A framed painting by Henri Matisse entitled "Egyptian Curtain".

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 is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary artistic developments in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.