Henri Charles Manguin (1874-1949) was a French artist, considered one of the founders of Fauvism, who was called a “voluptuous painter” because he loved to depict “bliss, luxury and pleasure” in his paintings. Manguin willingly painted cheerful Mediterranean landscapes, everyday scenes, exquisite and sensual nudes and still lifes. The main thing in his paintings is bright, carefully selected, surprisingly harmonious colors and simple forms, which together create a feeling of involvement in the depicted. And this is exactly the case when you want to be in the place of the heroes of his paintings, to be imbued with their serenity and joy of being.

At the age of 15, Manguin firmly decided to become an artist and entered the School of Decorative Arts. He studied there for four years, and then began studying at an institution of a higher order – the School of Fine Arts, an analogue of our Academy of Arts. When his favorite teacher, the symbolist Gustave Moreau, died in 1898, Manguin decided to leave the School of Fine Arts and moved to a house at 61 rue Boursault with his wife Jeanne Carette. His parents were rich, and Manguin did not have to economize. He organized an entire studio, where he invited models at his own expense to pose for his former classmates at the School.

And it soon became clear that Manguin was an original and talented artist, and few could compare with him in his mastery of color.
Soon he began to exhibit regularly at all the French Salons: Official, Independent and Autumn.

And in 1904 he decided to go to Saint-Tropez, where he rented a large mansion. And soon he was enchanted by the sunsets and sunrises there, the riot of bright subtropical flowers, which he captured in his landscapes.

There was no botanical precision of Millet’s forms or the elegance of Shishkin’s drawings, but his works were distinguished by the ideal harmony of bright, saturated colors, reflecting the very essence of generous southern nature and the artist’s delight in it.
His works created a furor at the autumn salon, although some conservative critics and the press were very unhappy with them. “A wild daub of colors,” they wrote. The critic Louis Vauxcelles was especially indignant, calling the hall where Manguin and his Fauvist friends were exhibited “a cage of wild animals.” This is where the name of the new artistic movement came from: Fauvism – “wild.”
But viewers and gallery owners Eugene Druet and Ambroise Vollard thought differently and bought up all his paintings. And soon Manguin woke up a real celebrity.

The First World War was raging, and Manguin painted bright, cheerful landscapes. His wife Zhanna posed for him nude on numerous occasions, and in this bliss, works emerged as if from another, normal world, where there is no place for wars and suffering, but joy, admiration for nature, peace and sensuality. Perhaps it was the desire to be imbued with the atmosphere of serenity and bliss lost in everyday life that contributed to the popularity of his paintings. When there was so much negativity around, Mangen’s paintings allowed many people not to fall into despair, to feel that beauty and love had not yet disappeared from the world, and isn’t this one of the main tasks of any good artist?