Young Sailor, 1906 by Henri Matisse

During his short career as a clerk in a law office, Henri Matisse secretly took painting classes, eventually devoting himself to the pursuit of art full-time. He went to study in Paris, first at the Académie Julian and then at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he trained in the traditional academic style of his teachers Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. Under the influence of painters such as the Impressionists and Paul Cézanne, as well as the light-filled landscapes of the French Riviera, Matisse forsook these conservative roots and developed a new style based on flat shapes of vivid color. In 1905, he exhibited work at the Salon d'Automne in Paris as the leader of the Fauves (French for "wild beasts"). This was an avant-garde movement that reduced painting to a bright palette, simple forms, and exuberant brushwork in order to communicate the fundamental elements of reality and sensation.