拍品专文
Contemporary critics of Kees van Dongen frequently praised the artist’s “Baudelairean gaze,” complementing his ability to capture the most nuanced details of a face, a scene. As the Dutch writer Carl Scharten observed, “What he sees, just so, instantly, as soon as it strikes him, that’s how it appears on canvas and paper; he can’t do it any other way” (quoted in A. Hopmans, All eyes on Kees van Dongen, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2010, p. 21). In Portrait de Madame Malpel, the artist rendered his sitter, Marie Malpel, with perspicacity, eloquently defining face and playful pose. Her clothing is similarly detailed: soft touches define the smattering of sequins across the bodice and her patterned skirt. Shifting between sweeping brushwork to more staccato marks, the artist has achieved a refined portrait, evocatively capturing the delicate play of light as it dances over Madame Malpel, shown here against a striking red ground.
Evoking an aura of elegant sophistication, the painting of Madame Malpel heralded a new moment in the artist’s practice, during which Van Dongen began to turn his attention towards formal portraiture, what would, in subsequent decades, define his career. Previously, the artist had found his models in the cabarets and dance halls that filled the streets of Montmartre where he was living. He sought to capture the vitality of the French capital, celebrating, in paint, the city’s heady atmosphere in the first years of the twentieth century. “I love anything that glitters, precious stones that sparkle, beautiful women,” he said. “Painting lets me possess all this most fully” (quoted in J. Freeman, Fauves, exh. cat., London, 1995, p. 118). Van Dongen met the Malpels in several years earlier. In 1907, Charles Malpel, clearly thrilled by Van Dongen’s work, organized an exhibition of his art in Toulouse. That same year, Van Dongen painted his portrait as well as another of Madame Malpel.
In Portrait de Madame Malpel, Van Dongen presented his sitter in an embroidered shawl and dress. her hair adorned with flowers. Van Dongen often depicted extravagant costumes, relishing the opportunity to paint bright colors, intricate designs, and sumptuous textiles. The outfit shown here was influenced by Spanish aesthetics, and shortly after completing the present work, Van Dongen visited Spain and Morocco, spending around four weeks in Seville before traveling to Tangiers. He produced several paintings related to this trip that feature women draped in elaborately-embroidered clothing, such as Emilia Navarro (Neuchâtel Museum of Art and History) and Spanish Woman, held in the collection of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The works he produced during and after this trip formed the foundation of two important solo-exhibitions staged in 1911 at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris: Van Dongen Hollande—Paris—Espagne—Maroc, and Oeuvres nouvelles de Van Dongen.
By depicting Madame Malpel à l’espagnole, Van Dongen aligned himself with a particular art historical tradition in French painting. During the nineteenth century, canvases by Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, among others, were brought to Paris and displayed in King Louis-Philippe’s Galerie Espagnole at the Palais de Louvre. The impact of these and other canvases from the Siglo de Oro was profound and wide-reaching: as Charles Baudelaire noted, “The Spanish museum had the effect of increasing the volume of general ideas that you had to have about art…a museum of foreign art is an international place of fellowship, where two peoples, observing and studying each other in a more relaxed fashion, come to know each other and fraternize without arguing” (quoted in G. Tinterow, “Raphael Replaced: The Triumph of Spanish Painting in France” in Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, p. 38). To the French modernists, Spanish art expressed a depth of human feeling, represented formally through the rich coloring and tenebrism, and these images offered a powerful antidote to the neoclassical aesthetic and melodrama espoused by the Academy.
In both subject and style, Van Dongen’s Portrait de Madame Malpel is a nod to this lineage. Indeed, the colors of the present work are particularly vivid, and the fiery reds and blazing oranges burn brightly across the canvas. Van Dongen used electric lights to achieve such dramatic tonalities that appear to be lit from within. This masterful handling underscores the artist’s alignment with Fauvism, the movement conceived by Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1904 that made color both its subject and guiding structural principle. While Van Dongen did not exhibit alongside the “Wild Beasts” at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, he nevertheless became associated with them, and his embrace of vibrant, expressive color earned him a reputation as one of the movement’s most original artists.
