Kees van Dongen

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist on 11th November 1921)
Señora Maria Elena Popolizio de Diehl, Buenos Aires (sale: Sotheby's, London, 25th November 1964, lot 150)
Private Collection, Paris (purchased at the above sale; sale: Sotheby's, London, 23rd March 1983, lot 35)
Kunsthandel Frans Jacobs, Amsterdam
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1997

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Venise 1921, seize tableaux de Van Dongen, 1921, no. 8

Gérard Bauër, Venise 1921: seize reproductions d'après les tableaux de Van Dongen, Paris, 1921, illustrated

Les Chercheuses belongs to a group of works Van Dongen executed during his stay in Venice in the spring of 1921. Probably set in the fashionable Harry's Bar in Piazza San Marco, the slender, elongated figures and the exaggerated colouring and make-up of the two women are characteristic of his Venetian paintings, inspired by the glorious surroundings and elegantly dressed figures. The artist’s trip to Venice was partly motivated by his need to leave Paris in the midst of a scandal involving his portrait of the celebrated writer Anatole France, whom he had depicted unflatteringly, as an old man. Van Dongen’s stay in Venice was very productive, and he returned to Paris with a number of new paintings, sixteen of which, including the present work, were bought by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, and were exhibited there in December of the same year.

 

In Venice Van Dongen was accompanied by the Marchesa Casati, a notorious society lady who introduced the painter to the Venetian high society. As Denys Sutton wrote: ‘He met this notorious femme-fatale, who embodied all the extravagance and vice of the fin-de-siècle in 1921, through Jasmy. The Casati introduced him into a very different society than that he had known until then – in which complexity and elegance abounded and which was inhabited by beautiful, supercilious and neurotic women. It meant a change in his life and with typical cynicism he remarked: "There was less colour but the women smelt better!" Van Dongen and the Casati were together in Venice where he painted a charming and witty series of Venetian scenes which possess a balletic grace and which were published by Bernheim’ (D. Sutton, ‘A Diamond as big as the Ritz’, in Apollo, London, January 1971, p. 48).