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Artist or Maker: Kees van Dongen (1877-1968)

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Description: L'Espagnole (El Mantón)
signed 'Van Dongen' (lower centre)
oil on canvas
51 1/4 x 38 3/8 in. (130.2 x 97.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1905-1906

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Provenance: Galerie Romanet, Paris.
Galerie Moos, Geneva.
Jacques Lindon, New York.
Sylvan Kocher, Solothurn, by 1959.
Hans Schröder, Saarbruck (inv. no. 26); his sale, Christie's, London, 1 December 1986, lot 4 (where illustrated on the cover of the catalogue).

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Exhibited: (Probably) Rotterdam, Kunstkring, Kees van Dongen, May - June 1906, no. 1.
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Van Dongen, December 1911, no. 3 (illustrated, titled 'El Mantón').
Brussels, La Libre Esthéthique, Dix-neuvième exposition, March - April 1912, no. 249 (titled 'El Mantón').
Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Triumph der Farbe. Die europäischen Fauves, July - September 1959, no. 80; this exhibition later travelled to Berlin, Nationalgalerie der ehemals staatlichen Museen, Orangerie des Schlosses Charlottenburg, September - November. Hamburg, Kunstverein, Matisse und seine Freunde-Les Fauves, May - July 1966, no. 93 (illustrated in colour pl. 21).
Paris, Musée d'art moderne, Van Dongen, October 1967 - January 1968, no. 43 (illustrated); this exhibition later travelled to Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen.

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Published: D. Gordon, Modern Art Exhibitions. 1900-1916, vol. I, Munich, 1974, no. 842 (illustrated p. 204).
G. Duthuit, Les Fauves, Geneva, 1949 (illustrated p. 85, titled El Mantón).

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Notes: Painted in 1905-06, L'Espagnole dates from the fiery beginning of Kees van Dongen's most celebrated Fauve period. Some of his paintings from this period play simply on their wall power and presence. L'Espagnole is different, combining as it does a shimmering vibrancy and sophistication. During these years, Van Dongen began to paint pictures of women that are still arresting in their immediacy, in the bold presence of the characters captured in his signature Fauve colours. These pictures were marked by an increasing bravura, reflecting the artist's own pride in both his subject and the level of execution. In L'Espagnole, these are most evident in the brightness of the background, which pushes the flesh tones and the ornamentation of the subject's clothes to the fore; meanwhile, in a neat chiaroscuro reversal, the background of the lower half of the woman silhouettes her predominantly white clothing by surrounding it with a deep, dark blue. It is only on closer inspection that the viewer notices the greens that make up so much of the shadow on her face and arms, so deftly handled has the colour been. This itself creates an engaging contrast with the other colours, not least the red of the clothes which is picked up subtly but to great effect in her lips and more discreetly above her eyes. It was in his brushwork as well as the use of colours that Van Dongen's unique Fauve qualities lay. Here, he has refined the incandescent explosions of a Vlaminck of the same period, instead applying the paint in a more sophisticated manner that creates an almost sfumato appearance, lending the outline of the woman hazy and indistinct quality. In this way, he has adapted his own loose and Fauve form of Divisionism, a technique through which he lends the colours an intense vibrancy, playing them off against one another, while also instilling the painting with a gesturality, a rawness that tells of the directness of the picture, filling it with life and spontaneity.

When he painted L'Espagnole, Van Dongen was still considered primarily a landscape painter by his buying public, but this work in fact dates from the period during which the characters of bohemian life in Paris began to appear with increasing frequency in his oils. Van Dongen had long been associated with such subjects, as is clear from the works on paper and illustrations that he executed at the turn of the century, but it was only now that these people burst from the canvases, incarnated in the flaming palette of his Fauve works. Here, L'Espagnole of the title stands with a cocky assurance in a pose that, in its age, must have appeared frank and even unladylike. Yet it is precisely this quality that makes L'Espagnole so intriguing. She appears before us with an intense confidence, yet in his depiction of her eyes and parted lips, Van Dongen is pointing to her sensuality that remained scandalous at the time.

This was a period of change in Van Dongen's life as well as in his art, as it was at the beginning of 1906 that he moved into the Bateau Lavoir, the legendary residence of a host of artists who would come to change the face of all modern art. Amongst these was Picasso, who within a short time became a firm friend of Van Dongen's, as is testified to by a group of photographs of the Dutch artist standing in front of the Spaniard's iconic and pioneering Les demoiselles d'Avignon. It was through this friendship that Van Dongen came to be acquainted with Picasso's then lover, Fernande Olivier. She in turn was immortalised not only in Picasso's sculptures of her head, but also in a series of radiant portraits by Van Dongen, in which he celebrated the female form and his model's palpable sexuality, made explicit in the nudity of some of the works, but always hinted at through the almond-shaped eyes with which he associated her. Van Dongen's portraits of Fernande are considered to have changed the way in which he painted women, and while it is not certain precisely when L'Espagnole was painted, she appears infused with a similar sensuality, one which had not appeared earlier.

One wonders who this Espagnole is whether she is Spanish, whether it is a stage name for an entertainer in the Folies-Bergères, whether she might even be a prostitute. Certainly prostitutes and entertainers occupied many of Van Dongen's figure paintings of this time, and would do so for years to come. He found in this subject a rich seam of possibilities which allowed him to celebrate female form in a manner that has a carnal quality wholly lacking in the pictures that Renoir was continuing to paint at this time. It is indeed by contrasting L'Espagnole with the paintings of contemporary artists such as Renoir that its refreshing honesty can be best discerned. L'Espagnole may be robed, yet even here Van Dongen is celebrating an aspect of womanhood that had been censored for far too long.

The green that Van Dongen has used so pointedly to highlight the shadows in L'Espagnole's face and arms hints at a Mediterranean complexion, implying that, whether it was a nickname or a description, the subject was of Spanish origin, an impression emphasised by her shawl (in several early exhibitions, the picture was in fact displayed under the title El Manton, meaning 'The Shawl'). When he travelled to Spain a few years later, it ignited a love affair that would remain with him throughout his life, and he tackled Spanish subjects with a great frequency. However, it would seem that L'Espagnole is one of the first of these, prefiguring this later fascination.

If this picture was painted in 1906, it would appear to have been during the earliest months of his stay there, as a picture of this title was sent in May that year to an exhibition of Van Dongen's works held at the Kunstkrick in Rotterdam, where it was numbered 1 in the catalogue. Certainly it is a bold declaration of the painter's skills and intentions, as is reflected in its extensive exhibition history. This history provides an interesting insight into Van Dongen's increasing recognition, for the 1911 exhibition in which this picture featured at Bernheim-Jeune's had been organised at relatively short notice after another show earlier that year had almost entirely sold out. It was now, half a decade after some of the most impressive works had been painted, that he was reaping the rewards. L'Espagnole's history spans the more celebrated arc of Van Dongen's career, for it was also shown at the celebrated retrospective of his works that was held in Paris at the Musée d'Art Moderne in 1967, the year before the artist's death.

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