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50 free Henri Matisse trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Henri Matisse was a court clerk until his mother brought him a paint box, and he ended his life in a wheelchair cutting painted paper into a second career. In between he was called a wild beast, bought by the Steins, commissioned by a Moscow textile king, and stayed in Nice through the Occupation while his daughter fought the Gestapo. These 50 questions cover the life and the work: Gustave Moreau's studio, John Russell and the Van Gogh drawing, the Humbert Affair, the Salon d'Automne of 1905 and Woman with a Hat, Dance and Music for Shchukin, The Red Studio and its clock, the Cone sisters, the Académie Matisse, and the rivalry and friendship with Picasso. You will get the cancer surgery that produced the cut-outs, Jazz, the Blue Nudes, Oceania, The Snail at Tate Modern, the nurse who became a nun and the chapel at Vence he called his masterpiece. Easy questions cover Fauvism and collage; the hard tier asks about Carracci, Stravinsky's Nightingale, The Sheaf and the Pinakothek's 1912 purchase. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Matisse led which movement, named after the French for 'wild beasts'?
Fauvism
The label came from a 1905 jibe about 'Donatello among the wild beasts'.
Q 02What medium did Matisse turn to when illness stopped him painting?
Cut paper collage
He called his final years a 'second life', wandering gardens in the form of cut-outs.
Q 03What did Matisse's mother bring him during his appendicitis convalescence in 1889?
Art supplies
He discovered 'a kind of paradise' and abandoned law, deeply disappointing his father.
Q 04What had Matisse studied in Paris before he took up painting?
Law
He worked as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after qualifying.
Q 05In which northern French town was Matisse born on New Year's Eve 1869?
Le Cateau-Cambrésis
His father was a wealthy grain merchant; the town now has a Matisse museum he founded in 1952.
Q 06Under which Symbolist teacher did Matisse study at the École des Beaux-Arts?
Gustave Moreau
Moreau pushed students to 'follow their visions' and is called the Fauves' inspirational teacher.
Q 07Which Australian painter introduced Matisse to Impressionism on Belle Île in 1896?
John Russell
They met on Belle Île in 1896; Matisse said Russell explained colour theory to him.
Q 08Which Cézanne painting did Matisse buy and hang at home as his main inspiration?
Three Bathers
He went into debt buying work, including a Gauguin and a Rodin bust.
Q 09Which financial scandal of 1902 ensnared Matisse's parents-in-law?
The Humbert Affair
It left Matisse sole breadwinner for an extended family of seven.
Q 10Who was Matisse's friendly rival and co-leader of the Fauves?
André Derain
They painted together at Collioure in the summer of 1905.
Q 11Which critic coined 'Donatello chez les fauves' in Gil Blas in 1905?
Louis Vauxcelles
Camille Mauclair added that 'a pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public'.
Q 12Which painting, singled out for condemnation in 1905, did Gertrude and Leo Stein buy?
Woman with a Hat
They paid 500 francs; the model was Matisse's wife Amélie.
Q 13Who is the sitter in Woman with a Hat?
Amélie Matisse
A green line divides her face; the hat is pure invention.
Q 21Which New York institution holds The Red Studio of 1911?
Museum of Modern Art
A 2004 poll of 500 experts ranked it the fifth most influential modern artwork.
Q 22Which object sits roughly at the centre of The Red Studio as its vertical axis?
A grandfather clock
Yellow lines outline furniture in a sea of rusty red.
Q 23How many years younger than Matisse was Picasso when they met around 1906?
Eleven
Gertrude Stein's salon at 27 rue de Fleurus brought them together.
At which Paris address did Gertrude Stein hold the Saturday salons Matisse attended?
Q 14Which US city's modern-art museum received Woman with a Hat by bequest in 1990?
San Francisco
Elise Haas bequeathed it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with 36 other works in 1990.
Q 15In which seaside town did Matisse paint with Signac and Cross in summer 1904?
Saint-Tropez
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is the key neo-Impressionist work from that year.
Q 16Which Russian collector commissioned Dance and Music for his Moscow staircase?
Sergei Shchukin
He bequeathed them to the Hermitage; a 1909 study hangs in MoMA as Dance (I).
Q 17How many dancing figures appear in Matisse's Dance?
Five
They are strong red against a simplified green landscape and deep blue sky.
Q 18Which Picasso painting is Le bonheur de vivre paired with as a pillar of early modernism?
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
It outraged the 1906 Salon des Indépendants with its cadmium colours.
Q 19Which engraver's Love in the Golden Age is suggested as a source for Le bonheur de vivre?
Agostino Carracci
Its circle of dancers in the background prefigures Matisse's Dance.
Q 20Which Matisse painting was burned in effigy at the 1913 Armory Show in Chicago?
Nu bleu
The 1907 Blue Nude was a souvenir of his trip to Biskra in Algeria.
27 rue de Fleurus
Stein said the salons began because people kept coming to see the Matisse paintings.
Q 25Which Baltimore family's two sisters became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso?
Cone
Claribel and Etta's hundreds of works are now in the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Q 26In which years did the Académie Matisse operate?
1907–1911
The Steins and Hans Purrmann helped set up the private, non-commercial school.
Q 27Which North African country did Matisse visit in 1912 and 1913, painting in Tangier?
Morocco
Odalisques and goldfish in aquariums became recurring themes afterward.
Q 28To which suburb of Nice did Matisse relocate in 1917?
Cimiez
He is buried there in the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez cemetery.
Q 29Which American collector commissioned the mural The Dance II, finished in 1932?
Albert C. Barnes
He had cardboard templates of the odd wall shapes made for Matisse's Nice studio.
Q 30Who was Lydia Delectorskaya?
His Russian assistant and model
Amélie ended their 41-year marriage over her in 1939; Lydia shot herself, survived, and returned.