Hilary Spurling

Hilary Spurling was born in Stockport, England, in 1940. Educated at Somerville College, Oxford, she was the arts editor, theatre critic and subsequently literary editor for The Spectator during the 1960s. She is a regular reviewer for The Observer and the Daily Telegraph.

Her first book was a biography of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, published in two volumes in 1974 and 1984. IVY WHEN YOUNG won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and SECRETS OF A WOMAN'S HEART: THE LATER LIFE OF IVY COMPTON-BURNETT won the Duff Cooper Award and the Heinemann Award. She is also the author of a biography of novelist Paul Scott.

Her first volume of the life of painter Henry Matisse was extremely well received in 1998. The second volume won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2006.

She is currently working on a biography of Pearl Buck.

Matisse was, with Picasso, one of the two great presiding geniuses of 20th-century western art. Unlike Picasso he has so far evaded any serious attempt to write his life.

The widespread general impression of Matisse as on one hand a somewhat frivolous painter and on the other a rather dull and uninteresting person is long overdue for revision. This stunning and revealing biography closely examines the relationship between his life and his art.