“"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.”

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

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Henri Matisse 60
French artist 1869–1954

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