Van Dongen’s portrait of Madame Malpel is one that radiates geniality and dignity. She stares directly outward, holding the gaze of both the viewer and Van Dongen himself to project an air of serene equanimity. She is a woman in possession of her own self, and her innermost thoughts and desires are hers alone. Portrait de Madame Malpel was previously in the collection of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass. Assembled over forty years, the Bass collection comprised the best of Impressionist, Modern, and Post-War art, with works by Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko, and Auguste Rodin, among others. Mrs. Bass had a lifelong connection to the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the couple together supported the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Evoking an aura of elegant sophistication, the painting of Madame Malpel heralded a new moment in the artist’s practice, during which Van Dongen began to turn his attention towards formal portraiture, what would, in subsequent decades, define his career. Previously, the artist had found his models in the cabarets and dance halls that filled the streets of Montmartre where he was living. He sought to capture the vitality of the French capital, celebrating, in paint, the city’s heady atmosphere in the first years of the twentieth century. “I love anything that glitters, precious stones that sparkle, beautiful women,” he said. “Painting lets me possess all this most fully” (quoted in J. Freeman, Fauves, exh. cat., London, 1995, p. 118). Van Dongen met the Malpels in several years earlier. In 1907, Charles Malpel, clearly thrilled by Van Dongen’s work, organized an exhibition of his art in Toulouse. That same year, Van Dongen painted his portrait as well as another of Madame Malpel.
In Portrait de Madame Malpel, Van Dongen presented his sitter in an embroidered shawl and dress. her hair adorned with flowers. Van Dongen often depicted extravagant costumes, relishing the opportunity to paint bright colors, intricate designs, and sumptuous textiles. The outfit shown here was influenced by Spanish aesthetics, and shortly after completing the present work, Van Dongen visited Spain and Morocco, spending around four weeks in Seville before traveling to Tangiers. He produced several paintings related to this trip that feature women draped in elaborately-embroidered clothing, such as Emilia Navarro (Neuchâtel Museum of Art and History) and Spanish Woman, held in the collection of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The works he produced during and after this trip formed the foundation of two important solo-exhibitions staged in 1911 at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris: Van Dongen Hollande—Paris—Espagne—Maroc, and Oeuvres nouvelles de Van Dongen.
By depicting Madame Malpel à l’espagnole, Van Dongen aligned himself with a particular art historical tradition in French painting. During the nineteenth century, canvases by Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, among others, were brought to Paris and displayed in King Louis-Philippe’s Galerie Espagnole at the Palais de Louvre. The impact of these and other canvases from the Siglo de Oro was profound and wide-reaching: as Charles Baudelaire noted, “The Spanish museum had the effect of increasing the volume of general ideas that you had to have about art…a museum of foreign art is an international place of fellowship, where two peoples, observing and studying each other in a more relaxed fashion, come to know each other and fraternize without arguing” (quoted in G. Tinterow, “Raphael Replaced: The Triumph of Spanish Painting in France” in Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, p. 38). To the French modernists, Spanish art expressed a depth of human feeling, represented formally through the rich coloring and tenebrism, and these images offered a powerful antidote to the neoclassical aesthetic and melodrama espoused by the Academy.
In both subject and style, Van Dongen’s Portrait de Madame Malpel is a nod to this lineage. Indeed, the colors of the present work are particularly vivid, and the fiery reds and blazing oranges burn brightly across the canvas. Van Dongen used electric lights to achieve such dramatic tonalities that appear to be lit from within. This masterful handling underscores the artist’s alignment with Fauvism, the movement conceived by Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1904 that made color both its subject and guiding structural principle. While Van Dongen did not exhibit alongside the “Wild Beasts” at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, he nevertheless became associated with them, and his embrace of vibrant, expressive color earned him a reputation as one of the movement’s most original artists.
Van Dongen’s portrait of Madame Malpel is one that radiates geniality and dignity. She stares directly outward, holding the gaze of both the viewer and Van Dongen himself to project an air of serene equanimity. She is a woman in possession of her own self, and her innermost thoughts and desires are hers alone. Portrait de Madame Malpel was previously in the collection of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass. Assembled over forty years, the Bass collection comprised the best of Impressionist, Modern, and Post-War art, with works by Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko, and Auguste Rodin, among others. Mrs. Bass had a lifelong connection to the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the couple together supported the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.