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Lot Essay
During the 1920s, les années folles, Van Dongen declared, “I passionately love the life of my time, so animated, so feverish. Ah! Life is even more beautiful than painting” (quoted in W.E. Steadman and D. Sutton, Van Dongen, exh. cat., The University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson, 1971, p. 46). Van Dongen pursued his love of modern life in the cabarets, restaurants and salons of Paris, and in the seaside resorts where his well-heeled clientele took their holidays. “I love novelty, the unpublished, that which has not been made before" (ibid., p. 46). He sought the patronage of the aristocracy and the nouveau riche, was a favorite guest in the salons of Paris, and hosted his own soirées.
Van Dongen's social connections gave him an excellent vantage point from which he could observe and chronicle contemporary glamour, fashion and mores. He was alert to all the subtleties of social display and behavior, and he could cast a sardonic eye on his subjects when he chose to do so. Yet there little evidence of ambivalence in his treatment of his sitters. He enjoyed the spectacle and moved easily within this world, and largely identified with it. Indeed, his view of those fabled years between the wars is all the more valuable because he was genuinely a participant in the passing parade. He did not seek or play the roles of the detached moralist or critic; he chose instead to let his sitters and subjects speak for this lifestyle and themselves. Louis Chaumeil called Van Dongen "le roi et peintre de son temps" (in Van Dongen, Geneva, 1967, p. 216).
Depictions of young women were Van Dongen’s specialty, and, as seen here, he was particularly drawn to the newly liberated woman of the 1920s, who bobbed her hair and projected her sexuality and a sense of independence in ways that were unthinkable in the years before the First World War. The more provocative display in clothing styles and the emphasis on heavy make-up that he had described in his garish paintings of demi-mondaines–dancers, artist's models and prostitutes–during the previous decade were now nearly universally chic and indeed de rigueur among the fashionable upper classes. The young woman in the present portrait is Elizabeth Fuller Goodspeed, also known as ‘Bobsy.’ An avid collector and the president of The Arts Club of Chicago, she frequented numerous literary and artistic circles and Gertrude Stein was one of her close friends. On one of her trips to Paris, she met Van Dongen who made this portrait of her in his rue de Courcelles studio.
Here, Van Dongen designates volume and dimension through subtle shifts of pinks, yellows and greens, picking out her lips with bold dashes of red and her eyes with touches of green, which mirror the areas of greenish pallor to her skin.
If indeed the times had caught up in many ways with Van Dongen's earlier portrayals of the modern woman, then the techniques he had used to paint them were still current and useful. The typically Fauve use of green shadows, used to complement the pinkness of a woman's skin and the red of her lips and cheeks, is observable in this portrait.
Van Dongen's social connections gave him an excellent vantage point from which he could observe and chronicle contemporary glamour, fashion and mores. He was alert to all the subtleties of social display and behavior, and he could cast a sardonic eye on his subjects when he chose to do so. Yet there little evidence of ambivalence in his treatment of his sitters. He enjoyed the spectacle and moved easily within this world, and largely identified with it. Indeed, his view of those fabled years between the wars is all the more valuable because he was genuinely a participant in the passing parade. He did not seek or play the roles of the detached moralist or critic; he chose instead to let his sitters and subjects speak for this lifestyle and themselves. Louis Chaumeil called Van Dongen "le roi et peintre de son temps" (in Van Dongen, Geneva, 1967, p. 216).
Depictions of young women were Van Dongen’s specialty, and, as seen here, he was particularly drawn to the newly liberated woman of the 1920s, who bobbed her hair and projected her sexuality and a sense of independence in ways that were unthinkable in the years before the First World War. The more provocative display in clothing styles and the emphasis on heavy make-up that he had described in his garish paintings of demi-mondaines–dancers, artist's models and prostitutes–during the previous decade were now nearly universally chic and indeed de rigueur among the fashionable upper classes. The young woman in the present portrait is Elizabeth Fuller Goodspeed, also known as ‘Bobsy.’ An avid collector and the president of The Arts Club of Chicago, she frequented numerous literary and artistic circles and Gertrude Stein was one of her close friends. On one of her trips to Paris, she met Van Dongen who made this portrait of her in his rue de Courcelles studio.
Here, Van Dongen designates volume and dimension through subtle shifts of pinks, yellows and greens, picking out her lips with bold dashes of red and her eyes with touches of green, which mirror the areas of greenish pallor to her skin.
If indeed the times had caught up in many ways with Van Dongen's earlier portrayals of the modern woman, then the techniques he had used to paint them were still current and useful. The typically Fauve use of green shadows, used to complement the pinkness of a woman's skin and the red of her lips and cheeks, is observable in this portrait.