Image: Галерея искусств
A Pushkin Museum newsletter titled 'Судьба Матисса' ('The Fate of Matisse') traces Henri Matisse’s rise from a law student to one of the defining figures of modern art, while pointing readers to works by the artist in the museum’s collection and to related publications. The text presents Matisse as an artist whose early life did not begin with art at all: he studied law, worked in the field briefly, and only took up oil painting at the age of 20 while recovering in hospital after an operation.
According to the newsletter, Matisse later recalled that when he began to paint, he felt as if he were in paradise. It says he persuaded his father to let him leave, moved to Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied with Gustave Moreau. The newsletter quotes Moreau as telling him, 'You are destined to simplify painting.' Matisse, however, was not pursuing a revolution at the outset; the text says he diligently painted still lifes while his palette gradually grew richer and the muted tones of his early 'dark paintings' eventually gave way to a more vivid colour.
The newsletter frames colour as the decisive breakthrough in Matisse’s work. By the age of 35, it says, he had discovered the possibilities of colour, and in the group of young painters later dubbed 'les fauves' after the 1905 Autumn Salon, he was recognised as the leader. That account places Matisse at the centre of an art-historical shift that helped define Fauvism, a movement associated with bold colour and a loosening of traditional pictorial restraint.
The text also highlights the importance of collector Sergei Shchukin in Matisse’s career. It says that when Shchukin appeared in May 1906, Matisse found an 'ideal patron,' while Shchukin found 'the artist of the future.' The newsletter describes a seven-year period in which one made the paintings and the other bought them. A separate museum shop page quoted in the source material adds that Shchukin became Matisse’s largest client and patron, and that 37 of the artist’s works were in the collector’s holdings in Moscow.
The newsletter notes that works by Henri Matisse are now on view in the permanent display of the Gallery of Art of the Countries of Europe and America of the 19th–20th Centuries, part of the Pushkin Museum. The organization named in the source material is the Pushkin Museum, which also promotes publications connected to Matisse and Shchukin rather than announcing a new exhibition by itself. Those publications include the book 'Sergey Shchukin and Henri Matisse', the catalogue 'From Dürer to Matisse. Selected Drawings from the Pushkin Museum Collection', and an album devoted to major Matisse works in the museum’s collection.
The shop descriptions attached to those titles provide further context for the museum’s publishing programme. The book on Shchukin and Matisse is described as focusing on the Russian collector’s close and trusting relationship with the French painter, while the catalogue 'From Dürer to Matisse. Selected Drawings from the Pushkin Museum Collection' is presented as part of a broader display of graphic works spanning from the Renaissance and Baroque through to the late 20th century. In the newsletter’s own closing practical note, the museum says the books are available in its online store and in souvenir kiosks at the Main Building on Volkhonka, 12, and at the Gallery of Art of the Countries of Europe and America of the 19th–20th Centuries on Volkhonka, 14.
