It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

Matisse draws a distinction between color as mere description (local color that imitates appearances) and color as an expressive language. The remark implies that expressive color is not a beginner’s shortcut but the culmination of disciplined training—drawing, composition, and visual judgment—so that when an artist finally “touches color,” it serves intention rather than novelty. In this view, color becomes analogous to a mature voice: it can carry emotion, structure, and meaning only after the artist has internalized craft and can control relationships of hue, value, and harmony. The quote also reflects modernist priorities, where fidelity to nature yields to the artist’s subjective ordering of experience.