Lot 43 : Kees van Dongen (1877-1968)

Kees van Dongen - 1877-1968

Auction Location: United States of America - 2002
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Description:

Le chapeau bleu signed 'van Dongen' (lower left) oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.2 cm.) Painted circa 1910-1912 PROVENANCE B. Shine, London. O'Hana Gallery, London. Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1966. LITERATURE D. Sutton, "A Diamond as Big as the Ritz", Apollo, vol. XCIII (no. 107), January 1971, p. 40 (illustrated, pl. 6). EXHIBITION London, O'Hana Gallery, Van Dongen, May-September 1966, no. 45 (titled Le chapeau bleu, Kiki de Montparnasse ). Tucson, The University of Arizona Art Museum and Kansas City, Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum, Cornelis Theodorus Marie Van Dongen, 1877-1968, 1971, p. 182, no. 53 (ilustrated in color, p. 73; titled The Blue Hat - Kiki of Montparnasse ; dated 1905). NOTES To be included in the forthcoming Kees Van Dongen catalogue raisonn‚ being prepared by Jacques Chalom des Cordes under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute. Van Dongen was immediately taken with Paris when he arrived there in 1899 from his native town of Delfshaven in Holland. Above all, it was Montmartre with its nightlife that held the greatest sway, and he spent much of his early career among the bistros and bals musettes in search of models for his paintings. It was together with Picasso and his companion Fernande Olivier that van Dongen became acclimated to life in the city. Van Dongen's early works showed the influence of the Impressionists. However in 1904, when van Dongen made his debut in the salons of Paris, his painting style had a greater raw emotional quality, taking on the ideals and principles associated with the radical movement of Les fauves. "Disregarding realism, they used colour simply with an eye to the picture surface, with only the effect in mind. The stronger the color, the greater its effect, which led them logically to the ultimate step of using colour straight from the tube" (J.-P. Crespelle, The Fauves, Greenwich, 1962, p. 30). Motivated by the bohemian lifestyle and the anarchist ideas in resistance to the bourgeois, van Dongen created portraits that were able to express a certain truth about humanity. Van Dongen chose to represent the Fauvist ideals mainly through portraiture. The extreme stylization of forms, preference for bright, rich colors and lack of interest in half-tones and shadows became van Dongen's hallmark. In Le chapeau bleu, van Dongen indulged his penchant for painting chansonniŠres and harlots. Van Dongen once remarked that he painted women of a certain ilk because their plight stirred his compassion. "I know every one of those women's histories, which are deeply tragic. They have experienced life in all its facets. I cannot help painting these women in garish colours; perhaps I do so in order to express the intensity of their lives?" As van Dongen's style matured, his painting became more expansive and exhibited a true enjoyment of color. As Jean-Louis Ferrier commented, "Van Dongen, being Dutch, likes to caress his canvases; it was not the lascivious postures, not the amorous attitudes of female figures that make his paintings so voluptuous but the brushwork itself" (J.-L. Ferrier, The Fauves, Paris, 1992, pp. 147-148).