ANSWERS

1) B. A lawyer

Matisse got a law degree and worked as a legal clerk. He began painting at 20 while recovering from illness and left his career for art in a year, reporting that painting had opened for him ‘a kind of paradise’.

2) TRUE

The 2014 show was the first in the Tate’s history to attract more than half a million people. with 562,622 visitors, it beat the 2002 ‘Matisse Picasso’ show’s 467,166.

3) A. Wild beasts

The name ‘Fauvism’ was coined by art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who saw the first show of the Fauvists, and was so appalled by their shocking use of expressive colour that he called them the ’wild beasts’. Led by Matisse, they provided the first major european art movement of the 20th century.

4) B. Tried to shoot herself in the chest

LYDIA Delectorskaya was a model, whose face and body Matisse — according to his biographer — came to know ‘by heart, like the alphabet’. She became his muse and creative partner, threatening to supplant his wife, Amélie, who demanded he choose between them. when the painter proclaimed loyalty to his wife, Lydia tried to shoot herself in the chest. Amélie soon asked for a divorce and he and Lydia were reunited.

5) D. ‘It has taken me my whole life to learn to draw like a child’

THAT was said by Pablo Picasso.

6) FALSE

However, Matisse was an insomniac, who spent the small hours making sketches with a two-metre-long bamboo cane tipped with charcoal. The colours of his cut-outs were so intense his doctor told him to wear dark glasses while working on them. matisse in the studio is on at the royal academy until November 12.