Henri Manguin was 20 years old when he attended the studio of the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau at the Beaux-arts school. There he became friends with Henri Matisse and other future pillars of Fauvism. If he was first influenced by the Impressionist movement, the Nabis and the work of Paul Cézanne, he then joined the Fauvist movement with a very particular use of colour, which serves to represent the joy of the world as he sees it. Manguin painted mostly nudes, rising, bathing, sleeping, taking for almost all his paintings his wife as a model, as well as some landscapes or floral representations. While his Fauvist comrades quickly abandoned the movement, Manguin was content to soften his colour palette to offer paintings that were less violent but still vibrant in their composition.