Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, on December 31st, 1892. The son of a local grain merchant, Henri showed no early interest in art. Instead, after five years in a secondary school in St-Quentin, he went to Paris in 1887 to study law. In 1890, while he was recuperating from an attack of appendicitis, Matisse passed the time by trying his hand at painting with a set of oil paints that his mother had given …

…colored paper. He also completed his designs for the small chapel at Vence, a picturesque little town where he had owned a villa from 1943 to 1948. He had begun the project by agreeing to do some stained glass windows. He then went on to do murals and ended up by designing nearly everything inside and outside, including windows, furniture, vestments, and murals for the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, near Nice in southern France.