This is the story of three women — one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years.
The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores.
Amélie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both.
Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband’s art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment.
Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. After a fractured childhood, she is trying to make a place for herself on France’s golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite.
Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course.
Marguerite is Matisse’s eldest daughter. When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties.
Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a novel about drama and betrayal, emotion and sex, glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken.
Madame Matisse by Sophie Haydock is published on 6 March, 2025.
Read Sophie’s Historia feature about these three women.
You’ll find much more historical fiction in Historia’s round-up of over 140 books published this year.
