The Foundation owns several dozen other Matisse paintings.

Another failure was a Matisse painting, "Woman With the Green Umbrella."

It opens by comparing the initial prices of Matisse paintings with their present values, an exponential increase that should impress only the marginally interested.

He painted his bedroom walls in a green and pink pattern inspired by wallpaper in a Matisse painting.

But he succumbs to one last temptation, the heist of a Matisse painting.

In 1966 he took a different inspiration from two other Matisse paintings, austerely minimal in color and design, seen at a Los Angeles exhibition.

"Espera," he said, and pointed over to the wall, where she should stand alone near a large Matisse painting of pears and peaches in a bowl.

A battle for a Matisse painting ended as the Museum of Modern Art gave up its claim that it owned the painting.

He finds gleaming floors, kindly teachers, children playing clarinets and a life-size photograph of Matisse painting in his Paris studio.