Matisse the Master

Hilary Spurling was born in England and educated at Oxford University. She has been theater critic and literary editor of The Spectator and a book reviewer for The Daily Telegraph, and has written biographies of Ivy Compton-Burnett and Paul Scott. The first volume of her biography of Henri Matisse, The Unknown Matisse, was an Editors’ Choice book of The New York Times. Since its publication, Ms. Spurling has written and lectured extensively on Matisse and originated an exhibition about the importance of textiles in the artist’s life and work that opened at the Royal Academy in London in the spring of 2005 and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the summer of 2005.From the Hardcover edition.