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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Kees Van Dongen catalogue critique of paintings and drawings being prepared by Jacques Chalom Des Cordes under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
'It might be in his analysis of the impressions of light that van Dongen excels. He has his own shades. His range of colors is different from his fellow artists... He has reintroduced the care for color in the modern vision of luxury. He is as gifted as Delacroix. Before him, mundane painters were aggressively garish... Van Dongen is a color wizard' (Paul Gsell, quoted in Kees Van Dongen, exh. cat., Monaco, Salle d'expositions du Quai Antoine Ier, 2008, p. 264).
Van Dongen's residence between 1915 and 1921 was the Villa Saïd in the Bois de Boulogne, before going on to purchase an even grander home in the Bois de Clichy. Subjects from the park had occupied Van Dongen since his Fauve years around 1905 and with his move to the Villa Saïd he found inspiration ever closer at hand. At the same time, his art was enjoying wider success with his transition from avant-gardiste to society darling well under way. This transition is reflected in the present work where the more salacious topics of the early Bois de Boulogne pictures are now replaced by a scene of unambiguous bourgeois leisure.
While the palette recalls the artist's earlier treatment of this theme, the present painting is clearly a later treatment of the subject. Though he has tempered his street-life imagery, creating a seemingly innocuous scene set in the Bois, there is a potent ambiguity in this painting. The bucolic nature seems to present a chance meeting in the woods, while in fact L'avenue des Acacias probably depicts the negotiation between a man and a prostitute, as he leans forward on the horse to discuss terms. Indeed, the horse itself and the stature of the woman are integrally linked to this discreetly presented theme. 'From Van Dongen's beginnings,' writes Gaston Diehl, 'by the side of streetwalkers, midinettes, ballerinas, and circus people, there are bonnes bourgeoises, artists of renown, important personages mixed up with the mob of the streets, with the dandies, the streetwalkers, the playboys, etc. Still more, after the first war, the most celebrated personalities, the most elegant of the dernier cri, the millionaires of the Old World or of the New are side by side... All of humanity is there, fixed, catalogued, registered, and the artist never missed a detail of dress, even for the most undressed of young ladies, which would permit him to fix his time with precision' (quoted in Van Dongen, New York, 1968, p. 90).
'It might be in his analysis of the impressions of light that van Dongen excels. He has his own shades. His range of colors is different from his fellow artists... He has reintroduced the care for color in the modern vision of luxury. He is as gifted as Delacroix. Before him, mundane painters were aggressively garish... Van Dongen is a color wizard' (Paul Gsell, quoted in Kees Van Dongen, exh. cat., Monaco, Salle d'expositions du Quai Antoine I
Van Dongen's residence between 1915 and 1921 was the Villa Saïd in the Bois de Boulogne, before going on to purchase an even grander home in the Bois de Clichy. Subjects from the park had occupied Van Dongen since his Fauve years around 1905 and with his move to the Villa Saïd he found inspiration ever closer at hand. At the same time, his art was enjoying wider success with his transition from avant-gardiste to society darling well under way. This transition is reflected in the present work where the more salacious topics of the early Bois de Boulogne pictures are now replaced by a scene of unambiguous bourgeois leisure.
While the palette recalls the artist's earlier treatment of this theme, the present painting is clearly a later treatment of the subject. Though he has tempered his street-life imagery, creating a seemingly innocuous scene set in the Bois, there is a potent ambiguity in this painting. The bucolic nature seems to present a chance meeting in the woods, while in fact L'avenue des Acacias probably depicts the negotiation between a man and a prostitute, as he leans forward on the horse to discuss terms. Indeed, the horse itself and the stature of the woman are integrally linked to this discreetly presented theme. 'From Van Dongen's beginnings,' writes Gaston Diehl, 'by the side of streetwalkers, midinettes, ballerinas, and circus people, there are bonnes bourgeoises, artists of renown, important personages mixed up with the mob of the streets, with the dandies, the streetwalkers, the playboys, etc. Still more, after the first war, the most celebrated personalities, the most elegant of the dernier cri, the millionaires of the Old World or of the New are side by side... All of humanity is there, fixed, catalogued, registered, and the artist never missed a detail of dress, even for the most undressed of young ladies, which would permit him to fix his time with precision' (quoted in Van Dongen, New York, 1968, p. 90).