Short answers, pulled from the story.
Matisse began painting in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during his recovery from an attack of appendicitis. He described the experience as discovering "a kind of paradise" and abandoned a career as a court administrator to study art.
Fauvism was a short-lived movement in modern painting, active from roughly 1904 to 1908, known for wild, often dissonant colour used without regard for a subject's natural appearance. Matisse was recognised as one of its two leaders alongside André Derain. The name came from critic Louis Vauxcelles, who wrote in Gil Blas on the 17th of October 1905 about "wild beasts" (fauves) in a room at the Salon d'Automne.
Matisse chose to remain in Nice, in Vichy France, despite his son Pierre urging him to flee to Brazil. In September 1940, he wrote to Pierre: "It seemed to me as if I would be deserting. If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?" He continued to exhibit during the occupation, though he was required to sign an oath assuring his "Aryan" status.
Matisse's paper cut-outs, or decoupage, were compositions made by cutting pre-painted sheets of gouache paper into shapes and arranging them into figures, murals, and room-sized works. He developed the technique as his primary medium after a 1941 cancer surgery left him reliant on a wheelchair and often bed-bound, making traditional painting and sculpture physically difficult.
The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence is a chapel in Vence, France, whose interior Matisse designed from 1948 onward in honour of Monique Bourgeois, a former nurse of his who became a Dominican nun. He designed its windows, chasubles, and tabernacle door using the cut-out method. The chapel's Stations of the Cross drawings are the subject of an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art running from the 29th of March to the 28th of June 2026.
According to David Rockefeller, Matisse's final artistic creation was a stained-glass window design for the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, near the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. The maquette was on the wall of his bedroom when he died on the 3rd of November 1954, and the window's installation was completed in 1956.