Chasing Matisse -- A Dream Made True

by James Morgan

Reviewed by Terrance Gelenter

At an age when most Americans are nervously trying to
figure out how to juggle social security and their
diminished retirement income when their working life
eventually comes to an end author James Morgan and his
wife put their lovingly restored home on the market
and took off for France to follow in the footsteps of
Matisse and create a new life.

For Morgan, an author who always dreamed of painting,
Matisse was an inspiration both for his work and for
the way that he shed the shackles of middle class
conformity and artistic conventions to follow his
inspiration.

After arriving in Paris the Morgan's odyssey takes
them north to the Picardy of Matisse's youth, then
back to Paris to absorb Matisse's Paris years, to
Belle-Ile on the Brittany coast, a long pause at
Collouire in the Pyrenées, on a ferry to Corsica,
magical Morocco and finally Nice, to peer through the
windows of Matisse's apartment and see the incredibly
sunlit blue of the Mediterranean.

Chasing Matisse is at once a mini-memoir, travel guide
and biography with a glimpse of the creative mind at
work-Matisse's and Morgan's. Pour that pastis!