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Lot Essay
Jacques Chalom des Cordes will include this work in his forthcoming Van Dongen catalogue critique being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
‘All women have their beauty and charm which I glorify… big eyes… long eyelashes, satin-smooth or matte skin… pearls and brilliants… And the shimmer of satins and velvets, the softness and warmth of furs. You have to want to touch a painting, for it to be a pleasure for all the senses. A painting must be something which is exciting and glorifies life… The joy of our time is that you can mix everything, blend everything: it really is the age of the cocktail.’
(Van Dongen, quoted in A. Hopmans, exh. cat., All Eyes on Kees van Dongen, Rotterdam, 2010-2011, p. 152)
Adorned in a chic silver dress, bejewelled in diamonds and sporting a fashionably cropped hairstyle, Kees van Dongen’s large portrait of the glamorous Mrs Jean McKelvie Sclater-Booth was painted circa 1920, at the dawn of the ebullient, hedonistic and optimistic decade that came to be known as the Roaring Twenties. At this time, Van Dongen was one of Paris’s most famous and sought after artists. Having spent the First World War in Paris, as well as travelling in Spain, Morocco and Egypt, on his return to the French capital he embarked on a new life, leaving his studio in Montparnasse and moving into an opulent home, the Villa Saïd. With his new mistress, the fashionable Léa Jacob, known as Jasmy, Van Dongen left behind the demi-monde of his past, and became a key figure of the fashionable beau monde of Paris. He transformed the Villa Saïd into a colour-filled Oriental realm, holding debauched parties in his studio that attracted the glamorous bohemian elite of Paris.
It was these highly fashionable women who became the artist’s primary subject matter at this time. Elegant socialites dressed in the latest Parisian fashion were pictured within sumptuous interiors, luxurious images of femininity. Portrait de Mrs Jean McKelvie Sclater-Booth encapsulates the distinctive style that Van Dongen developed to depict his wealthy sitters. Elongated and stylised, they adhered to the artist’s own idealised ‘type’: tall and slender, with large eyes and long, elegant legs – the visual embodiment of the world of beauty and high fashion that Van Dongen inhabited.
‘All women have their beauty and charm which I glorify… big eyes… long eyelashes, satin-smooth or matte skin… pearls and brilliants… And the shimmer of satins and velvets, the softness and warmth of furs. You have to want to touch a painting, for it to be a pleasure for all the senses. A painting must be something which is exciting and glorifies life… The joy of our time is that you can mix everything, blend everything: it really is the age of the cocktail.’
(Van Dongen, quoted in A. Hopmans, exh. cat., All Eyes on Kees van Dongen, Rotterdam, 2010-2011, p. 152)
Adorned in a chic silver dress, bejewelled in diamonds and sporting a fashionably cropped hairstyle, Kees van Dongen’s large portrait of the glamorous Mrs Jean McKelvie Sclater-Booth was painted circa 1920, at the dawn of the ebullient, hedonistic and optimistic decade that came to be known as the Roaring Twenties. At this time, Van Dongen was one of Paris’s most famous and sought after artists. Having spent the First World War in Paris, as well as travelling in Spain, Morocco and Egypt, on his return to the French capital he embarked on a new life, leaving his studio in Montparnasse and moving into an opulent home, the Villa Saïd. With his new mistress, the fashionable Léa Jacob, known as Jasmy, Van Dongen left behind the demi-monde of his past, and became a key figure of the fashionable beau monde of Paris. He transformed the Villa Saïd into a colour-filled Oriental realm, holding debauched parties in his studio that attracted the glamorous bohemian elite of Paris.
It was these highly fashionable women who became the artist’s primary subject matter at this time. Elegant socialites dressed in the latest Parisian fashion were pictured within sumptuous interiors, luxurious images of femininity. Portrait de Mrs Jean McKelvie Sclater-Booth encapsulates the distinctive style that Van Dongen developed to depict his wealthy sitters. Elongated and stylised, they adhered to the artist’s own idealised ‘type’: tall and slender, with large eyes and long, elegant legs – the visual embodiment of the world of beauty and high fashion that Van Dongen inhabited.