A framed painting by Henri Matisse entitled "Still Life with Book".

Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 to 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. Matisse was born in Le Cateau Cambresis, Nord, France, the oldest son of a prosperous grain merchant. He grew up in Bohain en Vermandois, Picardie, France. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau Cambresis after gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered a kind of paradise as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father. In 1891, he returned to Paris to study art at the Academie Julian and became a student of William Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. Initially he painted still lifes and landscapes in a traditional style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the opening decades of the twentieth century.