Henri Matisse was born in 1869, the year the Cutty Sark was launched. The year he died, 1954, the first hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini Atoll. Matisse lived through some of the most traumatic political events, worst wars, greatest slaughters, and the most demented rivalries of ideology. Yet, this did not affect his artwork. He never express his political opinion or experiences living throughout the horror of the 20th century, instead his painting were “the equivalent of an ideal place, sealed away from the assaults and erosions of history” ( Hughes, p.134).
Matisse was inspired by Manet and Cezanne, and even kept a small Cezanne Bathers as his talisman. At around 1904 he got interested in the coloured dots of Seurat’s