Matisse, Henri. Self-Portrait. 1906. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
Although Henri Matisse was almost thirty when he bought Cézanne’s Three Bathers, his career as an artist was still relatively young in comparison with his contemporaries. Matisse’s late move into the art world makes it somewhat less surprising that Three Bathers became so influential to him. Matisse began law school at the University of Paris when he was eighteen and worked as a clerk in a law office. His interest in art did not begin until he had his appendix removed in 1890 and bought some paints and a book about painting to keep him busy while he was bedridden. He taught himself to paint by copying other paintings before going to Paris at the age of twenty-three to study art (Mannering 13-14). He began by taking art classes to help him pass the entrance examination for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but failed and in 1892 began studying with Gustave Moreau, a professor at Beaux-Arts. He finally passed the entrance examinations to Beaux-Arts in 1895 and studied there until his marriage to Amélie Parayre in 1898. While studying with Moreau, Matisse learned about art by copying paintings of the Old Masters at the Louvre, where he produced over nineteen copies (Watkins). When he bought Three Bathers, Matisse had just completed his studies and married Amélie. He had done little work on his own thus far and was not very far removed from his copies at the Louvre so it is only natural that he used Cézanne’s Three Bathers as a template from which to copy many stylistic features that he found admirable in Cézanne’s art.