gals to get a living!"
Mr. Hinchford shuddered. ”

“ Oh! sir, I know all about you—what should I do alone in the world, if I didn't think of those who saved me when I was young?"
"And what are you doing?"
"Getting my living by needlework, by artificial flower making, or by anything that's honest which falls in my way. I keep at work, and hunt about for work, and there are some good people, I find, who take pity upon those situated like myself. I'm not afraid, sir, of doing well!"
"Glad to hear it, Mattie."
Mattie motioned Ann Packet to retire. ”

“ She, however, was ready to marry a painter. Quentin, therefore, gave up his hammer and anvil, and began to paint Madonnas that he might prosper in his suit. Some authorities, however, laugh at this story, and claim that the specimens of iron work which are shown as the early works of Matsys date from a time when he would have been only ten or twelve years old, and that they must therefore have been the work of his father, Josse Matsys, who was a locksmith. The well-cover in Antwerp, near the cathedral, is always known as Quentin Matsys' well. ”

“ A very quiet man, a man more than ordinarily cautious, hard to please, and still harder to rouse.
In shutting up his shop that night, he had caught one or two fragments of the dialogue, and he knew more certainly than his wife that Mattie was being tempted back to the old life. Of that life he knew everything; he had learned it piece by piece without affecting to take an interest in the matter; he even knew that Mattie had long taken a fancy—an odd fancy—to his daughter, that she often inquired about her, and her boarding-school, of Ann Packet, domestic to the house of Wesden. ”

“ Mattie was not looking pretty well; on the contrary, very pale and thin, as though anxiety, or hard work, or both, had been her portion since she had left Great Suffolk Street. She was dressed in black, very neatly dressed, and possibly the dark trappings had some effect in increasing the pallor of her countenance.
"We thought that we had lost you for good, Mattie."
"Was it likely, sir, that I was going to lose sight of all those who had been kind to me?"
"You're not looking very well," he said.
"Ah! we musn't judge by people's looks," said Mattie, cheerfully. "I'm well enough, thank God! ”

“ She was a girl, too, whom a little contented; one who could live on a little, and make shift—terrible shift—when luck run against her; above all, her tempters, the Watts, Simes', and others, festering amongst the Kent Street courts, were cruel and hard with her, and she kept out of their way so long as it was possible.
Given the same monotony of existence for a few more years, and Mattie would have become a tramp perhaps, oscillating from fair to fair, race-course to race-course, losing true feeling, modesty, heart and soul, at every step. ”

“ The men have an air of distinction. He often leans as far toward caricature, however, as he does toward sentimentality, and there are great contrasts in his work—grimacing, long-nosed, carousing old men and lovely women. “None understands as well as Matsys how to make strong splendours of colour shine through a thin veil of mist, or how to paint the tremulous surface of life so [192] that we see the blood running in the veins.” ”

“ That was the turning-point of Mattie's life; after that, a little woman with an eye to business; a small female costermonger with a large basket before her suspended by a strap—troubled and kept moving on by policemen—but earning her fair modicum of profit; quick with her eyes, ready with her answers, happy as a queen whose business was brisk, and lodging away from Mother Watts and old Simes, whose acquaintance she had quietly dropped.
Mattie still watched Harriet Wesden from a distance ”