Encouraged by his mother after winning the First Prize in Figure Drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, Charles Camoin was admitted into Gustave Moreau’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in January 1898. Although the training with the master only lasted a few months – Moreau died in April 1898 –, his friendships with Albert Marquet and Henri Matisse were key for the rest of his career. As Camoin recalled, ‘What I know of [Moreau], I learnt mainly from Matisse and Marquet.’
The training at Beaux-Arts was based on Academies – drawn from live models or antique casts – that the teacher reviewed once a week. However, Moreau encouraged his students to follow their own path and distinguished himself from his colleagues with a freer, less conventional approach. He invited them not only to look and copy the old masters in the Louvre, but also to draw in the street.
The three friends roamed around Paris and its surroundings to do quick perspective drawings or sketch the silhouettes of the passers-by in few, concise strokes. They often worked together in their studios, sometimes joined by other students like Henri Manguin and Jean Puy. They shared the same models and regularly enjoyed making one another’s portraits. Camaraderie and artistic emulation permeated the atmosphere in which Camoin painted his first works in a post-impressionist vein, already demonstrating talent for colour and sense of composition.
Camoin was forced nonetheless to regularly leave Paris to do his military service, in Arles from 1900 to 1903, then in Aix-en-Provence. He made the most of it and painted outdoors, revisiting motifs previously painted by Van Gogh. More important, he gathered up the courage to introduce himself to Paul Cézanne. This meeting proved decisive for his career: the old master took a liking to the young artist – a Provençal like himself – and became his mentor. From then on, Camoin often came to visit him (for Sunday lunches, painting sessions sur le motif, or to show him his paintings) and they kept up a regular correspondence, both friendly and theoretical, which Camoin kept all his life, much like a gospel book.
