Chasing Matisse

Who hasn't had the fanthasy of leaving his or her old life behind to start over? What would happen if you gave up your job, city, state, and routine to move to another part of the world? Critically acclaimed writer and aspiring painter James Morgan does just that. Risking everything, he and his wife shed their old, settled life in a lovingly restored house in Little Rock, Arkansas, to travel in the footsteps of Morgan's hero, the painter Henri Matisse, and to find inspiration in Matisse's fierce struggle to live the life he knew he had to live. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part biography of Matisse, Chasing Matisse proves that you don't have to be wealthy to live the life you want; you just have to want it enough. Morgan's riveting journey of self-discovery takes him, and us, from the earthy, brooding Picardy of Matisse's youth all the way to the luminous Nice of the painter's final years. In between, Morgan confronts, with the notebook of a journalist and the sketchpad of an artist, the places that Matisse himself saw and painted: bustling, romantic Paris; windswept Belle-île off the Brittany coast; Corsica, with its blazing southern light; the Pyrénees village of Collouire, where color became explosive in Matisse's hands; exotic Morocco, land of the secret interior life; and across the sybaritic French Riviera to spiritual Vence and the hillside Villa Le Rêve -- the Dream -- where the mature artist created so many of his masterpieces. A journey from darkness to light, Chasing Matisse shows us how we can learn to see ourselves, others, and the world with fresh eyes. We look with Morgan out of some of the same windows through which Matisse himself found his subjects and take great heart from Matisse's indomitable, life-affirming spirit. For Matisse, living was an art, and he never stopped striving, never stopped creating, never stopped growing, never stopped reinventing himself. "The artist," he said, "must look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time." That's the inspiring message of renewal that comes through on every page of Chasing Matisse. Funny, sad, and defiantly hopeful, this is a book that restores our faith in the possibility of dreams.

James Morgan is the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Distance to the Moon and the critically acclaimed If These Walls Had Ears: The Biography of a House. He also collaborated with Virginia Kelley, President Clinton's mother, on her bestselling autobiography, Leading with My Heart. Morgan's articles and essays have appeared in numerous national media, including The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post Magazine, Men's Journal, and National Geographic Traveler. He and his wife now live in Paris. Visit www.chasingmatisse.com

Contents List of Illustrations Prologue Learning to See Part I: Leaden Skies Chapter 1 Up in Charcoal Country Chapter 2 Looking for the Light Chapter 3 Matters of Perspective Chapter 4 A Sub-Department of Paradise Chapter 5 Standing on the Edge Part II Borrowed Light Chapter 6 The Being of Things Chapter 7 Beautiful Jungle Chapter 8 Equilibrium Chapter 9 The Veiled Eye Part III: This Perpetual Dazzlement Chapter 10 Exactitude Is Not Truth Chapter 11 The Silence Living in Houses Chapter 12 The World As It Isn't A Note on Sources Acknowledgments Index