A work at the crossroads of multiple influences, Fatimah Ismaël de Louxor, painted in 1913, evinces Kees van Dongen’s avant-garde practice at the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the early successes of his Fauvist paintings and his mounting international reputation, van Dongen embarked upon a series of canvases depicting exotic dancers and performers he encountered in his escapades through the Parisian nightlife. One such dancer, “Anita la Bohémienne,” would become one of his most iconic and captivating muses and is represented in the present painting. The extraordinary palette of crimson, orange and gold used instead of conventional flesh-tones is a definitive element of van Dongen’s early works, and reflects his recent travels through Spain, Morocco, and Egypt. A vivid, exuberantly colored portrait, Fatimah Ismaël de Louxor is a powerful expression of the artist’s quintessential style.

In keeping with the attitudes and fashion of the t.mes , “Orientalist” themes dominated the artist’s work throughout this period, and van Dongen imbued works like the present example with an exoticism and passion he perceived in other cultures. A Western fascination with the cultures of the Middle East and North Africa dominated the zeitgeist at the turn of the century, and the intensity of color and light associated with these regions had a profound impact on the motifs and techniques of the European avant-garde. The abundance of such imagery continued to fascinate van Dongen and his fellow artists Matisse and Picasso well into the 1910s. Following his own travels to Spain and Morocco in 1910 and 1911, and to Egypt in 1913 directly before the present work was painted, van Dongen’s interest in heightened color contrasts and exaggerated forms was redoubled. In reference to the present work, Jean Melas-Kyriazi writes: “In March 1913 Van Dongen traveled to Egypt and discovered the country’s violent combination of color and atmosphere which relaunched his Fauvism. Van Dongen became again a 'wild beast.' His style simplified, using strong outlines and playing freely with color, and giving particular prominence to red, as we see in his paintings L’Egyptienne and Fatimah Ismaël of Luxor, which can be compared with the Femme aux colonnes one of many paintings from his trip to Morocco in 1910” (Jean Melas-Kyriazi, Van Dongen et le Fauvisme, Lausanne, 1971, pp. 126-130; translated from French).

Back in Paris, van Dongen was working in a studio at the famous Bateau-Lavoir, the heart of bohemian life in Montmartre, where he had met Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, among others. The painter frequently hosted parties in his vast studio where cabaret performers and prostitutes met elegant ladies of Parisian society; van Dongen was fascinated by their beauty and sensuality. It was here that van Dongen met the dancer “Anita la Bohémienne.” Captivated by her belly dancing and sultry features, the painter persuaded her to become his model; the sensual muse appeared in several of his canvases from this period and often assumed the imagined identities of far-away cultures, including an Arabic archetype by the name of Fatma or Fatimah, though always recognizable by her short dark hair. She became the subject of some of van Dongen’s most emotionally charged, energetic and erotic paintings, including the present work. As Peter Selz explains: “Van Dongen adapted the pure color and audacious line of Fauvism to the portraiture of sensuous women. He was fascinated by the make-up and artifice of women on the more glittering fringes of proper society. He painted the brilliance of their jewels and lamé cloth in his pictures of dancers, actresses, and demimondaines” (Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1957, p. 112).

Almost entirely devoted to portraiture and depicting the human form, from his first association with the Fauves, van Dongen developed a unique manner of painting figures. Extremely broad and fluid brush work and rich coloration served to highlight the most expressive features of his subjects, and as Kyriazi has noted, red was by far his most favored color. However, van Dongen was not alone amongst the Fauves to use red so extensively. Matisse also recognized the expressive and lyrical potential of using red, most notably in the entirely red figures in both his large-scale compositions of 1910—Musique and Danse (II). Van Dongen's use of red was far more wide-ranging, and intrinsic to his own interpretation of Fauvism’s formal qualities. As John Klein explains: “In his portraits and female nudes from this long Fauve period, van Dongen uses the color red liberally and voluptuously, as a signifier of ardor, sex, and blood. Flooding the faces and bodies of Egyptians or Moroccans, it also signifies the exotic…. When Matisse disingenuously placed all the weight of Fauvism on a single color, it would not be surprising if he were making a covert reference to van Dongen's reddish predilections. But by his extravagant deployment of red, van Dongen was not vitiating its attention-getting effect—he was doing for Fauvism what Matisse and the others, too restless, and too devoted to the necessity of self-expression in their work, would not. He was [making] Fauve style accessible... with an appeal beyond the narrow confines of the avant-garde” (Exh. Cat., The Montreal Museum of Replica Handbags s (and traveling), Van Dongen, 2008, p. 223).