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Description: PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

1877- 1968
PORTRAIT DE FERNANDE

measurements
55.2 by 46.2cm.

alternate measurements
21 3/4 by 18 1/4 in.

Painted in Paris in 1905.

signed van Dongen (lower right); signed Van Dongen on the stretcher; signed Van Dongen, dated Montmartre Paris 1905 and inscribed Fernande on the reverse

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

The artist (until at least 1959)
Lady Bagrit, London (acquired from the artist by 1963; thence by descent)
Acquired by the present owner in 1998

EXHIBITED

Geneva, Musée Rath, Van Dongen, 1959, no. 25, illustrated in the catalogue
London, Tate Gallery, Private Views: Works from the Collections of Twenty Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1963, no. 36 (titled Fernande)

LITERATURE

Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen. L'homme et l'artiste - La vie et l'~uvre, Geneva, 1967, no. 48, illustrated (as dating from 1906)

NOTE

Portrait de Fernande was painted during the pivotal period of Van Dongen's career, when he became associated with the Fauve painters with whom he first participated in the 1905 Salon d'Automne. It was during that exhibition that the term 'Les Fauves' was coined, at the sight of the vivid colours and free forms of Matisse and his associates. Van Dongen also exhibited with the Fauve group at Prath & Magnier in Paris in December of the same year and was mentioned alongside other artists in the Chronique des Arts: 'At Prath & Magniers there is a gathering of avant-garde painters, the masters of the intense touch and forthright colour, the champions of the Salon d'Automne' (quoted in Anita Hopmans, The Van Dongen Nobody Knows, Early and Fauvist Drawings 1895-1912, Rotterdam, 1996, p. 67).

This period marks Van Dongen's transformation from a draughtsman to an avant-garde painter, with a shift of focus and technique from a linear approach to the thick painterly treatment of form. As in the present work, paint is applied in thick brushstrokes and colour assumes an expressive and highly charged quality. Marius-Ary Leblond analysed Van Dongen's use of colour 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).

Van Dongen's bold use of colour in his portraits came as a response to Matisse's groundbreaking paintings such as Femme au chapeau (fig. 2), now considered to be one the Fauves' pivotal works, which scandalised Parisian critics at the Salon d'Automne of 1905. Whilst the conflict in Matisse's work is achieved by the apparent contradiction between the wild, unrestrained handling of pigment and the apparently bourgeois subject, Van Dongen in the present work celebrates the concurrent sensual appeal of vibrant colour and female sexuality. The use of his favoured emerald green to achieve three-dimensional form relates to the similar technique utilised by Matisse in another Fauve masterpiece Madame Matisse. La Raie verte (fig. 3) which, like the present work, rejects the tradition of modelling through the use of chiaroscuro in favour of chromatic contrast and an expressive use of colour.

The sitter of the present work is Fernande Olivier (fig. 4), who was Picasso's companion and muse at the time. In December 1905 Van Dongen, with his wife Guus and their young daughter Dolly, moved to a studio in the Bateau-Lavoir, a building in Montmartre where Picasso, Herbin, Gris and other artists lived and worked. Van Dongen's studio was directly opposite that occupied by Picasso and Fernande, and over this period the two families became close. Fernande Olivier was born as Amélie Lang in 1881 but changed her name later in life so that she could escape an abusive husband. She met Picasso when he moved into the Bateau-Lavoir, where she lived and worked as an artist's model. In 1905 Fernande moved in with Picasso and remained his companion for the following six years. With her beautiful features and rich auburn hair, Fernande was an attractive woman known as 'La belle Fernande'. Between 1900 and 1905 she modelled for a number of painters and sculptors, including Van Dongen. However, Picasso demanded she give up modelling for others as he was very jealous and possessive, often locking her in their apartment when he left. There is some disagreement about how he tolerated the numerous portraits Van Dongen painted of her, as John Richardson writes: 'Daix thinks Fernande may have incurred her lover's wrath by modelling for his amorous friend Van Dongen.; I am not so sure. 'La belle Fernande' was famously susceptible, very conscious of turning heads whenever she appeared in public' (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life, London, 1996, p. 20).