Henri Matisse Quotes (60 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 238-239
1940s

“It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color — not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

Henri Matisse Quotes about feelings

“What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture. But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), pp. 409-410

“Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“Do I believe in God? Yes, when I am working. When I am submissive and modest, I feel myself to be greatly helped by someone who causes me to do things that exceed my capabilities. However, I cannot acknowledge him because it is as if I were to find myself before a conjuror whose sleight of hand eludes me.”

Henri Matisse

Si je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidé par quelqu'un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent. Pourtant je ne me sens envers lui aucune reconnaissance car c'est comme si je me trouvais devant un prestidigitateur dont je ne puis percer les tours.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

“What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life. I do not insist upon the details of the face. I do not care to repeat them with anatomical exactness. Though I happen to have an Italian model whose appearance at first suggests nothing but a purely animal existence, yet I succeed in picking out among the lines of his face those which suggest that deep gravity which persists in every human being.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 413

“Expression, to my way of thinking, does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions – everything plays a part. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter’s disposal for the expression of his feelings”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Henri Matisse: Trending quotes

“There are flowers everywhere for those who want to see them”

Henri Matisse

1940s, Jazz (1947)

Flowers

“The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present (1998), p. 62
Posthumous quotes

Courage , Effort

“A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.”

Henri Matisse

Un musicien a dit: en art la vérité, le réel commence quand on ne comprend plus rien à ce qu'on fait, à ce q'uon sait, et qu'il reste en vous une énergie d'autant plus forte qu'elle est contrariée, compressée, comprimée. Il faut alors se présenter avec la plus grande humilité, tout-blanc, tout pur, candide, le cerveau semblant-vide, dans un état d'esprit analogue à celui du communiant approchant la Sainte Table. Il faut évidemment avoir tout son acquis derrière soi et avoir su garder la fraîcheur de l'Instinct.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

Truth , Art , Understanding , Reality

Henri Matisse Quotes

“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”

Henri Matisse

Courageous , Courage

“Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality.”

Henri Matisse

"Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (15 September 1925), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)
1921 - 1940
Context: Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

Secret , Dreams , Art , Nature

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

Henri Matisse

Way , Thinking , Suffering , Time

“You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.”

Henri Matisse

In 'Time' magazine (26 June 1950)
1950s

Love , Lovers , Drink , Study

“Exactitude is not truth.”

Henri Matisse

Truth

“Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“For me all is in the conception. I must therefore have a clear vision of the whole from the beginning.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in obituaries (5 November 1954)
1950s

Painting , Forgetting

“I have been no more than a medium, as it were.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Smithsonian (November 1986)
Posthumous quotes

“Tomorrow, Sunday, at 4 o'clock, visit from Picasso. As I'm expecting to see him tomorrow, my mind is at work. I'm doing this propaganda show [at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, 1945] with him. I can imagine the room with my pictures on one side, and his on the other. It's as if I were going to cohabit with an epileptic.”

Henri Matisse

Quote of Matisse in his notebook, c. April 1945; as cited in 'Matisse & Picasso', Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 6
1940s

Imagination

“I see with horror that the 'Salon Automne' is looming, for I haven't got, and shan't have, all I meant to be able to show there, the big stillife ['Harmony in Red'] has taken up so much of my time; but since I am content with the outcome, I tell myself one can't hope to be fast as well as good.”

Henri Matisse

Quote of Matisse in his letter to Sergei Shchukin [the Russian buyer of his still-life w:The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room), that year], 6 augustus 1908; as quoted by w:Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: Man of the North, 1869 – 1908, Penguin UK, 28 Sep, 2006, note 182
1900s

Hope , Time

“The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself. His means of expression must derive almost all of necessity from his temperament.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
Posthumous quotes

Soul

“Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.... a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Life , Drawing

“At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.”

Henri Matisse

Statement by Matisse to Tériade; as quoted by Tériade in 'Constance de Fauvisme', in 'Minotaure' (15 October 1936), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)
1930s

Way

“I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

Time , Drawing

“In a picture every part will be visible and will play the role conferred upon it, be it principal or secondary. All that is not useful in the picture is detrimental.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Parting

“I don't paint things. I only paint the differences between things.”

