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拍品專文
Following the First World War, Kees van Dongen became a notable figure within Paris’ beau monde, wholly immersing himself in the decadent, exhilarating lifestyle of the city’s haute bourgeoisie. He hosted raucous parties at his home, attended lavish balls in Venice, and holidayed in the fashionable seaside resorts that dotted the coast of Normandy. In addition to his portraits of the aristocracy, society ladies, and actresses, he also captured scenes of life – the swanky summer set in Deauville, the crowds outside St Mark’s Cathedral, the beautiful and the dazzling. Painted in 1923, La Porte Dauphine captures the bon ton of the French capital, shown in their finest fashions strolling along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, today known as the Avenue Foch.
Under a serene sky, men in suits and slender, lanky women walk leisurely down the wide avenue in La Porte Dauphine. Lush gardens flank the road and in the background stands the Arc de Triomphe. The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne was built during the Second Empire as part of Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s masterplan for the city and the impressive promenade was outfitted with ornamental gardens, exotic flowers, and rows of chestnut trees; it was immediately popular with Parisians. The titular Porte Dauphine of the present work is the neighbourhood that encompasses much of the Avenue Foch and the Bois du Boulogne and where Van Dongen had lived in the early 1920s; the name comes from a nineteenth-century gate in the city’s Thiers wall. Although not seen in the painting, it is likely that Van Dongen’s cityscape was set just beyond the homonymous metro station, which first opened in December of 1900 and was bedecked, several years later, with an art nouveau canopy designed by Hector Guimard.
Van Dongen first moved to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, but he only became a French citizen in 1920. Still, he felt extremely and exquisitely aligned with the city and is reported to have once said that ‘having come to France for three days to see the Bastille Day festivities, [I] stayed for 50 years’ (‘Kees van Dongen, Fauvist Painter, Is Dead at 91’, New York Times, 29 May 1969, p. 39). He quickly made a name for himself after arriving in Paris, becoming famous first for his Fauvist tendencies, specifically his ‘riotous’ and brilliant colour palette as well as his contributions to the ‘revolt against Impressionism’ (ibid.). Yet works such as La Porte Dauphine share much with the artists that Van Dongen sought to challenge. Like Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, Van Dongen too imaged the modern city, its people and styles, and as he adapted his techniques to figure painting, he was embraced by the world of fashion and cinema, becoming friends with legendary fashion designers such Paul Poiret and Jeanne Adèle Bernard, who both collected his art; he was the toast of the international set. Indeed, it was during these years that the artist took on the name Kees. Born Cornélius Théodorus Marie van Dongen, during the 1920s, his friends and wealthy sitters nicknamed him Kiki, which he later evolved into Kees.
From his first days in the capital, Van Dongen embodied the spirit of the flâneur as he roved around documenting bits and fragments of what he saw. As Charles Baudelaire, who equated the flâneur to an artist-poet, explained, ‘For the perfect flâneur, it is an immense joy to set up a house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite… the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life’ (C. Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life And Other Essays, trans. J Mayne, London, 1964, p. 9). Indeed, Van Dongen’s affection for his adopted home is wonderfully tangible in La Porte Dauphine. This is a world that glitters and effervesces, and like the artists who came before him, he too contributed to the fantasy of the French capital. As he said, ‘I love everything that shines, precious stones that sparkle, fabrics that bristle, beautiful women who inspire carnal desire. And painting gives me the most complete possession of that’ (K. van Dongen quoted in op. cit., 1968, p. 39).
La Porte Dauphine was owned by the celebrated fashion designer Jeanne Adèle Bernard, known as Madame Jenny.
Under a serene sky, men in suits and slender, lanky women walk leisurely down the wide avenue in La Porte Dauphine. Lush gardens flank the road and in the background stands the Arc de Triomphe. The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne was built during the Second Empire as part of Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s masterplan for the city and the impressive promenade was outfitted with ornamental gardens, exotic flowers, and rows of chestnut trees; it was immediately popular with Parisians. The titular Porte Dauphine of the present work is the neighbourhood that encompasses much of the Avenue Foch and the Bois du Boulogne and where Van Dongen had lived in the early 1920s; the name comes from a nineteenth-century gate in the city’s Thiers wall. Although not seen in the painting, it is likely that Van Dongen’s cityscape was set just beyond the homonymous metro station, which first opened in December of 1900 and was bedecked, several years later, with an art nouveau canopy designed by Hector Guimard.
Van Dongen first moved to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, but he only became a French citizen in 1920. Still, he felt extremely and exquisitely aligned with the city and is reported to have once said that ‘having come to France for three days to see the Bastille Day festivities, [I] stayed for 50 years’ (‘Kees van Dongen, Fauvist Painter, Is Dead at 91’, New York Times, 29 May 1969, p. 39). He quickly made a name for himself after arriving in Paris, becoming famous first for his Fauvist tendencies, specifically his ‘riotous’ and brilliant colour palette as well as his contributions to the ‘revolt against Impressionism’ (ibid.). Yet works such as La Porte Dauphine share much with the artists that Van Dongen sought to challenge. Like Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, Van Dongen too imaged the modern city, its people and styles, and as he adapted his techniques to figure painting, he was embraced by the world of fashion and cinema, becoming friends with legendary fashion designers such Paul Poiret and Jeanne Adèle Bernard, who both collected his art; he was the toast of the international set. Indeed, it was during these years that the artist took on the name Kees. Born Cornélius Théodorus Marie van Dongen, during the 1920s, his friends and wealthy sitters nicknamed him Kiki, which he later evolved into Kees.
From his first days in the capital, Van Dongen embodied the spirit of the flâneur as he roved around documenting bits and fragments of what he saw. As Charles Baudelaire, who equated the flâneur to an artist-poet, explained, ‘For the perfect flâneur, it is an immense joy to set up a house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite… the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life’ (C. Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life And Other Essays, trans. J Mayne, London, 1964, p. 9). Indeed, Van Dongen’s affection for his adopted home is wonderfully tangible in La Porte Dauphine. This is a world that glitters and effervesces, and like the artists who came before him, he too contributed to the fantasy of the French capital. As he said, ‘I love everything that shines, precious stones that sparkle, fabrics that bristle, beautiful women who inspire carnal desire. And painting gives me the most complete possession of that’ (K. van Dongen quoted in op. cit., 1968, p. 39).
La Porte Dauphine was owned by the celebrated fashion designer Jeanne Adèle Bernard, known as Madame Jenny.