In 1889 a bored 20-year-old law clerk recovering from appendicitis was handed a box of paints by his mother and found what he later called paradise. This episode follows Henri Matisse from that sickbed to his arrival in Paris in 1891, his traditional training under Bouguereau and Moreau, his days copying Chardin at the Louvre, and the 1896 trip to Belle-Île where Van Gogh's friend John Russell introduced him to color as emotion rather than description. We examine the Humbert affair that wiped out his family's finances and forced him back to conservative, sellable work.

Then comes 1905 and the explosion of Fauvism, named after a critic's insult, the purchase of Woman with a Hat by Gertrude and Leo Stein, and the introduction to Picasso that became a lifelong rivalry. The conversation traces his travels to Algeria, Morocco, and exhibitions of ...