- 27
Kees van Dongen
Description
- Kees van Dongen
- La femme aux chats
- signed van Dongen (lower centre)
- oil on canvas
- 81.5 by 100.5cm.
- 32 by 39 1/2 in.
Provenance
Galerie Pétridès, Paris
Private Collection, Paris (acquired from the above in the 1950s)
Thence by descent to the present owner
Literature
Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen, L’homme et l’artiste – la vie et l’œuvre, Geneva, 1967, mentioned p. 212
Condition
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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."
Catalogue Note
Donald Kupsit suggests that van Dongen’s use of the female nude shows a ‘special character of this fascination, indicated by the attempt to reduce the female body to a crude mass of colour, implies a special desire, a special wish to be seduced: the physical intimacy communicated amounts to identification with the female. It is an identification which confirms the artist’s power – which appropriates female power for his art. For me, his most important pictures are those of women’ (D. Kupsit, Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1989, p. 37). As van Dongen himself explained: 'I love anything that glitters, precious stones that sparkle, fabrics that shimmer, beautiful women who arouse carnal desire... painting lets me possess all this most fully' (quoted in Marcel Giry, Fauvism, Fribourg, 1981, pp. 224-6).
In a telling gesture the nude toys with the cats using her long hair to tempt them and to obscure her own features which seems at once coquettish and intimate. The inclusion of various animals in his works such as birds, cats and dogs (fig. 1), give coded significance to the female figures they accompany, for example dogs may represent fidelity, whilst cats are used to imply a certain lasciviousness. This painting belongs to a group of works depicting performers and courtesans that the artist completed on the eve of the First World War, when he was establishing his reputation as the painter of the Parisian demi-monde. In March 1912 Van Dongen rented a new studio in Montparnasse at 33 rue Denfert-Rochereau. As Anita Hopmans noted: This pre-war Montparnasse, where Van Dongen stayed until 1916, was the hub of fancy-dress parties’ (A. Hopmans, All Eyes on Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2010, p. 100), and the artist frequently hosted them in his vast studio (fig. 2). The cafés and concert halls of the area were filled with young cabaret performers and prostitutes who were willing to model, and like so many artists of his day, van Dongen was transfixed by their lurid beauty. Ironically, those most impressed with van Dongen's achievements were the grandes dames of Parisian society, who began commissioning portraits from him in the 1910s, establishing him as a painter of women par excellence. Gaston Diehl has written the following on these pictures: ‘The vitality of his need for immediate pleasure took even more concrete form through his development […] of two major themes. One, with which he was already quite familiar, is girls of the street. He treats them without complacency, but - a point on which there is unanimous agreement - he knew how to make a troubling femininity radiate’ (Gaston Diehl, Van Dongen, Milan, n.d., p. 41).