About Chasing Matisse
Chasing Matisse is a unique and exciting book project by critically acclaimed writer and aspiring painter James Morgan, published by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, in April 2005.

With his wife, Beth, as his muse and model, Morgan followed in the footsteps of his creative hero, Henri Matisse, setting out to reinvent his life and see the world in a fresh new way.

Morgan's journey of self-discovery takes him throughout France, Corsica, and Morocco, beginning in the earthy, brooding Picardy of Henri Matisse's youth and ending in the luminous Nice of the Matisse's final years.

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The Travel Itinerary
Beginning in November 2002, Morgan's adventure led him from Henri Matisse's birthplace in Picardy all through France, Corsica, and Morocco.

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Seeing Like an Artist
‘Everything that we see in our daily life is more or less distorted by acquired habits, and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of readymade images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time….’
                        - Henri Matisse

Beth's Diary
"We motored through the traffic and through the hills and vineyards to make our way to Aix-en-Provence. This wasn’t technically on our Matisse itinerary, but Henri Matisse greatly admired the painter Cézanne and had bought one of his paintings when he could ill afford it and kept it for many years as a touchstone of sorts, a prized possession that he wouldn’t sell no matter what."   - Beth Arnold

Read Beth's Travel Diary

The Sketchpad
While traveling in France, Corsica, and Morocco, Morgan often sketched and painted in the exact places where Henri Matisse had made his art.

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Beth's Travel Notes
These are not meant to be a complete tourist guide of Henri Matisse's France and Moroccan sojourns. This is our travel handbook of hotels that became our homes, restaurants we enjoyed, cafés that called us, and stores that caught our eye.

Visit Beth's Travel Notes

Also By James Morgan Stronger in the Broken Places: Nine Lessons for Turning Crisis into Triumph Co-author with former FEMA director James Lee Witt. Published in October 2002 by Times Books, from Henry Holt & Company. Buy at Amazon.com The Distance to the Moon: A Road Trip Into the American Dream Published by Riverhead in hardcover in May 1999 and later released in paperback. Selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Buy at Amazon.com If These Walls Had Ears: The Biography of a House This book was a selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. Buy at Amazon.com Leading with My Heart Morgan collaborated with Virginia Kelley, President Clinton’s mother, on her best-selling, critically-acclaimed autobiography published by Simon & Schuster in 1994. A New York Times Notable Book & a Literary Guild selection. Buy at Amazon.com

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