The Matisse Stories

This elegant, beautifully illustrated edition contains three stories, each touched in a different way by the paintings of Henri Matisse. Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings - a trip to the hairdresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant - but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in color and creation.