The long life of the French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) gave way to all kinds of ups and downs, triumphs and failures. The son of a provincial ironmonger, he would not discover until relatively late and purely by chance his artistic vocation when his mother gave him a box of paints when he turned twenty and was bored as a mushroom in his internship. a law firm. The crush was instantaneous and would accompany him until the day of his death.
Now, as so often happens, it is one thing to want and another, quite different, to know. And what is said to know, the budding young artist Matisse did not have a bitch, so he signed up for some painting classes at a musty local academy. His family was horrified at such an undertaking that was only going to bring him personal ruin and that of his good name. Now twenty-two years old, Henri planted himself in Paris with one hand in front and the other behind.
They would spend years and more years of learning at the hands of teachers somewhat disconnected from the new artistic currents. But neither hunger nor countless deprivations and disappointments could stop Matisse’s ambition, although it would take him a while to find his own style, which is what every artist is basically looking for.
While he spent countless hours in The Louvre meticulously copying the works of the great masters, the new art movement known as Impressionism was racing beyond its walls without his knowledge! It was not until 1898 that he discovered Monet, Gauguin or Cézanne to his astonishment, although, once hooked on the wave, it did not take long for him to become a fervent practitioner of Impressionism then in vogue. Still, he still couldn’t come up with a style of his own that would guarantee him income, fame, and the chance to marry and start a family.
Matisse, a demure man from the misty north and an unsuccessful painter in his late twenties, fell in love with Amélie Parayre, a dark-haired southerner from Toulouse whose parents, Armand and Catherine, were Frédéric and Thérèse’s trusted servants. Humbert, a fashionable marriage in that fin de siècle France.
Frédèric Humbert’s father had been Minister of Justice during the Third Republic and Thérèse was reputed to be one of the richest women in the country. It was a marriage of deep liberal ideals that naturally blessed the marriage of her daughter with an unknown artist who barely earned enough to pay the rent.
The origin of Madame Humbert’s fortune is quite curious. Some twenty years before his daughter married Matisse, a mysterious American named Robert Henry Crawford, who was clearly her biological father, bequeathed her a sizable safe containing bearer bonds worth a hundred dollars. million francs. But before Thérèse could get her hands on them, the inheritance was contested by two nephews of the late Crawford.
Total: an endless legal battle began that would end up involving the best lawyers in the nation, in addition to monopolizing the interest of millions of citizens, while increasing, year after year, the value of the bonds locked up in that imposing safe that the Humberts kept in their home.
So, despite her wealth recognized by all, since in sight were the estates, the yachts, the sumptuous house in Paris…, Madame Humbert had no money in cash. But there were many merchants who trusted her and it goes without saying that her trusted servants, the Parayers, worked without pay, waiting for one day the famous safe would be opened. But since the lawsuit already seemed to become endless, Thérèse was forced to take advantage of her good contacts in the Government in exchange for large bribes.
The box was finally opened in 1902. It was empty. It was then learned that the two litigating nephews were none other than Madame Humbert’s brothers. The dust that this case raised was monumental, the effectiveness of which was based for so many years on the most absolute secrecy maintained against all odds among the four cronies involved. At first the blame fell on the faithful Armand and Thérèse Parayre, Matisse’s in-laws, who even spent several months in jail, until the Humberts were finally proven guilty, and were sentenced to five years of hard labor.
As for Matisse, in the meantime he had already found his true and unmistakable style, which would make him one of the great painters of the time. And he succeeded because, despite so many false promises of wealth, he never gave up his artistic pursuit. Serve the safe of the Humberts as a metaphor for the emptiness that lies at the bottom of so many promises of all kinds, now and then, but above all those of the politicians who sell miraculous hair-growths that abound so much in our frenetic misguided world.
