Henri Matisse was one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century. Matisse’s use of unmodulated color, inventive figuration, and decorative patterns helped redefine many of the formal tenets of painting. “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter,” he once said. Born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, he took to art relatively late in life after initially pursuing law. First studying painting under Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts, he quickly adopted the Pointillist ideas espoused by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. With Pointillism as a point of departure, Matisse...