He was known for both his use of color and his fluid, original draughtsmanship.

In 1887, he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.

In 1896, Matisse, an unknown art student at the time, visited the Australian painter John Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of Vincent van Gogh--who had been a friend of Russell--and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Matisse's style changed completely, and he abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright colors.

Fauvism was the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized strong color, often applied straight from the paint tubes, over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Matisse was recognized as a leader of les Fauves, along with André Derain.

Le Bateau ("The Boat"), a paper-cut by Henri Matisse, caused a minor stir in 1961 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York hung the work upside-down. It remained that way until the 47th day of the exhibit when Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake and notified a guard.

Matisse immersed himself in the work of other artists and went into debt buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin, a painting by Gauguin, a drawing by Van Gogh, and Cézanne's Three Bathers.

After a 1905 exhibit garnered harsh criticism, Matisse found himself depressed, but his mood improved considerably when American novelist and art collector Gertrude Stein purchased Woman with a Hat, the painting that had been singled out for special condemnation. More and more people began to visit Stein hoping to see her Matisse paintings, so she instituted her legendary Saturday evening salons where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse would meet.

In 1905, just prior to such works being derisively labeled as the creations of Les Fauves, Matisse painted The Green Stripe, also known as Portrait of Madame Matisse. One of his most famous paintings, it depicts Matisse's wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre.

Matisse shocked the art world when he exhibited Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra). The painting, which reflects the long-standing tradition of the reclining female nude in Western art, depicts not the idealized female figure, but rather an anatomically distorted and harshly modeled physique. The press responded with hostility, criticizing the artist's "misplacement of features and limbs." In 1913, when the painting traveled to Chicago, students burned a copy of Blue Nude and held a mock trial of Matisse for his crimes against art.

Matisse's wife Amélie ended their 41-year marriage in July 1939 over suspicions that he was having an affair with Lydia Delectorskaya, a young orphaned Russian refugee who had been hired as her companion. Delectorskaya attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest, but remarkably survived with no serious after-effects and returned to Matisse, running his household and coordinating his business affairs for the rest of his life.