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ECSTASY IN EVERY COLOUR Galleries: In Paris, the superb new Matisse show astonishes Richard Cork with its revelatory scope. (The Times. February 26, 1993) Dour, driven and professorial in bearing, Matisse peers out sternly from the darkness at the start of his great Paris exhibition. Impeccably displayed at the Pompidou Centre, this revelatory show differs from its acclaimed New York predecessor by focusing on his exceptional achievement between 1904 and 1917. They were his finest years, the period when he irradiated modern painting with a revolutionary vision of colour at its most blazing and sensuous. But in this early self-portrait he looks earnest, almost puritanical — a man encircled by shadows and beset with anxiety. Part of the strain conveyed by Matisse's frowning features may have stemmed from a suspicion that time was against him. At the beginning of 1904 he was little-known, already approaching his 35th birthday and short of money. The allowance from his father had ended three years before, forcing his wife to open a millinery shop. But Vollard, one of the most respected avant-garde dealers in Paris, was about to give Matisse his first one-man show. He probably hoped that success was at last within reach, and th