Parisian Stories
By Giovanna Bertazzoni

'Paris attracted me like a lighthouse,' said Kees van Dongen, whose drawings illuminated some of the city's darkness.

When the Dutch-born Kees van Dongen first visited Paris in July 1897, the art scene was extraordinarily lively and fecund. He was immediately seduced by the experiments of a new generation of artists who were pushing beyond the boundaries of Impressionism and toying with the new pictorial vocabularies from which Fauvism and Cubism would soon spring.

With the end of their group exhibitions at Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists had exhausted their revolutionary impact, but new draughtsmen, illustrators and painters were transforming the legacy of the réfusés. These trendsetters were freer to experiment, both on the technical and the iconographical levels. In just one decade, fin de siècle Paris witnessed the explosion of Symbolism, the Art Nouveau movement, the bloom of Pointillisme, the daring graphic proposals of the Nabis, and the radical Naturalism of Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen and the young Picasso.

This cultural laboratory forged the first steps of van Dongen, who, after this initial foray into the capital as an unknown and penniless artist, in 1897, returned for good in the autumn of 1899. As he declared in an interview in 1949, 'Paris attracted me like a lighthouse.'

Under the spell of the city, his early production is entirely devoted to Parisian characters, sketched in powerful drawings with striking gray washes and rough chalk lines. These expressionistic portrayals of people with difficult existences were inspired by the art of Millet, Pissarro and van Gogh. Fired by his avant-garde tastes in art and his passion for politics, van Dongen soon joined his socially committed colleagues in experimenting with new lithographic techniques for the capital's popular artistic magazines. At the end of the 19th century many of the city's dailies produced illustrated supplements. It was the golden age of La Plume, La Revue Blanche, Les temps nouveaux, Le Gil Blas illustré and L'Assiette au beurre, which boasted the most sophisticated and caustic pens of Paris.

In the summer and autumn of 1901 van Dongen met S. Schwartz, the publisher of L'Assiette au beurre, and Félix Fénéon, the editor in chief of La Revue Blanche. For them he produced the striking drawings that established his reputation and launched his career. In October 1901, Schwartz asked van Dongen to illustrate an entire issue of L'Assiette au beurre, a satirical magazine with a biting tone and powerful social criticism, which owed its popularity to its illustrations; its only text being the captions that accompanied them. The title came from an expression meaning an exceptional opportunity. It was the only paper at the time that produced issues illustrated by one single artist, and that printed the drawings full page. Van Dongen illustrated the 30th edition, published on 26 October with the title Petite histoire pour petits et grands nenfants [sic] - 'Short Story for Young and Old Children'. The preparatory drawings for such prints were usually kept by the editor and seldom survived, but in this exceptional case they were returned to the artist and were later auctioned at the Hôtel Rameau in Versailles. Eight drawings from this series will be offered for sale in the Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper sale in London on 28 June.

Imbued with a unique sense of energy, traced with fast, impressive brushstrokes, they are a rare example of van Dongen's early artistic experiments, and permit us a glimpse of how he worked and carefully prepared for his prints. The series tells, with profound yet sober pathos, the tragic story of a mother and daughter forced by reduced circumstances into a life of prostitution. The intensity of van Dongen's social critique, fuelled by his belief that an artist should serve the community, finds an unprecedented expression in these large sheets, in which the light hues are a sophisticated contrapposto to the confident strokes of black ink that define his sensual female figures.

Van Dongen's style in these drawings combines an incisive sense of line with an instinctive feel for color. They anticipate his Fauve liberation, while paying homage to one of his recurrent themes and one of his greatest artistic strengths - the dazzling portrayal of women.

Giovanna Bertazzoni is Head of the Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper Department, Christie's London.

Inquiries:
Giovanna Bertazzoni
Tel: 44 (0)20 7389 2454


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