To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the museum founded by the artist in his hometown of Le Cateau-Cambrésis in 1952 pays tribute to a native son. This catalog sheds light on the first 20 years of Matisse’s career, a period never before revealed so completely, from the early works after his discovery of painting in 1890 and his years of academic training all the way to his own school in Paris, where he taught until 1911. Focusing on these formative years of crucial importance for his identity, reveals how he became a painter and dissects the creative process of a man who copied the great masters of the past, drawing both on them and on his contemporaries in order to turn all the rules upside down and establish his position alongside those whose works he contemplated. The catalog presents exemplary works made available by unprecedented loans from the Matisse family and international cultural institutions, as well as essays by experts on Matisse.