He said it was himself, not his subject-or rather it was the feelings his subject aroused in him-that had to be raped. Toward the end of his life he told an interviewer that each canvas began as a flirtation and ended up as a rape. Anxiety and dread hung over his studio sessions. The French expression for thunderbolt- coup de foudre-means “love at first sight,” with all the undertones of violence and risk that were an intrinsic part of Matisse’s passion for painting. and then I wait for the thunderbolt that is bound to follow.” That’s what keeps me there, surrounded by my fruit and flowers which I get to grips with little by little, almost without noticing. All he could do was work, but he said he dreaded the daily confrontation with form and color on canvas so much that he couldn’t face it without the consoling human presence of the pretty young film extras he paid to pose for him. Matisse was 70, sick, helpless, fearful for his family and friends, and appalled by what had happened to his country. Like millions of other citizens driven from their homes by the German invaders, Matisse had fled south, taking no more than he could carry, living precariously from one day to the next, and ending up in Nice, where a nervous population expected imminent invasion by Fascist Italian troops. In September 1940, less than three months after Paris had surrendered to Hitler’s armies, artist Henri Matisse, stranded in Nice on the Mediterranean coast, sent a moving letter to his younger son, Pierre, in New York City, explaining why he now needed a model to paint more than ever.
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