The Unknown Matisse 1869-1908

by HilarySpurling (Author)

• Prizes: Shortlisted for WH Smith Literary Prize 1999 and Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 1999 and WH Smith Annual Literary Award 1999 and Whitbread Prize (Biography) 1999. ','1','ChildrenBookAge: ','Book Overview: ','This book is extraordinary in revealing not only so much about Matisse that was previously unknown and unexpected, but also so much of real importance to an understanding of him and his art . . . Truly indispensable for anyone interested in Matisse, or in the milieu in which he lived and worked, or in the forces that shaped the art of this century--with a human dimension that is vividly drawn, utrterly compelling, and profoundly moving.
  --John Elderfield, curator of the 1992 Matisse retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York
  Hilary Spurling, most accomplished of biographers, sheds an entirely new light on the humiliations and failures that Henri Matisse had to overcome in order to develop into the greatest French painter of this century. Her account of Matisse\'s early years is as riveting as a novel by Zola.
  --John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso
  Besides being a first-rate scholar, Hilary Spurling is an artist in narrative who has unearthed a fascinating story and told it brilliantly. This is a terrific achievement.
  --Michael Holroyd, author Bernard Shaw

  From the Hardcover edition.

  ','Hilary Spurling is the author of numerous biographies, including Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1884-1919; Paul Scott: A Life; a two-volume biography of Matisse, The Unknown Matisse and Matisse the Master (also published in the abridged single-volume Matisse: The Life); and Burying the Bones. She won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize for Ivy When Young, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for Matisse the Master, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Burying the Bones. She grew up in Bristol and studied at the University of Oxford. From 1964 to 1970 she was Theatre Critic and Literary Editor of the Spectator, and since then she has been a regular book reviewer for the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. In 2016 she won the Biographers\' Club Lifetime Achievement Award.');">

  Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $4.38

  'Hilary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse is a truly wonderful biography. Her prose is muscular, rhythmical, carrying a lot of information, yet swift, enthralling. She has done for Matisse what George Painter famously did for Proust in the 1950s. Besides being a first-rate scholar, she is an artist in narrative who has unearthed a fascinating story and told it brilliantly. I rate this first volume with the first volume of Richard Holmes' Coleridge . Both books mark a climax in what has been called a golden age of modern biography which began with Richard Ellman's James Joyce . It is a terrific achievement' - Michael Holroyd.