# The Unknown Matisse

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/hilary-spurling/the-unknown-matisse/9780241984048

![The Unknown Matisse](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/hilary-spurling/the-unknown-matisse_978-02-4198-404-8.jpg?v=2026-04-25%2017%3A33%3A04)

- Book: [The Unknown Matisse](https://www.bookquiver.com/hilary-spurling/the-unknown-matisse) ([The Unknown Matisse.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/hilary-spurling/the-unknown-matisse.md))
- Authors: [Hilary Spurling](https://www.bookquiver.com/hilary-spurling)
- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-02-4198-404-8
- Published: 2017-12-14
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

" Hilary Spurling's THE UNKNOWN MATISSE is a truly wonderful biography. Her prose is muscular, rhythmical, carrying a lot of information, yet swift, enthralling. She has done for Matisse what George Painter famously did for Proust in the 1950s. Besides being a first-rate scholar, she is an artist in narrative who has unearthed a fascinating story and told it brilliantly. I rate this first volume with the first volume of Richard Holmes's COLERIDGE . Both books mark a climax in what has been called a golden age of modern biography which began with Richard Ellman's JAMES JOYCE. It is a terrific achievement." Michael Holroyd