Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau in Picardy, France. In 1891 he abandoned a legal career to study under Bouguereau and Moreau. Here, he painted still lifes and landscapes in a sober range of colours.

Henri Matisse is often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. His visionary experiments into different styles of painting - from his impressionistic domestic and figurative subjects to his abstract cutouts - changed our perception of the world.

Matisse was a nervous man and he coaxed his anxiety into serenity through painting. In his later years, while bed ridden, Henri Matisse became well known for his abstract works made of cutouts in coloured paper mixed with gouache and crayons.