Matisse - The Women Speak

Without three remarkable women who supported him tirelessly, and whom he drew and painted endlessly, Matisse would not have been the remarkable artist he became. His story is well known - theirs are not.

Biography wouldn't do. You need to be in the room with them, to feel their emotions and to hear what what they may not have said, but but absolutely could have said. So this is a novel.

These women led extraordinary lives. Two of them worked for the French resistance and were captured by the Nazis. One of them, who knew nothing about painting, ended up being a crucial collaborator in some of the best loved art of the twentieth century. All three of them dedicated their lives to this art but got scant recognition for it.

Here is that recognition.

John Hamwee has had seven books published by Random House, Frances Lincoln and Singing Dragon. Formerly an acedemic at the Open University and a peace researcher, he has been a practising acupuncturist for over thirty years.