Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954 (Unknown Matisse) - Tapa blanda

Hilary Spurling presents a thorough and riveting account of Matisse's early life, from his beginnings as the son of shopkeepers in Flanders through his impoverished days as a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Tracing Matisse's life through his thirties, Spurling describes how the artist's stubborn northern temperament helped sustain him through many challenges, both artistic and financial, as he found his way as a painter.

"Hilary Spurling, most accomplished of biographers, sheds an entirely new light on the humiliations and failures that Henri Matisse had to overcome in order to develop into the greatest French painter of the century. Her account of Matisse's early years is as riveting as a novel by Zola."—John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso