Henri Matisse used to look ... I thought about this again when I read Matisse’s own words, uttered four years before his death in 1954: “The sea is blue, but bluer than anyone has ever painted ...

If Henri Matisse was regarded as the ... The Steins grabbed up the Blue Nude, with its misshapen (some critics said “reptilian”) figure reclining against a decorative background of palms.

In September 1940, less than three months after Paris had surrendered to Hitler’s armies, artist Henri ... Matisse, both painted in 1905, unnerved contemporaries. His notorious Blue Nude ...