Page 24 - Studio International - July August 1968

Matisse as a teacher

John Lyman

Henri Matisse is dead. What a contradiction in terms!
For the last fourteen miraculous years he had defied mortality. It
had always seemed paradoxical that the work of this sober, reflective
man, with the grave mien of a doctor, looked as though it had been
dashed off in a moment of gay exuberance but since, following an
operation at the age of 72, he had become partially incapacitated,
unable to leave his bed for more than half a day, his art had grown
incredibly in youthfulness and vitality.
My first acquaintance with Matisse's painting was when, in the
spring of 1909, I saw his Fontainebleau Forest in the Salon des Inde-
pendents. Its summary intensity haunted my dreams. In the fall,
Matthew Smith and I (we had become friends a year earlier at
Etaples) resolved to attend the 'Academie Matisse'. Nothing could
have been less academic than this nest of heretical fledglings, lodged
in a disused convent under the trees of an ancient garden.
That was the time when everybody said of a picture by Matisse :
`My six-year-old child could do better than that.' Today it is said in
certain avant-garde circles that his painting is too facile. There is no
real difference between the two statements except that the earlier
one was excusable because it was evoked by naive surprise at a
spontaneity that had not been seen since at least the Middle Ages.
Facile, his painting? Blind or dogmatic he who can say so. If
Matisse rarely repainted, he began his picture again on a fresh canvas
five, ten, fifteen times, until the moment of final decanting was
reached. It was the same with his drawings: trial sheet after sheet
fluttered to the floor until, with final concentration, he condensed
into the subtle modulation of a line an incredible wealth of content.
He was quick to censure the superficial device, the merely decora-
tive abbreviation, the lack of 'density' as he always called it. That
was the burden of his teaching. Students who came to him to learn
modern tricks got no encouragement. 'Learn to walk on the ground
before you try the tight-rope' was his constant reminder.
Continental art teachers seldom criticize oftener than once a week;
Matisse visited us only once a fortnight and then his criticism usually
took the form of a long chat about fundamental principles and
qualities. We were about fifteen in the school. The late Edward
Bruce was massier. Besides Matthew Smith there was Per Krog who
became a leading painter in his native Norway, Hans Purrmann, a
number of other Germans and Scandinavians, and some Austrian
women whose most memorable aesthetic gift was their own blonde
A self-portrait of c. 1900 and, facing page Woman with Amphora and
Pomegranates, a gouache on cut paper of 1952 (Private collection, Paris). beauty.

Martin Shuttleworth is senior lecturer co- Andrew Forge is head of the painting department
Contributors to this issue ordinating art history and complementary studies, at Goldsmiths College, London. His book on
Leicester College of Art. His novel 'The Lovekillers', is Rauschenberg is due to be published next year.
to be published next year.
Howard Hodgkin is a practising painter and teacher
John Lyman, born in Maine, 1886, went to Canada Elma Askham Thubron was formerly head of the at Chelsea School of Art.
as a child. He studied at the Royal College of Art, painting department, Lancaster College of Art. She
London, and the Academie Julian, Paris, was a pupil has also taught at the University of Illinois. Phillip King, the sculptor, teaches at the Slade
of Henri Matisse, and a friend of Per Krog, Matthew School and St. Martin's School of Art. He is re-
Smith and J. W. Morrice. Lyman died in 1967. His Harry Thubron is head of the painting school, presenting Britain at the XXXIV Venice Biennale this
tribute to Matisse was first published in Canadian Art Leicester College of Art. year.
February 1955 (Now Arts Canada).