The Essential: Henri Matisse (Essential Series)

Focusing on Henri Matisse, this is one of an illustrated series which provides accounts of the lives of individual artists, professional and personal anecdotes, and concise definitions of cultural and social movements that shaped their work. Matisse, the son of a grain merchant, trained as a lawyer, but while recuperating from appendicitis as a young man discovered a passion for painting. The book examines his hallucinatingly colourful interiors, his lounging harem girls and finny goldfish, and his cut-outs and joyous dancing figures.