Kees van Dongen

Private Collection, France (acquired in the 1950s)
By descent to the present owner

Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. The edges are lined with tape. There are three pin holes visible to the sheet along the upper edge. The upper left corner is scuffed. The sheet is time stained and there are faint lines of mount staining visible along the left and lower edges. There are some possible spots of foxing in places. There are dirt marks particularly visible along the lower edge. There are some very fine lines of craquellure in areas notably to the white pigment. There is a paint loss (approx 1 cm wide) to the lower left quadrant and a few further spots in particular to the green pigment. There is a flattened horizontal fold to the centre of the composition.There is no evidence of retouching under UV light. This work is in good condition.
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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."

Kees Van Dongen often frequented the cabarets of Montmartre as well as the brothels in order to paint the singers and prostitutes. In 1906, he moved to the Bateau-lavoir where he met with Picasso and gave masked balls in his studio for his friends Derain, Vlaminck, Camoin and Matisse.

It was on the Butte of Montmartre that Van Dongen saw the performance of the transvestite Romanian singer Modjesko, famous at the time, of whom he painted moreover a superb portrait in 1908, kept today in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

With its gouache highlights, this work employs the explosive colors of Fauvism, a movement with which Van Dongen was directly associated since the famous exhibition at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. But it also testifies to the painter’s implication in the German Expressionist movement Die Brüke which he was invited to join in 1908. This surprising work reveals not only the shady night life of Paris, of which Van Dongen was a fervent observer, but illustrates as well the new stylistic and formalistic experiments of this great period of the Parisian avant-garde.