Kees van Dongen

Galerie Paul Pétridès, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Kunsthandel Borzo, Den Bosch, The Netherlands
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner in October 1994

The canvas is not lined. There is a nailhead-sized spot of retouching to the upper left corner, visible under UV light. Apart from some very light craquelure and slight degradation to the varnish in the upper left quadrant, this work is in very good condition.
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Van Dongen's reputation as the master of night-life themes was established early in his career, and his exuberant Fauve palette and stylised figures enabled him to become a pioneering artist in this bohemian landscape.

The present work captures a private moment between two Parisians while the crowd in the background enjoys the spectacle of a fête foraine at La Villette in the north-east of Paris. The exoticism of the funfairs were to provide the perfect foil for Van Dongen. In the midst of the clamour of the music, the crowd and the encouragement of the stall-keeper, the artist would sit at a café with his sketchbook to capture the excitement of a Parisian night-life scene. Merry-go-rounds, circuses, shooting stands and guinguettes would entertain the lower class Parisians seeking a moment of fantasy.  As an expression of la vie moderne and an antithesis to bourgeois life, such décor would provide an endless source of colourful inspiration.

Le Cirque, Fête foraine à la Villette was probably painted at the height of the artist's career, just after he had established his reputation while exhibiting with the Fauves in 1905 and 1907. While the leading Fauvists such as Matisse and Derain would depict the sunlit coast of southern France, Van Dongen would find more inspiration in the city life, especially the Parisian night-life. The artificial lights of the circus, music-halls and fairs, the movement and gaiety of the crowd excited him more than nature and open spaces.

In the present work, Van Dongen applies his vibrant, Fauve palette to create an atmosphere of contrasts. The noisy excitement of the fair visitors in the background is rendered by the white light irradiating the dark night sky and animating the pink and yellow silhouettes. This buzz seems to disappear in the distance as the artist thickly applies rich colours: drawing simple forms on the canvas to create a caravan, a fair stand and a circus in the mid-ground. The yellow ochres and heated oranges on the left, the vibrant green of the circus, in sharp contrast with the dark blue sky, creates a curtain for the two lovers in the foreground as they discreetly escape from the crowd for a private rendez-vous.

This mastery of contrasting effects is characteristic of Van Dongen's bold approach to colour that earned him the place at the forefront of the European avant-garde in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, and which later was celebrated by Apollinaire when in 1918 he wrote: 'This colourist has, above all, drawn an acute excitement from electric lighting and has added it to the nuances. The result is an intoxication, a dazzle, a vibrancy, and the colour, holding fast to an extraordinary individuality, swoons, exalts itself, sails, grows dim, faints away, without ever clouding over the clarity of shade' (quoted in G. Diehl, Van Dongen, Milan, 1969, p. 85).

3MPY5_COMP
Postcard of a Fête Foraine in the North of Paris, circa 1910