Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse abandoned a legal career to study painting, eventually apprenticing under the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, who deepened his sense of color. During the summers of 1904 and 1905, working in the bright light of Saint-Tropez and then Collioure alongside Andre Derain, Matisse developed the clashing, non-naturalistic palette that critics derided as fauve. His 1905 portrait Woman with a Hat and his 1904 Luxe, Calme et Volupte, which the Musee d'Orsay describes as the starting point of Fauvism, mark this breakthrough. Matisse is widely regarded as the acknowledged leader of the Fauvist group and one of the most important painters of the twentieth century, and he continued exploring color's expressive power throughout his life, culminating in his late paper cut-outs.