Let’s say for someone who has dedicated their life to studying or being involved in arts and culture — there’s one way of saying it, where the kind of self-doubt involved can be: “Why am I not being a dentist and being of use to society”, right? “Why don’t I have a real job?” That kind of question, which is very valid. “Is what you’re doing of use?” Then there’s another way of thinking: Of course what I’m doing is of use, because culture will only be of more importance in the years to come, and that will give us our sense of self-worth or whatever.

Indeed, both in Nice and in the southern French town of Vence (where he named his villa La Rêve, or “The Dream”), Matisse constantly kept nearby his “working library”—a large cache of ceramics, textiles, statuettes, plants, birds, and other objects that captured his fascination. Not only were they visually appealing, these items also served as subject matter for his work—perhaps one reason why he seems to have rarely faced creative block throughout his prolific five-decade career. “The object is an actor,” he once offered. “A good actor can have a part in 10 different plays; an object can play a different role in 10 different pictures.”