Kees van Dongen

Private Collection
Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007

The canvas is not lined. UV examination reveals two very small spots of retouching to the yellow parasol and one very small retouching to the green parasol. There are some fine lines of craquelure and minor paint shrinkage to the orange parasol. Otherwise, this work is in overall very good condition. Colours: fairly accurate in the printed catalogue.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Deauville fit me like a glove. I found clients there and it reminded me of Holland. Something about the light'
Kees van Dongen, 1958 (translated from French)

'In van Dongen's work we find everything that lives, sparkles and is luxurious' (All Eyes on van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boijmans Van Beiningen, Rotterdam, 2010-11, p. 155), remarked a journalist in 1928, and this statement is certainly not reserved for scenes of Paris. In Le Bar du Soleil, Deauville we are shown a snapshot of the exciting and exceedingly fashionable summer social scene at Deauville. In the first half of the twentieth century, Deauville was full of the great and the good: it was a place to see and be seen, and van Dongen was at the heart of this lively world. The artist first visited the resort in the summer of 1913, when he stayed with his collector friends the Desjardins. So taken was he by the buzz and glamour of the place that he returned almost every year of his life. He became one of the most recognisable regulars, his distinctive silhouette, white beard and pipe easily spotted and photographed at either the race-course or at the centre of the action, Le Bar du Soleil.

That the present work was chosen by the French Tourist board to feature in a 1950s advertising campaign poster for France is hardly surprising (fig. 1). It is the most alluring and aspirational of images, a veritable cocktail party of fizz, colour and fresh sea air. Though the Fauves are often credited with inventing colour, van Dongen also actively went in search of it. Deauville offered the artist unlimited luminous blue sky, blustering flags, dazzling parasols and a twinkling sea: the perfect backdrop to the lively social scene that spilled out onto the beach from the Bar du Soleil. Here, the viewer is invited to sit alongside van Dongen's easel, joining the party and the fabulous people-watching. For van Dongen is not merely a voyeur, he is the king of Deauville and the present work is testament to the artist's status as an insider.

Van Dongen was not the only Fauve artist to find inspiration in fashionable French seaside resorts, and though the present work certainly owes something to the dynamic atmosphere of Raoul Dufy's famous beach scenes of Trouville and Sainte-Adresse, the vibrancy of its palette in unrivalled. Van Dongen invites us into an effervescent world of electric blue skies, bright yellow sand, and deep tanned skin. This is a world inhabited by those at the forefront of Parisian fashion, where women in bright green bikinis, white high-heels and orange towels are crowned by equally dazzling parasols. Eager waiters leap down onto the beach to attend to the needs of their glamorous clientele. Anita Hopmans has rightly emphasised the artistic significance of van Dongen's fascination for, and enagagement with, this affluent milieu. She reminds us how his scenes of the Lido, Deauville and Cannes are examples of the way in which 'van Dongen created this luxury around him, his work sprung from it and was inextricably bound up with it' (ibid.)

In the modern tradition of Monet, Renoir, Dufy et al. Bar du Soleil, Deauville is a wonderful love letter to, and record of, the charmed world of the leisure classes of the time. Van Dongen found colour and glitz wherever he could, be it in Paris's grandest salons, casinos, race-courses or sea-side holiday resorts. His thirst for depicting the thrill of modern life was seemingly inexhaustible and the energetic execution of the present work is a tribute to both his love of painting and his simultaneous desire to return to the party.