hello my name is Paul Priestley welcome to artist in school the home of art history for young people and for interested amateurs today I'm going to be telling you 10 really interesting facts about the French artist aie matis fact number one he was born in 1869 into a very prosperous family his parents had big Ambitions for him so he went to univers University and he got a law degree but at the age of 22 he got appendicitis and spent some weeks convalescing at home his mother gave him a box of paints and he played around with these for some time and eventually realized that he quite liked painting so decided to give up the law and take up painting his father was not very pleased fact number two in 1892 he applied to the eold de bose art the best art school in France but failed the entrance exam so what he decided to do was to stand outside the AAL boar every morning when the tutors arrived and accidentally on purpose bump into them with his drawings he did this for a number of weeks and eventually one of the tutors an artist called gusta Morrow invited him into his classes and he sat at the back but in 1894 he applied to the AAL de bose art again and again failed he eventually succeeded in 1895 at the age of 26 fact number three in 1894 his girlfriend Caroline gives birth to his daughter margarit Caroline effectively works as his housekeeper you can see her here in the painting laying the table he enjoys life he sits in nice comfortable chairs like this one and spends most of his time painting while she works around the house fact number four in 1900 he bought a painting by San szan he calls the god of painting up to this point matisse's paintings are quite dull but once he gets into San he begins to copy some of the sesan's IDE as you can see here his paintings begin to start developing fact number five remember that matis is a very conservative person yet in 195 he meets two artists Andre Dura and moris vlaming both of whom were very Bohemian characters in fact mati's family think they're nothing but drug addicts and drunkards yet the three of them together create this new form of painting called fism which is very extreme very bright very colorful matisse's paintings suddenly become very Avant guard as you can see here fact number six in 1912 he visits Morocco and he is fascinated by the light and the color of the North African country but what fascinates him most is that when he goes into cafes and bars he sees men smoking the hooker pipes but staring at bowls of goldfish and these goldfish become part of many of his paintings fact number seven matis had married his wife Amal in 1898 but in 1917 she chose to stay at home while he traveled to the south of France with a young Italian model called Lorette he painted 50 very intimate paintings of lorett during the six months that he stayed in nice as you can see here fact number eight by the time matis was in his late 50s his paintings were selling very well in fact so well that in 1924 he renegotiates his Gallery contract so that he earns higher commission from his paintings in fact his exhibition of that year sold out in one day fact number nine during the second world war matis gets cancer he's operated on in 1941 and the operation is successful but it leaves him as an invalid in a wheelchair he's nursed back to health by a group of nuns but this takes nearly 2 years to repay the nuns matis decides to design and pay for the rebuilding of their new church at Vin in the south of France it produces a very mati like church as you can see here it's a beautiful place to visit fact number 10 matis spends the last few years of his life bedridden but that does not stop him from creating art he's given up painting but he's now taken up a pair of scissors and he cuts out collage from huge sheets of colored paper that he has printed for him and he produces some wonderful artwork as you can see here these are probably the best collages that have ever been produced thank you for watching artist in school the home of art history for young people I hope you've enjoyed the video if you have please give it a like I would really appreciate that if you if you really enjoyed the video then please subscribe to my channel you can do so by clicking on this picture of me here that would be much appreciated thank you very much for watching