Title: Reader in purple dress
Author: Henri Matisse - French Fauvist painter and sculptor (1869-1954)
Date: 1898
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: cm 45 x 36
Current location: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims (France - Reims)
Henri Matisse is known for his bright colors and flat two-dimensional shapes.
He was the first artist to fully separate color from shape.
Matisse was one of the founding fathers of what is now known as modernism, or modern art.
Matisse created most of his work in the early 1900s first in Paris and then later in the city of Nice in southern France.
His two favorite subjects for painting were women and interiors.
Matisse's paintings hang in the greatest art museums of the world.
In 1892 Matisse left the Académie Julian for evening classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs and for the atelier of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts.
Moreau, a tolerant teacher, did not try to impose his own style on his pupils but rather encouraged them to develop their personalities and to learn from the treasures in the Louvre.
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