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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Kees Van Dongen Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
In Le lévrier bleu, painted in 1919, Van Dongen depicted his portrait subject as an archetypal beauty in the trendy, gamine mold—tall and rail-thin, with modishly bobbed hair, large eyes rimmed in kohl, and a flapper-style shift dress. She has been identified as a Parisian belle named Loyse Dumarest, who appears in at least two other canvases by the artist, bust-length (sold, Christie’s, London, 6 February 2006, lot 73) and seated (Chaumeil, fig. 57). Here, she is shown full-length and life-size, on a canvas measuring over six feet high, emerging in gleaming, silvery radiance from the surrounding darkness.
The painting takes its title from the greyhound that accompanies the model, mirroring her slender proportions and lending an animal sensuality to the image. The dog may have belonged to the famously outré socialite and Van Dongen’s close friend, the Marchesa Luisa Casati, whose collection of pets also included snakes and cheetahs. Van Dongen in La vasque fleuri (Chaumeil, pl. 121) and more famously Boldini (sold, Christie’s, New York, 1 November 1995, lot 6) both painted “La Casati” with one of her greyhounds deployed as a fashion accessory.
Van Dongen selected Le lévrier bleu as the sole painting, along with a decorative screen, to represent his signature vision of urbane, modern beauty at the Salon des Indépendants of 1920, the initial reinstatement of this important yearly exhibition since the outbreak of war in 1914. Later in 1920, Vogue magazine reproduced the present painting as well as a portrait of Jasmy (Chaumeil, pl. 122) to illustrate the most sought-after fashions of the moment.
The erotic frisson and provocative edge that characterize Van Dongen’s Fauve paintings of the demi-monde imbue these post-war, society portraits as well. “Van Dongen did not abandon transgression in order to become established and successful,” John Klein has written. “He embraced it and made it consumable, even a source of beau monde desire” (exh. cat., op. cit., 2008, p. 223). In Le lévrier bleu, Loyse Dumarest meets the viewer’s eye with a sultry, direct gaze; her cheeks are heavily rouged and her skin shot with green, underscoring the artificiality of the image.
In Le lévrier bleu, painted in 1919, Van Dongen depicted his portrait subject as an archetypal beauty in the trendy, gamine mold—tall and rail-thin, with modishly bobbed hair, large eyes rimmed in kohl, and a flapper-style shift dress. She has been identified as a Parisian belle named Loyse Dumarest, who appears in at least two other canvases by the artist, bust-length (sold, Christie’s, London, 6 February 2006, lot 73) and seated (Chaumeil, fig. 57). Here, she is shown full-length and life-size, on a canvas measuring over six feet high, emerging in gleaming, silvery radiance from the surrounding darkness.
The painting takes its title from the greyhound that accompanies the model, mirroring her slender proportions and lending an animal sensuality to the image. The dog may have belonged to the famously outré socialite and Van Dongen’s close friend, the Marchesa Luisa Casati, whose collection of pets also included snakes and cheetahs. Van Dongen in La vasque fleuri (Chaumeil, pl. 121) and more famously Boldini (sold, Christie’s, New York, 1 November 1995, lot 6) both painted “La Casati” with one of her greyhounds deployed as a fashion accessory.
Van Dongen selected Le lévrier bleu as the sole painting, along with a decorative screen, to represent his signature vision of urbane, modern beauty at the Salon des Indépendants of 1920, the initial reinstatement of this important yearly exhibition since the outbreak of war in 1914. Later in 1920, Vogue magazine reproduced the present painting as well as a portrait of Jasmy (Chaumeil, pl. 122) to illustrate the most sought-after fashions of the moment.
The erotic frisson and provocative edge that characterize Van Dongen’s Fauve paintings of the demi-monde imbue these post-war, society portraits as well. “Van Dongen did not abandon transgression in order to become established and successful,” John Klein has written. “He embraced it and made it consumable, even a source of beau monde desire” (exh. cat., op. cit., 2008, p. 223). In Le lévrier bleu, Loyse Dumarest meets the viewer’s eye with a sultry, direct gaze; her cheeks are heavily rouged and her skin shot with green, underscoring the artificiality of the image.