Alongside the Fauves' leaders André Derain and Henri Matisse, Henri Charles Manguin was a central figure in this movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Particularly noted for capturing the vivid colors of the French riviera and the joie de vivre of its nude bathers, Manguin was dubbed “the voluptuous painter” by Apollinaire.

Henri Charles Manguin was born on March 23, 1874 in Paris and pursued the study of painting under the eminent instructor Gustave Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts, where his cohorts included fellow future Fauves Matisse, Marquet, and Camoin.IN 1905 Manguin exhibited in the legendary Salon d'Automne which marked the birth of Fauvism. In 1906, the peerless impresario of the avant-garde, Ambrose Vollard, purchased over a hundred of Manguin's canvases. Manguin remained faithful to the Fauvist vision for the remainder of his career, and from the 1920s he divided his time between Paris and the Riviera, finally settling in Saint Tropez shortly before his death on September 25, 1949.

This portait of the artist's wife Jeanne is an early, important work by Manguin executed before his friend and colleague Henri Matisse painted his famous "Femme au chapeu", 1905.

Manguin is represented in the permanent collections of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, among numerous other major world institutions.