HENRI MATISSE,

one of the greatest innovators of twentieth-century painting, was an intensely private person.It was not until half a century after his death that Hilary Spurling’s two-part biography cleared away the fog of inaccurate guesswork and gossip that obscured both the man and at times his work. Matisse- The Life contains the pith of those two volumes, universally acclaimed for their revelatory insight, meticulous scholarship and brilliant storytelling.

This new, one-volume edition centres on the ferocious struggles that underlay the radiant serenity of Matisse’s work, and traces their intimate connection to the personal disasters that beset him, his family and his country through two world wars.This is, in the author’s own words, the ‘short, sharp, clear portrait I should have liked to write in the first place’. PRAISE FOR THE UNKNOWN MATISSE

‘A marvellous sunburst of a biography’ Richard Holmes, Daily Telegraph

‘Reveals a personality

and a personal history

none of us had guessed at’ Richard Dorment, The New York Review of Books

‘Matisse is truly amazing, and it is an amazing story … Outstanding’ Philip Hensher, Spectator

PRAISE FOR MATISSE THE MASTER

‘A true biographical masterpiece’ Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday

‘An outstanding biography, as full of insight into the pictures as it is revealing about the man’ Jeanette Winterson, The Times

‘As dazzling as its subject … superb’ Peter Conrad, Observer