It is hard to believe today that Matisse was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply pushed on from one innovation to the next, and left the world to draw its own conclusions. Unfortunately, these were generally false and often damaging. Throughout his life and afterward people fantasized about his models and circulated baseless fabrications about his private life. Fifty years after...

Discusses the life and work of French post-impressionist artist Henri Matisse.

A.S. Byatt's books shimmer with all the hues of her critically acclaimed talent and imagination. In The Matisse Stories, this Booker Prize-winning author offers three elegant tales that explore the subtle interplays between mind and eye, heart and hand. In the first, Medusa's Ankles, a fashionable woman watches her life take on darker, more ominous shades in the mirror of a beauty salon. In the next, Art Work, an eccentric housekeeper's alarming eye...

"When Henri Matisse was a boy, he drew pictures everywhere. And when he grew up, he became a famous artist whose paintings were beloved around the world. Them late in life, a serious illness confined Henri to just his bed and a wheelchair. But amazingly, from there he created some of his finest works , the enormous and breathtaking paper cut-outs."--Jacket flap.