Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse, was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. 

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. 

Along with Picasso, Matisse helped to define and influence radicaly the  contemporary art in the 20th century. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve, by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. 

His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.