Mr. Matisse and His Cutouts

by Annemarie van Haeringen

Overview

Mr. Matisse is a painter with "the sun in his tummy." His colors make everyone happy. But one day he becomes ill and has to have a major operation. When he wakes up in a white hospital room, he misses his colors. 'Bring my brushes! Bring my paint!' But the sheets are not smooth and taut like canvas. And the walls and ceiling are too far away. What will he do now?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735842632
Publisher:	NorthSouth Books
Publication date:	09/01/2016
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,233,154
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	AD590L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Annemarie Van Haeringen was born in 1959 in the Netherlands. She is a Dutch illustrator, having studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She has created a remarkable number of children's picture books and has worked for several children's magazines.

Interviews

Annemarie van Haeringen was born in the Netherlands. She is a Dutch illustrator and picture book author and illustrator. She studied art at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Annemarie has illustrated numerous children’s books, worked on a series of films, and created illustrations for several children’s magazines. She won the Golden Brush Award three times—in 1999, 2000, and 2005—and a silver for Coco and the Little Black Dress in 2014.

Editorial Reviews

08/15/2016
Van Haeringen follows her 2015 biography of Coco Chanel, Coco and the Little Black Dress, with an upbeat look at how Henri Matisse turned a setback into a new chapter in his artistic life. Initially described as an artist “with the sun in his tummy colors made everyone joyful,” Matisse is sidelined by illness and left unable to paint. Scissors and paper in the hospital room allow Matisse to bring color into his environment, and he continued to experiment with paper cutouts after he returned home. Van Haeringen splashes the pages with vividly colored cutouts of foliage, fruit, and abstracted shapes, providing a solid visual representation of the direction Matisse’s work took, and a closing note offers additional details about his illness (abdominal cancer) and the “new art form” of his cutout collages. It’s a charming window into the mind-set of an artist determined to create. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"The story of the legendary painter's adoption of paper cutouts as an expressive medium after illness made traditional painting physically impossible is told here through lively pen-and-watercolor sketches. Nuanced modulation of color, brilliant hues to monochrome and back again, is skillfully implemented."- Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

09/01/2016
PreS-Gr 3—When Henri Matisse, because of illness, could no longer paint and sculpt using traditional methods, he created cutouts, a combination of sculpture and painting. This allowed the 20th-century artist to flourish in spite of challenges to his mobility. Van Haeringen imagines how Matisse discovered the process of creating cutouts in his hospital bed after his abdominal surgery. The illustrations, in pen and ink and watercolor, depict Matisse's famous red studio, his hospital room, and the transformation of the hospital room into a paper garden of colorful cutouts. The author pays tribute to Matisse by incorporating elements of his style (vivid colors and shapes) into the illustrations. This title is similar to Jeanette Winter's Henri's Scissors. However, while Winter used direct quotes from letters, van Haeringen relies on imagined dialogue. The text is not as fluid as the illustrations; the narration switches from third person to first person in the span of a single page. A brief biographical note on Matisse's art career and his later illness is included at the end of the book and provides context to some of the missing details in the main text. VERDICT An imaginative though incomplete introduction to Matisse's cutouts and an adequate addition to elementary art collections.—Jessica Cline, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

2016-06-28
The story of the legendary painter’s adoption of paper cutouts as an expressive medium after illness made traditional painting physically impossible is told here through lively pen-and-watercolor sketches. Nuanced modulation of color, brilliant hues to monochrome and back again, is skillfully implemented. After bright, watercolor scenes of him at work, an almost colorless spread depicts Matisse in his hospital bed. “There’s no color in here. You’d think I was dead. What a nightmare! Fetch my brushes! Fetch my paints!” exclaims the painter. Successive spreads show him generating color as he creates, reinforcing the fact that it was the artist’s desire to embellish and enhance his surroundings that inspired his innovative use of cut paper. His process of creating the cutouts and directing the positioning of them on the walls of his room is well-portrayed, leading up to the revelation that “I’ve made myself a garden to live in, a whole new life.” Like the snail he depicts, the painter slowly rolls in his wheelchair through the oasis he has created against all obstacles. The one obstacle to making this book truly successful is the limited selection of cutouts actually shown, either as copies or reproductions of Matisse originals; there’s no Jazz, no Swimming Pool. The drama of the artist’s fulfillment of his creative desires through this direct medium is somewhat undercut by the paucity of the visual elements. (biographical note) (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews

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