With the second volume of John Richardson’s great Picasso biography already out, it was only a matter of time before Matisse (1869–1954) received equal treatment. Hilary Spurling—a London-based theater critic, literary editor, book reviewer, and biographer—has met the challenge admirably with her book, whose fluidity, depth of research, and level of detail are awe-inspiring.[1] While Spurling does not attempt to do the intense pictorial analysis or to make the art historical references that Richardson does—“This book is a biography, not a work of art history,” she writes in the preface—she provides an extraordinarily rich and fascinating context for understanding Matisse’s art and dispels some of the myths and assumptions about him. Her book reveals the “unknown” Matisse, the man not understood by a study of his paintings alone.

The most remarkable thing that comes across about Matisse’s early period is just how undistinguished it was, especially in terms of art. This genius was definitely a late bloomer. His ambitions as a youth were to be a clown or horseman. He was a gifted marksman and violinist. In 1887, Matisse left Bohain in the north of France near the Belgian border, and headed to Paris to study law. He apparently never even set foot in the Louvre during this period. Not until age twenty, while convalescing in a hospital from a hernia (probably caused by carrying heavy grain sacks in his father’s seed store), did Matisse dabble with some paints and discover his true calling in life.