Henri Matisse

Je ne peins pas les choses. Je ne peins que les différences entre les choses.
"Henri Matisse: contre vents et marées : peinture et livres illustrés de 1939 à 1943"
1930s

Painting

“An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythms, by effort that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.”

Henri Matisse

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 238
1940s

Nature , Effort

“[I wouldn't mind turning into] a vermilion goldfish.”

Henri Matisse

At age 80, as quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
Posthumous quotes

“The work of Renoir, after that of Cézanne whose great influence had been manifested among artists, save us from whatever drying effect there is in pure abstraction. The rules that one might deduce in considering the work of these two masters appear to be more difficult to discover in the work of Renoir, who hides his efforts better. Whereas the continuous tension of the mind of Cézanne, his lack of self-confidence, prevent him from giving himself to us entirely even though he shows the evidence of his corrections, from which are easily (too easily) deduced rules that have a mathematical precision.”

Henri Matisse

critical quote on Cubism
In a short text of Matisse, 1918, written for the catalogue of 'Den Franske Utstilling', 1918, Copenhagen; as quoted in Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 272, note 2
1910 - 1920

Quotes , Confidence , Mathematics , Effort

“If upon a white canvas I jot down some sensations of blue, of green, of red – every new brush stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I set out to paint an interior... If I paint a green near the red, if I paint in a yellow floor, there must still be between this green, this yellow, and the white of the canvas a relation that will be satisfactory to me. But these several tones mutually weaken one another. It is necessary, therefore, that the various elements that I use be so balanced that they do not destroy one another..”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

Painting

“I will repeat what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire: "For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself."”

Henri Matisse

original version in French: Je vous répéterai ce que je disais naguère à Guillaume Apollinaire: "Je n'ai, pour ma part, jamais évité l'influence des autres, j'aurais considéré cela comme une lâcheté et un manque de sincérité vis-à-vis de moi-même."
'Interview with Henri Matisse' by Jacques Guenne, in 'L'Art Vivant' (15 September 1925)
1920s

Parting , Sincerity

“I simply put down colours which render my sensation.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“"I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me."
After a pause full of intense thought on my part, I asked: "But if one hasn't always emotion. What then?"
"Do not paint," he quickly answered. "When I came in here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.”

Henri Matisse

Interview with Clara T. MacChesney (1912), in Matisse on Art (1995) edited by Jack D. Flam, p. 66
1910s

Parting , Painting

“To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will only be inspired by the sensation that the season gives me; the icy clearness of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm like a protracted summer or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon yellow trees that give a chilly impression and announce winter.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Autumn , Tree , Winter

“A picture must possess a real power to generate light.... for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
posthumous quotes

Light , Time

“Drawing with scissors: To cut to the quick in color reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors.”

Henri Matisse

Dessiner avec les ciseaux: découper à vif dans la couleur me rappelle la taille directe des sculpteurs.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

Color , Drawing

“We are born with the sensibility of a period of civilization. We are not masters of our production; it is imposed upon us.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 9
Posthumous quotes

“I know that Seurat is completely the opposite of a romantic, which I am, but with a good portion of the scientific, of the rationalist, which creates the struggle from which I sometimes emerge the victor, but exhausted.”

Henri Matisse

In a letter to Camoin, Autumn 1914; as quoted in Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 275, note 5
1910s

“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted by in the review of 'The Drawings of Henri Matisse', exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

Drawing

“Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Painting

“The vertical is in my spirit. It helps me to define precisely the direction of lines, and in quick sketches I never indicate a curve, that of a branch in landscape for example, without being aware of its relationship to the vertical.
My curves are not mad.”

Henri Matisse

La verticale est dans mon esprit. Elle m'aide à préciser la direction des lignes, et dans mes dessins rapides je n'indique pas une courbe, par exemple, celle d'une branche dans un paysage, sans avoir conscience de son rapport avec la verticale.
Mes courbes ne sont pas folles.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

Help , Madness

“The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down my colors without a preconceived plan. If at the first step and perhaps without my being conscious of it one tone has particularly pleased me, more often then not when the picture is finished, I will notice that I have respected this tone while I have progressively altered and transformed the others. I discover the quality of colors in a purely instinctive way.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Way

“A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua I do not trouble to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before me, but I perceive instantly the sentiment which radiates from it and which is instinct in the composition in every line and color.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 413

Life , Art , Color , Christ

“There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of a composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)