Matisse's Obsession with Textiles

And we thought Matisse was "just a painter"...

However, his textile related background exerted a profound influence

on his art. This passion for textiles not only stimulated his creativity
but allowed him to "find his true artistic voice".

Mimosa Tapestry - Matisse Textile

Matisse, His Art and His Textiles. The Fabric of Dreams - "The premise of 'Matisse, His Art and His Textiles' [the exhibition] is that textiles were 'the key to (Matisse's) visual imagination'."
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/painting/matisse_textiles.asp

Schmattes of Matisse: Painter Was Obsessed With Textile Design - Hilton Kramer - "...textiles have all along been the key to a full understanding of Matisse’s art..."
http://www.observer.com/node/37415

How a Renown Painter Found Inspiration in Cloth - Roberta Smith - "Matisse...first encountered some of the salient characteristics of his own art in textile form."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE7D81F3BF937A15755C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

Not just a man of the cloth - Laura Cumming - "Matisse was the son of textile workers...he was at home with the fabrics, surrounded by swatches, understanding their fluidity, weight and drape. He began collecting the stuff in his youth and by the end of his life had an archive so vast - 'my working library' he called it - and so ceaselessly replenished by trips to flea markets and tailors, bazaars in Morocco and Algeria, to the end-of-season sales at French couturiers, that a whole room of his flat in Nice was given over to fabrics."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/mar/06/art

Matisse's debt to textiles revealed - Maev Kennedy  - "Rainbow-coloured textiles were what rescued Henri Matisse from the flat, muddy sugar beet fields of northern France and made him one of the best loved artists of the 20th century."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/mar/02/arts.artsnews