Kees van Dongen

Robert Lehman, New York
Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York 
Private Collection, Indiana (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 3, 2005, lot 237)
Acquired at the above sale

Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen: l'homme et l'artiste, la vie et l'oeuvre, Geneva, 1967, no. 31, illustrated n.p. 

This work is in overall very good condition and there is a lovely rich impasto surface in places. The canvas is not lined. UV examination reveals a few very small spots of retouching, one to her neck, one to her hair, and a few small spots to the right of her nose. There are a few very fine lines of craquelure in places and some paint shrinkage to parts of the red pigment.
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.

Van Dongen was the premier portraitist of Fauvism, a style otherwise more closely associated with landscape than the human figure. Matisse for example painted only a small number of portraits in the style, including his two celebrated paintings of his wife Femme au chapeau (see fig. 1) and La raie verte of 1905, both striking manifestos of the radical painting technique.

In the present work the uncompromising position of the sitter is heightened by van Dongen's bold use of color. Indeed juxtaposed contrasting colors appear to spark light and energy, particularly in the way the skin of the model appears intensely luminous, an effect produced in part by the thick bluish shading lines above the eyes, along the nose and chin, as well as the strong red of the mouth. The sitter's striking eyes are further accentuated by fields of other colors: bold reds, blues and greens. The resulting image is altogether arresting, as the viewer viscerally experiences the artist's efforts "to strip down painting to it's essentials, to find inspiration in an art that depended on instinct, like children’s art and folk art."

As Sarah Whitfield observes, "paintings such as Femme à la croix reveal how van Dongen briefly embraced the Fauve tenet of making the spectator conscious of the physical act of painting by making every gesture of the brush visible to the eye, reinforcing the point that the marks of color on the canvas are merely representations of their subjects. The factors which link Van Dongen to Fauvism are, above all, the immediacy of the image, the nakedness of the means, and the rejection of charm, attributes of primitivism which Fauvism made its own" (Sarah Whitfield, Fauvism, London, 1991, p. 179).