Henri Matisse

"What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and tranquillity, devoid of any disturbing or troubling subject matter, which serves, for any intellectual – whether a businessman or a man of letters, for example – as a soothing balm, a mental tranquilliser, something akin to a comfortable armchair that relieves one of physical fatigue." The painter of Luxury, Calm and Pleasure (1904) remains, in a century shaken by the avant-garde movements, one of the great figures of French art, whose continuity he embodies better than any other. A pupil of Gustave Moreau, close to Camille Pissarro, an admirer of Cézanne, an attentive reader of Paul Signac, and keen to lay solid foundations for his art, Matisse gradually established himself. It was both by freeing himself from "Cézannism" and by reflecting on the promise of a return to paradise lost that he found his own unique path. Alongside Derain, the Fauvist experiment of the summer of 1905 enabled him to cast off his last inhibitions and to renew the tradition of landscape painting through a non-descriptive use of colour ("When I use green, it doesn’t mean grass; when I use blue, it doesn’t mean the sky.").