Kees Van Dongen– Not to be Forgotten

The name Kees Van Dongen should be known to anyone who appreciates the Fauvist movement of Paris after the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in Rotterdam (1877). By 1897 he had completed his studies and by 1899, he settled in Paris where he worked as a house painter and an illustrator for satirical magazines which, for a while, afforded him a basic income.  In 1904 he exhibited about one hundred works at the gallery of Amboise Vollard who was partly responsible for Picasso’s fame. By 1905 he began to exhibit and the Paris Salle d’Automme was his first exposure to the public. It changed his life, his friends, and place of dwelling. It was then that he moved in to the famous Bateau Lavoire (where Picasso lived). At the exhibit, he was shown with the paintings of Henri Matisse. His use of vibrant color and aggressive brush stroke put him into what they now called the Fauvist school. (Fauvism is akin to ‘wild beasts’.) This avant-garde movement included people like Maurice de Vlamink, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay and Edouard Vuillard.   Van Dongen’s friendships were with Derain and Matisse. This led to Neo-impressionism and by living in the Bateau Lavoire he came into contact with Pablo Picasso and Fernande Olivier whose portrait Van Dongen painted. But the two went in opposite directions. For Van Dongen, painting was ‘a game’.  His way to success was through the painting of famous personalities like the Aga Khan, Leopold III of Belgium, Sasha Guitry, Anna de Noailles and Maurice Chevalier. His style was simple but he continued to use explosive colors and bold outlines. Like Modigliani he tended to elongate the figure and make his women look thin. “Painting, he said, is the most beautiful of lies.”  By 1926 he was awarded the Legion of Honour and later, the Order of the Crown of Belgium. He became a French citizen and two of his works were put in the Luxembourg Museum. His work consists of lithographs and richly colored seascapes, some of which began when he was in Belgium. His simple scenes of Paris are to be admired. Added to his long list of creations are book illustrations for writings of Kipling, Proust, Gide and Baudelaire. Van Dongen also wrote a biography of Rembrandt.   While there was a definite relationship with Kees and Matisse or Derain, he was connected with the Fauvists but in his choice of portraits I see Lautrec and Modigliani. Portraits became his modus operendi and he even did one of Bridget Bardot at the height of her fame.   Having been divorced from his first wife, Van Dongen met Marie-Claire with whom they had a son, Jean Marie in 1940. Like many Parisian painters he moved to the south of France — Monaco — where he died on May 28, 1968. He had befriended both Picasso and some of his friends including Guillaume Apollinaire as well as Matisse. He is remembered as a master of modern art but Apollinaire described him as a man sustained by ‘opium, ambergris and eroticism’. It’s a good description of the artist but one could say that most of those mentioned above can be described the same way. They were driven and unafraid of the “new”.  Years later some of his works were stolen from the Encino, California home of an elderly couple who had been collecting for over 60 years. Included were works by Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Emil Nolde, Diego Rivera and Van Dongen’s 1933 oil painting of Alicia Alanova (Lady In A Hat). All works were of museum caliber.  In your search for the great artists of the twentieth century who honed their craft under the Parisian sun include Van Dongen, especially when you think of French Fauvists or look for him if you are ever in Monaco. His collection is currently on show in Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts in cooperation with the Nouveau Musee National de Monaco.