Matisse: 'I paint to forget everything else'

The paradox of Matisse: a man who lived in a century of horror and produced only calm beauty. 'Matisse was “demolished” when, in 1945, he sat listening to his daughter’s detailed description of being tortured to the point of death by the Gestapo. But he went on to stage-manage the clarity, serenity and stillness that you encounter today in the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence. “The point is,” explained this unbeliever, “to create a special atmosphere: to sublimate, to lift people out of their everyday concerns and preoccupations.” But perhaps his best advocate was his colleague, the painter Jules Flandrin: “The essential thing about Matisse’s painting is not to judge it with the eye. You have to look at it as you would look at the sunshine through the window. And then it works, I promise.” More.