Executed circa 1949, De Kinderdyck, Holland (Vase de tulipes) is a radiant and symbolic encapsulation of Kees van Dongen’s artistic contributions. The painter consistently returned to the subject of the still life throughout his career, approaching each composition with the same vigor as the Fauve scenes and portraits of fashionable women that garnered him widespread recognition.

Born and raised in Rotterdam, van Dongen spent his early adulthood studying art at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, taking a keen interest in the depiction of the female figure. In 1900, Van Dongen relocated to Paris, eventually landing at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, where he found great inspiration in the city’s nightlife and theater and quickly became acquainted with a coterie of burgeoning avant-garde painters, artists like Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Gris and Max Jacob.

During this pivotal period surrounded by daring young painters, van Dongen rose to prominence for his pioneering Fauve compositions, replete with riotous colors, exaggerated figures and stark contrasts of light and dark. Before long, the Dutch painter had garnered increasing success as his work evolved toward a more universally appealing idiom, one informed by his early Fauve works yet tempered in subject matter and tone. By the 1920s, his work was well received by upper class Parisians who flocked to the artist for his stylized high society portraits.

Throughout this period of evolution, van Dongen utilized the genre of still life as a vehicle for pictorial exploration as well as personal mythologizing. Like Gauguin, whose still lifes were both an ode to great painters like Paul Cézanne as well as a reflection of his life’s travels, van Dongen also imbued a sense of self within his own compositions.

In the present work, van Dongen transforms a simple still life into a picture infused with iconography and personal history, instantly conjuring images of the Dutch countryside through the depiction of the national flower and the windmills dotting the background. The painting's title refers to a village on the outskirts of Rotterdam famous for its windmills. For van Dongen, like his compatriot Vincent van Gogh before him, the structures also came to represent the bucolic corners of Montmartre nearly as much as The Netherlands.

Far from a faithful reproduction of a tablescape, the composition of De Kinderdyck, Holland (Vase de tulipes) is carefully detailed and planned. In the present work, the tulips at center seemingly erupt from their vase, dominating the canvas and framing the troupe of windmills aligned along an imagined horizon. The background comprised of blended pink and red muted tones is juxtaposed by the bolder red and yellow colors in the foreground which call to mind the artist's Fauve roots. At left, van Dongen includes two fallen petals, perhaps a nod to the passing of time, as well as a book at The Narrow Corner by Somerset Maugham, at right. Immensely popular, the English novelist was the world’s highest paid author in the 1930s, having published The Narrow Corner in 1932. As Maugham’s works were often found in middle and upper-class homes in Europe during this period, the inclusion of this book alludes to both van Dongen’s station in life as well as that of his sitters at the time the present work was painted.

Deliberately composed, ripe with color and laden with personal symbolism, van Dongen’s De Kinderdyck, Holland (Vase de tulipes) is one of the artist’s finest still lives to come to auction in years.