Notes:

Kees van Dongen was a Dutch-French artist was one of the leading Fauvists and was particularly renowned for his stylized, sensuously rendered portraits of women. Some of the painter’s most famous works depict fashionable celebrities, including the French actress Brigitte Bardot.  “The essential thing is to elongate the women, especially to make them slim,” he said of his models. “After that, you just need to make their jewelry bigger.”

Associated with Fauvism early in his career (he participated in their first exhibition), Van Dongen introduced a range of edgy urban subjects that went further in challenging social norms than Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and others, who stuck to traditional bourgeois themes (still-life, landscape, portraits, and interiors).

Born Cornelis Theodorus Maria van Dongen on January 26, 1877 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, he studied at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten of Rotterdam, where he created somber-toned landscapes inspired by Rembrandt. Financed by his father, the artist moved to Paris in 1897 where he frequented the bars and cabarets of Montmartre. Affiliated with the Fauvists Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, and André Derain, Van Dongen’s use of color and expressive line became integral to his style.

In December 1905, Kees van Dongen was invited by Picasso to move into a studio in the Bateau-Lavoir. They became friends and were evenly matched in the battle to be part of the latest French art. Van Dongen and Picasso attract attention with their daring technique and conquer the Parisian art market side by side. 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 died on May 28, 1968 in Monte Carlo, Monaco at the age of 91.

This current artwork is the largest known watercolour by Van Dongen, showing a model elegantly posing next to a green bench in the artist’s studio. Her red heel just barely portruding from her dress.

Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.