Egyptienne au collier de perles

In 1913, Kees van Dongen travelled to Egypt, and his experiences there resulted in a celebrated revitalisation of his Fauvism. Indeed, Van Dongen now became the scion of the movement. Painted in 1913, Egyptienne au collier de perles combines the exoticism that had flavoured so many of his most famous paintings with a tempered palette. Van Dongen has manipulated his paint to retain a lush colourism, yet has foregone any distractingly bright colours - only the pearls of the title gleam from the canvas against the mellow, sensuous flesh-tones. Meanwhile, the deft and judicious flashes of red and green that he has used to articulate the skin in the arms and face of the subject reveal his Fauvism bubbling underneath the surface. There is a latent energy to this painting, and Van Dongen also manages to imply that there is a latent energy to the Egyptian: despite the static and pensive position in which she is portrayed, there are barely hidden currents of sensuality, even in her discreet exoticism. Gone is the brash erotica of the Parisian dance halls, replaced by something infinitely more engaging and affecting.

Van Dongen considered his journey to Egypt so successful that he would repeat it some years later. Because of this voyage, 1913 has become a vintage date for his painting, and other pictures from this period are in various museum collections including several in the Centre Georges Pompidou. It breathed new life into his Fauvism while others moved away from that style. As well as altering Van Dongen's palette, Egypt's antiquities had a huge impact on the artist. In Egyptienne au collier de perles, the woman retains a mystical distance from the painter, her dignity recalling the sculptures of Karnak that he visited, and lending the painting a deeply hieratic and absorbingly static atmosphere, while even her facial features resemble Egyptian statuary.