Matisse's ancestors had been weavers for generations: textiles, a key to his visual imagination, were in his blood. Although he was to outgrow every other influence, textiles retained their power for him throughout his life. His studio in Nice was a treasure house of exotic Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colourful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens and backcloths. This sumptuously illustrated book - the catalogue of a groundbreaking exhibition at the Musee Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambresis; the Royal Academy of Arts, London; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - explores for the first time Matisse's relationship with the textiles that surrounded him from his earliest days. Charting how the fabrics he painted became the very fabric of his painting, specialist authors examine the ways in which Matisse used what he called his 'working library' of textiles to furnish, order and compose some of the twentieth century's most pioneering works of art.