"Forgive me for saying this, Monsieur,
I like the colors, but the shapes are just awful."

      --- Monique Bourgeois, on first being shown Matisse's paintings. She came to Matisse as a nurse and became the last of his great models.

Recounted by Patricia Hampl in her book
Blue Arabesque.

After knowing Matisse a year and a half, working for him, posing for him, seeing him through the dark night, becoming part of his household, taken under the wing of this grandfather figure so soon after the loss of her own father, bound to him with the bonds of fondness and teasing honesty and the charmed and harmless flirtation that can arise between an old man and a young girl for whom the rules are clear and kept, Monique Bourgeois entered the Dominican convent at Monteils and became, to her patron's initial dismay, Sister Jacques-Marie. Like Matisse, she too had a calling.

--- Patricia Hampl, Blue Arabesque.