Pierre Courthion (1902-1988) was a Swiss art critic and historian. Courthion was educated at the University of Geneva and was awarded a scholarship to study painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the Louvre, he did his doctorate on the painter, Jean-Étienne Liotard. In 1941, Courthion interviewed Henri Matisse, but after months of difficult negotiations, Matisse refused to have the resulting book published, just a few weeks before it was due to come out. The "lost" interview was not published until 2013. His papers are held at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California.