Kees van Dongen

Sale:  Galerie Charpentier, Paris, June 6, 1956, lot 97

Galerie Félix Vercel, Paris

Private Collection

Acquired from the above

Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, La Femme et ses artistes, 1986

Paris, Musée Jacquemart André, Institut de France, Europe des Grands Maîtres 1870-1970, 1989

Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux Arts, A Feast of Colour: Post-Impressionists from Private Collections, 1989-90

Madrid, Barcelona & Bilbao, La Juventud del Genio, 1990-91

Tokyo; Sapporo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Ooita, Hamamatsu, Niigata, Seoul, Dong A. Museum, Premiers chefs-d'oeuvre des Grands Maîtres Européens, 1991-92

Paris, Galerie Felix Vercel, Hommage à mon Père, 1998 (titled Portrait)

In very good condition. Original canvas. Under ultra-violet light, there are some minor spots of inpainting around the figure in the background. There are two lines on her chin and a couple of small lines in two of the cherries of her hat. Apart from an area of fluorescence in the lower right corner and a few spots in the figure's white garment, this work is in good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This striking portrait of an anonymous sitter, wearing a hat that is lavishly decorated with cherries, dates from the beginning of the artist's Fauvist experiment.  Color was of prime importance during this period, and van Dongen takes full advantage of that preference here by focusing our attention on the the cluster of ornamental cherries.   Gaston Diehl discussed van Dongen's early portraits in the context of the Fauve movement: "Although he was in harmony with his fellows on the need to simplify and exalt chromaticism, as his remarkable Self-portrait of 1906 attests, he sharply detached himself from them at the same time, by maintaining a direct, indeed brutal, realism. In his portraits [...] he held fast to a meticulous craftsmanship, so meticulous it could almost be called naïve" (Gaston Diehl, Van Dongen, Milan, n.d., pp. 41 & 49).

The period in which the present work was completed marks van Dongen's transformation from a draughtsman (see fig. 1) to an avant-garde painter, with a shift of focus and technique from a linear approach to the painterly treatment of form. As in the present work, paint is applied in wide, flat brushstrokes and color assumes an expressive and highly charged quality. Marius-Ary Leblond analyzed van Dongen's use of color in the preface to  the catalogue of the 1906 exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune: "he breaks down the harmonies of the rosy skin, in which he discovers acid greens, blood orange reds, phosphorous yellows, vinous lilac, electric blues: instead of juxtaposing these shades in narrow strokes, he spreads them out in isolation, each over large areas [...] The artist, also breaking down the contours of the bodies in the atmosphere, doubles each essential line of the members with a band of a complementary colour, a sort of schematic make-up which he extends to the features of the face [...] to all the others of the bust and legs" (quoted in Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1989, p. 153). 

The identity of the sitter of this work remains hidden, as van Dongen's primary focus was on the vibrancy of his palette and the directness of his expression rather than on the anatomical accuracy or descriptive value of his portraits. In this picture, he dresses his model in an elaborate hat, an attribute of the bourgeois class (fig. 2). In rendering his subject in strong, vibrant colours, the artist sought to recreate his own interpretation of it, expressing the essence of female sexuality. In other paintings from around the same time, van Dongen often presented his models wearing nothing but a festooned hat, and this accessory becomes somewhat of a fetish object in his compositions from this period (see fig. 3).  

Fig. 1, Kees van Dongen, Femme à la voilette, 1903, black chalk, brush, ink and watercolor on paper, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Fig. 2, Kees van Dongen, Femme au chapeau vert, 1907, oil on canvas, Private Collection, on deposit at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny

Fig. 3, Kees van Dongen, Femme nue au chapeau, 1908, oil on canvas, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris