Kees van Dongen

O'Hana Gallery, London
Private Collection, Europe (and sold: Sotheby's, London, March 30, 1988, lot 151)
Private Collection, Netherlands (acquired at the above sale)

This painting is in lovely condition. It is still on its original stretcher and is unlined. The paint layer is cleaned. The only retouches are in the dark green on either side of the arm on the right, where a few isolated retouches have been applied to eliminate small losses. The remainder of the picture is in wonderful and original condition. The above condition report has been prepared by Simon Parkes, an independent conservator who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
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.

L’Habit de danseuse was painted approximately five years after the pivotal 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne, the debut of the Fauve movement, and its composition exhibits many of the distinctive traits that characterized van Dongen’s unique embrace of this groundbreaking style. Unlike the more joyful and innocent visions of colleagues such as Matisse, van Dongen’s paintings of women are mediated through his impressions of Parisian night-life and the artificial lighting of bars and concert halls, rather than in natural open spaces. In the present work, the decadent milieu is revealed in the sensuous curvature of the female body and the pallor of exposed skin, not to mention the atmospheric rendering of the interior backdrop.

Louis Vauxcelles, the influential French art critic, proclaimed van Dongen as “the historian of girls of the streets, of the dregs, of all the rabble of corrupt females and their crapulous pimps” (quoted in Gaston Diehl, Van Dongen, Milan, n.d., p. 87), and behind the air of decadence that pervades this work is a streak of Dutch realism that remained ever present in the artist’s work. The sulphurous yellows and lurid greens are hallmarks of his mature paintings, and the troubling sensuality that is already overt in this painting would become even more pronounced. In his prologue to his December 1911 exhibition, van Dongen asserted that “a certain immodesty is truly a virtue, as is the absence of respect for many respectable things” (quoted in ibid., p. 87). This work is underpinned by a strange combination of baudelairism and naïveté that captures both the exotic and the sordid nature of the bohemian world he inhabited.