Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year 2005. If you have ever wondered how anyone with such a tame, dull public image as Matisse could have painted such rich, powerfull, mysteriously moving pictures, let alone produced the radical cut-paper and stained glass inventions of his last years, here is the answer. They were made by the real Matisse, whose true story has been written down at last from start to finish by his biographer, Hilary Spurling.
This is the second and final volume of the first true biography of Henri Matisse. Until publication of The Unknown Matisse (Volume One), the few facts known about Matisse's life had been distorted by inaccuracy, misunderstanding and glaring gaps.
Hilary Spurling's biography investigates the secret life of Matisse, whose painting shocked and infuriated his contemporaries while paving the way for modern art, and in this second volume, she tells the story of his maturity as an artist and the relationship between his life and art between 1909 and 1954, his glory years.
Hilary Spurling has specialized in uncovering secrets kept - in the words of Ivy Compton-Burnett - through long lives and on death-beds'. She won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award for Ivy, and her Paul Scott was rated by reviewers as one of the best biographies written since the war.
Hilary Spurling was born in England and educated at Oxford University. From 1964 to 1970 she was theatre critic and literary editor of the Spectator. Since then she has been a regular book reviewer for the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. She lives in London with her husband, the playwright John Spurling, with whom she has three children.
