Kees Van Dongen (1877 - 1968)

Provenance : 
Galerie Charpentier, Paris (consigned by the artist before March 1949 and at least until May 1949)
Private collection, Paris
Private collection, France (by descent from the above)

Exhibitions :
Van Dongen: Works from 1890 to 1948, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, March–April
1949, no. 173

Confirmation of inclusion in the artist’s digital catalogue raisonné issued by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.


In contrast to Van Dongen’s society portraits and the frivolous summers of Deauville, beginning on the boardwalk and stretching late into the night, the artist offers in this painting, dated to the second half of the 1940s, a more contemplative vision of his summer retreat, marked by pronounced chromatic
restraint.

Structuring the entire composition, a tall mast, slightly off-centre, rises into the sky, its long vertical line standing out against the clouds. Not a single soul on the horizon.
Having long since abandoned the trappings of Fauvism, Van Dongen here paints, against his usual habits, an uninhabited seaside subject—an atmospheric work devoid of anecdote and stripped of any decorative impulse.

Far removed from horse races and the frenzied nights of dancing and gambling that the painter relished in festive settings; worlds away from the glossy magazine pages on which Van Dongen parades along the boardwalk in a chic dressing gown, this small canvas asserts its silence all the more forcefully for being
singular within the artist’s oeuvre.
Flying the French flag, the tall mast—forming a cross against the restless sky— serves to heighten the gravity of the composition.
The pictorial material itself contributes to this tension: stretched thin and at times almost suggested, allowing the weave of the canvas to emerge in certain areas, it becomes denser and more heavily impastoed in parts of the sky, introducing subtle variations in thickness.

After an enforced absence due to the events of the Second World War, Van Dongen was able, from 1947 onwards, to resume his stays at the Normandy, the legendary hotel on the Côte Fleurie where he had taken up residence each summer since 1919.

The artist had discovered Deauville in 1913 and quickly became attached to it: “In Le Havre, a shipowner of Dutch origin wanted me to paint his portrait. I went to his home, painted his portrait, and then went for a walk along the coast, which was very beautiful, in Honfleur and Trouville. Deauville suited me like a glove. I found my clientele there, and it reminded me of Holland. Because of the light.”¹

In 1931, the portfolio Deauville was published. Watercolours executed by Van Dongen in the 1920s frame the texts written by his friend Paul Poiret. The couturier’s creations are, of course, closely associated with the emergence of Deauville as a fashionable seaside resort. Van Dongen’s elegance and iconic presence also left a lasting imprint on the Norman town. 
In the summer of 2022, Les Franciscaines, the city’s new cultural venue, devoted an exhibition to him entitled Deauville me va comme un gant.

¹. Kees van Dongen. Interview with Henri Perruchot, Les Nouvelles littéraires, artistiques et scientifiques, 7 August 1958