Kees van Dongen

Dr Walter Leder, Winterthur (acquired in the 1960s)

Thence by descent

The canvas is unlined, and there is no evidence of retouching visible under ultra-violet light. Apart from a few tiny specks of paint loss in the figure's hair and the lower right corner, this work is in very good original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although slightly richer in the original. The grey tones are slightly less red and more neutral in the original.
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 'These enticing nudes, who have no adornment but a flower, a knot of ribbons, or a hat, permitted the critics to baptize our painter “the psychologist of the body.”'

Donald Kuspit, ‘Kees van Dongen: Unequivocal Colour and Equivocal Sexuality’, in Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1989-90, pp. 37-39

Having been hidden away in a private collection for almost half a century, this portrait of a young woman gazing demurely at the viewer is a 'discovery' of a work dating from a pivotal stage in Van Dongen’s career. At the time he painted this oil, he was still working with the Fauvist palette of vibrant colours, but his art was now taking a more sophisticated turn, mostly in response to the tastes of his clientele. Van Dongen had become an international celebrity, and his work was in demand internationally, most notably in fashionable Parisian circles. By 1913 his works were included in important exhibitions across Europe, one-man shows organised by his dealer Bernheim-Jeune, and the Salon d’Automne of 1913, where his Tableau, another depiction of a nude wearing stockings (fig. 1), caused a scandal. The European avant-garde was praising his talent as the best portraitist among the Fauves, and he soon began to receive commissions from patrons in France and abroad. In March 1912 Van Dongen rented a second studio in Montparnasse, at 33 rue Denfert-Rochereau (now rue Barbusse; fig. 3), a spacious room sparsely furnished, and filled with the artist’s own paintings, where he organised parties and balls and which soon became a meeting point of the avant-garde.

 

Bas bleus is indeed a work that demonstrates the artist’s style on the cusp of two decisive periods in his career. Here he has painted a nude woman, wearing nothing but a pair of blue stockings, who is possibly one of the café performers or courtesans that dominated Van Dongen’s canvases during his Fauve period. At the same time, while openly facing the viewer, she appears to be more timid than the wild models of his earlier career, and her elegant, slender body heralds the refinement and grace of the portraits he would execute throughout the 1920s. Though her pose may appear more refined, the woman in the present work has the same sultry eyes, fiery red lips and radiant glow of many of the femmes fatales that Van Dongen depicted in 1907-08. As Donald Kuspit wrote: ‘Fauvism is eager for art to have the vital power of the female. It is this that the Fauvist images of females pursue, and that Van Dongen articulates with a special vehemence’ (D. Kuspit, ‘Kees van Dongen: Unequivocal Colour and Equivocal Sexuality’, in Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1989-90, pp. 37-39).

 

A similar approach to the female nude can be found in the works of Van Dongen’s fellow Fauvist Matisse, who depicted his models against a bright monochromatic background (fig. 2), or in exotic landscapes or interiors. On the other hand, Van Dongen’s appropriation of the demi-monde as a subject for modern painting had begun prior to the turning of the century. ‘Van Dongen’s paintings of friends and colleagues of the night-life of Montmartre and of similar venues draw directly upon the example of Toulouse-Lautrec’, John Elderfield explained. ‘Such a mixture of Lautrec and expressionist colorism was by no means unprecedented. Picasso’s paintings of prostitutes and entertainers of late 1900 and early 1901 form an important precedent for the art of Van Dongen’ (J. Elderfield, The ‘Wild Beasts’: Fauvism and Its Affinities, New York, 1976, p. 66).

 

The identity of the sitter of this work remains unknown, as Van Dongen’s primary focus was on the vibrancy of his palette and the directness of his expression than on the anatomical accuracy or descriptive value of his portraits. While rendering the background in broad brushstrokes that hint to the nature of the setting, his emphasis is clearly on the sitter’s body, and particularly in her detailed and vibrantly painted facial features and hair. ‘For his part, faithful to his principal source of inspiration, the feminine nude, van Dongen openly asserted his position in the witty prologue he composed for his December [1911] show: “A certain immodesty is truly a virtue, as is the absence of respect for many respectable things.” […] These enticing nudes, who have no adornment but a flower, a knot of ribbons, or a hat, permitted the critics to baptize our painter “the psychologist of the body,” and permitted René Jean to congratulate him for “seeing woman as a superb animal whose smiles and gestures are gracious, supple, feline, and evocative”’ (D. Kuspit, op. cit., p. 52).