Kees van Dongen

Nature morte avec poupée is a striking example of Kees van Dongen’s unique approach to the traditional still life genre. The colorful embroidery of the doll’s dress, framed by the glimmering beads of the golden slippers and the delicate blue hues of the porcelain horse, imbue the canvas with a striking textural quality that transforms the typically unassuming subject into a dynamic composition.

The artist’s handling of paint and employment of color grants this work an expressive and highly-charged quality. Reflecting his artistic roots in the Fauve movement, which he practiced with two of the movement's principle exponents, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, van Dongen retained his love for thickly applied paint and highly saturated hues. The present work is reminiscent of the commissioned portraits of Parisian elite that would define van Dongen’s oeuvre, in which the artist rendered elegant, Parisian women with a doll-like quality through flattened perspectives and bold color and texture. Van Dongen's still lifes demonstrate the artist's remarkable ability to distill traditional subject matter to its color and energy. So focused was Van Dongen's obsession with color, scholar William Steadman has suggested that it held a symbolic meaning and status for the artist (W.E. Steadman & D. Sutton, Cornelius Theodorus Marie Van Dongen, Tuscon 1971, pp. 20-28).

The present work evokes the color and expressive line that became the quintessence of his style. In 1926, the artist was inducted into the French Legion of Honor, and, in 1927, awarded the Order of the Crown of Belgium. Van Dongen’s approach to art earned him international approbation and Nature morte avec poupée beautifully epitomizes the intoxicating painterly intensity for which he was most well-known.