Henri Charles Manguin

Henri Charles Manguin (1874-1949) was one of the important French Fauvist painters, whose warmly sensual landscapes, nudes, and still lifes place him within the small circle of artists who transformed French painting during the first decade of the twentieth century. Born in Paris, Manguin pursued his artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under the great Symbolist master Gustave Moreau. Moreau's studio proved extraordinarily influential, and Manguin's fellow students there included Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, and Charles Camoin, artists with whom he would remain closely associated throughout his career.

Manguin exhibited at the celebrated 1905 Salon d'Automne, the exhibition that gave Fauvism its name when the critic Louis Vauxcelles referred to the vividly colored paintings of Matisse, André Derain, Marquet, and their colleagues as the work of fauves, or "wild beasts." Manguin's participation placed him at the heart of one of the most consequential movements in modern art, and his own paintings from this period demonstrate the same commitment to intense, unmodulated color and expressive brushwork that defined the Fauvist project.

Manguin's discovery of the south of France, and particularly Saint-Tropez, transformed his mature practice. Introduced to the fishing village by Paul Signac, who had established himself there in the 1890s, Manguin fell in love with the Mediterranean coast and eventually settled there permanently. The intensified southern light, together with the pleasures of family life with his wife Jeanne, who served as his most frequent model, gave his work a warmth and directness that distinguish him from many of his Fauvist contemporaries.

Manguin's paintings of nudes, harbor views, garden scenes, and interiors combine confident Fauvist color with a genuinely lyrical sensibility. His pictures are held today in the Musée d'Orsay, the Hermitage, and other major international collections, where they remain among the most affectionate expressions of the Fauvist tradition.