THE unbeaten Henri Matisse has huge shoes to fill, but he has the scope and ability to do so, and a name that oozes class.

We are well aware by now about the care taken by Sue Magnier to name the Coolmore runners, and they tend to give the best names to the very best horses.

Born on the last day of 1869 (what a disaster that would have been had he been a thoroughbred horse!), Henri Émile Benoît Matisse died weeks short of his 85th birthday in 1954. He was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship.

Matisse was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the great artists who helped define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Now his name is associated with a horse who could also make his mark on racing, and eventually breeding. You simply cannot pick any holes in this horse, and should he live up to expectations, there is surely a stallion box awaiting him at Coolmore.

Futurity Stakes

At the Curragh on Saturday, Henri Matisse won the Group 2 Futurity Stakes, a race sponsored by Coolmore and with the name of the winner’s sire, Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj), attached.

Only four ran, but it was the ease of his win over the Group 3 winner Hotazhell that impressed many, and he was giving 3lbs to the runner-up. In late June, Henri Matisse followed up on his maiden win by securing the Group 2 Gain Railway Stakes.

The Futurity Stakes has now been won on eight of the last 10 occasions by an Aidan O’Brien runner. Jim Bolger supplied the other two, including the subsequent Group 1 winner Mac Swiney.

O’Brien’s other seven are all well-known, and three of them later won at Group 1 level, namely Churchill, Anthony Van Dyck and Henry Longfellow.

Henri Matisse is the sixth foal and fifth winner out of Immortal Verse, a dual Group 1 winning daughter of the exceptional broodmare sire Pivotal (Polar Falcon).

Immortal Verse sold for a sale-topping 4,700,000gns in 2013 to BBA Ireland. She won the Group 1 Coronation Stakes and Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois, was the champion filly at three in England and the second-best in Europe, and she is proving to be worth her sale price, though her breeding record, to date, is a case of a game of two halves.

First foal

Her first foal was Literary Society (Dansili), and he was sent to be trained in France by Freddy Head. The colt made two starts, on the second occasion finishing sixth in a maiden behind Shakeel who won a Group 1. However, that was the last we saw of Literary Society. Battle For Glory (War Front) was next, trained by John Gosden, and he got home by a nose in an end-of-season novice at Newmarket at two, in what transpired to be his only start. He sold as a three-year-old for 8,000gns.

Battle For Glory’s full-brother Grand Deed (War Front) raced once from the Gosden yard, transferred to Archie Watson who conjured up a win in a handicap at Wolverhampton, and after the gelding’s sale the following moth for 10,000gns, he was off to Kuwait where he won a race worth £1,380 at four. This was a largely inauspicious start to the breeding career of Immortal Verse, and these three were bred by Merriebelle Stables in two cases, and by them in partnership with Coolmore’s Orpendale, Chelston and Wynatt once.

The next two offspring of Immortal Verse altered the story dramatically, and both runners were bred in partnership by the two entities. A change in direction training-wise also proved to be a master move, with all of the mare’s subsequent offspring placed in the care of Aidan O’Brien at Ballydoyle. First came Tenebrism (Caravaggio), and she was followed a year later by Statuette (Justify). Both became stakes winners, with the former being a champion.

Cheveley Park

Tenebrism (named after a style of painting especially associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio and his followers) provided Aidan O’Brien with his 360th Group 1 flat success as a trainer and his fourth win in the race when she landed the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes. He had won it previously with Brave Anna, Clemmie and Fairyland in successive years. Tenebrism was making just her second career start, and the following year she added the Group 1 Prix Jean Prat to her roll of honour.

Statuette’s future was considered to be very bright when Ryan Moore dismounted from the filly after she gave her sire Justify (Scat Daddy) his first winner in Europe, but we only saw her once more, and on that occasion she won the Group 2 Balanchine Stakes at the Curragh. However, that performance was enough to have her go into winter quarters at odds of about 6/1 for the 1000 Guineas. An early season set back sadly meant she never raced again.

Now, along comes a third pattern winner in Henri Matisse, bred by the Immortal Verse Syndicate, and the breeding record of that mare looks very different indeed. Henri Matisse is from the first Coolmore-conceived crop by Wootton Bassett, a crop that breeders spent €100,000 to avail of his services. This year breeders would have had to fork out double that amount. This year’s juvenile crop is headed by the Ballydoyle star, while other members include the unbeaten Group 3 French fully Angeal, the Joseph O’Brien-trained recent French stakes winner Apples And Bananas, dual winner and Group 3 runner-up Houquetot, and the pattern-placed Camille Pissaro and Swagman.

Mill Princess

Immortal Verse is a full-sister to Go Lovely Rose (Pivotal), the winning dam of the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes runner-up Roseman (Kingman), and Baradar (Muhaarar) who was a Group 1-placed juvenile. Daughter of the French stakes winner and group-placed Side Of Paradise (Sadler’s Wells), Immortal Verse is a granddaughter of Mill Princess (Mill Reef).

That winning mare’s 11 successful runners were headed by Last Tycoon (Try My Best). He won eight of his 13 starts, including the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes, Group 1 William Hill Sprint Cup and Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Mile, and was later a successful sire.

Five of Mill Princess’s 11 winners won stakes races, while two others were stakes-placed. She is grandam of the 1999 Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas winner Valentine Waltz (Be My Guest), the 2006 winner of the same race, Tie Black (Machiavellian), and Grade 1 Matron Stakes winner Sense Of Style (Thunder Gulch), while her descendants also include the Group 1 winning siblings The United States, Hydrangea and Hermosa, all by Galileo (Sadler’s Wells).

Tenebrism’s fourth dam Irish Lass II (Sayajirao), a stakes winner in France and a full-sister to Lynchris, the leading staying filly of her year in Ireland when she won both the 1960 Irish Oaks and Irish St Leger for trainer John Oxx, produced the Group 1 Irish Sweeps Derby winner Irish Ball (Baldric II), and is grandam of three classic-winning siblings, Assert (Be My Guest), Eurobird (Ela-Mana-Mou) and Bikala (Kalamoun).