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KEES VAN DONGEN (1877-1968) L’Atelier signed “Van Dongen” (lower right) dated “1917” (on the rev...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:500,000.00 - 700,000.00 USD
KEES VAN DONGEN (1877-1968) L’Atelier signed “Van Dongen” (lower right) dated “1917” (on the rev...

KEES VAN DONGEN

(1877-1968)

L’Atelier

signed “Van Dongen” (lower right) dated “1917” (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

65.1 x 54.3 cm (25 5⁄8 x 21 3⁄8 in.)

painted in 1917

Estimate: £350,000–480,000

$500,000–700,000



Provenance

Anon. sale: Sotheby’s, London, June 22, 1966, lot 46

J. Rosen, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Acquired from the above by the present owner
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This work will be included in the forthcoming van Dongen catalogue raisonné being prepared by Jacques Chalom des Cordes under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
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L’Atelier dates from a pivotal time in van Dongen’s life and career. With his family sequestered in Holland due to World War I, van Dongen remained in Paris where he began a relationship with the Countess Cassati, who provided the artist with a studio and accommodations at 29 Villa Said in the Bois de Bologne, the site of the present work. Van Dongen had already established himself as a society portraitist and sought to combine his artistic experience with his new-found social connections. The present work depicts van Dongen himself, dressed in a painter’s blue overalls, showing a work in progress, later entitled Doves, to two elegantly dressed patrons. There has been little attempt to create any sense of depth around this group of two-dimensional elongated figures, except for the strong blue contour, which serves to emphasise their importance whilst creating the allusion that they are almost a part of the painting before them. The highly decorative elements of this painting along with its fusion of foreground and background into a uniform plane recall the compositional techniques employed by Henri Matisse in his masterpiece, L’Atelier rose, 1911 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
The woman on the balcony above, likely the Countess Cassati, is inappropriately naked, which alludes to her personal relationship with the artist. The inclusion of such a figure also presents a direct comparison to earlier works van Dongen produced during his years spent living the bohemian lifestyle above a brothel in Rotterdam.
In addition, this figure serves to reduce the dominance of the Polynesian carpet, most likely a souvenir from his many travels, whilst balancing and adding a narrative to the composition.