Henri Matisse (1869–1954) gave the world one of its most quoted artistic credos — "Creativity takes courage" — a phrase that distills a lifetime of radical reinvention into four words. Matisse had already survived the critical storms over Fauvism, had spent years in dialogue and rivalry with Picasso, and was in the process of transforming colour from description into pure sensation when Alvin Langdon Coburn photographed him in May 1913. Coburn was himself a pioneering modernist, one of the first photographers to pursue abstraction as a serious artistic ambition, and his celebrated Men of Mark series sought out the defining figures of the age.
The portrait — made on 13 May 1913 and now held in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution — shows Matisse with the watchful, slightly guarded intensity that characterised his public persona. Behind the composed exterior lay a man who had staked everything on colour: who had accepted poverty, ridicule, and incomprehension rather than retreat to the safety of academic convention. The quote printed alongside the portrait is not a slogan but a hard-won conviction.
Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.
Photograph: Alvin Langdon Coburn, Henri Matisse, photogravure, 13 May 1913. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain.
