Charles Camoin was born in Marseilles, France in 1879. In Gustave Moreau's class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris he met Henri Matisse. Matisse and his friends (including Camoin, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, Georges Rouault, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck), formed the original group of artists labelled 'the Fauves' for their wild, expressionist-like use of color and their refusal to paint like the traditional exhibited work in the Salons of their day. Camoin always remained close to Matisse, whose portrait he painted and which is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Museum in Paris.

Charles Camoin's works have been widely shown in France and are in such major collections as the Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris in addition to the Centre Georges Pompidou and many of the French regional museums. In 1955 he was awarded the Prix du President de la Rupublique at the Biennale of Menton.

Charles Camoin died in 1965.