KEES VAN DONGEN (1877-1968)
Bateaux à quai (Boats at dock)

Signed ‘K. Van Dongen’ (lower right) Oil on panel 23.5 x 30.5 cm Provenance: Artcurial, Paris, 13 Oct 2011, lot 226 Private Collection. This work will be included in the catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Jacques Chalom des Cordes under the sponsorship of Wildenstein Institute. Painted in bright and vivid colours, Bateaux à quai is an example of the fauves’ propensity to represent nature. Van Dongen endows it with a strong expressivity, with the formal simplifi cations of Cubism and the emotional experiences of Expressionism. A Dutch-French painter, Kees Van Dongen, pseudonym of Cornelis Theodorus Marie van Dongen (1877-1968), was one of the leading fi gures of Fauvism. Along with Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain and others, van Dongen exhibited at the Salon d’Automne 1905. The critic Louis Vauxcelles described the artists as “fauves” (wild beasts) for their expressive and spontaneous brushwork, intensely vivid and exuberant colours. He lived spent his life His life was spent between Rotterdam and Paris, but he spent his last years, from 1949 to 1968, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. In 2012 Villa Sauber (Nouveau Musée National de Monaco)features an exhibition with van Dongen’s masterpieces, which were acquired by the Principality between 2004 and 2008.