Painted several years after van Dongen's seminal exhibition with the Fauves at the Salon d’Automne in 1905, Nu au chapeau is a dazzling, monumental example of the artist’s striking depictions of the female form. This elegant, atmospheric representation of a standing nude dates from the most important period in van Dongen's production; unlike the French Fauve painters, who depicted the sunlit coast of southern France, van Dongen found inspiration in city life. It was the Parisian night-life and the artificial lights of the circus and concert-halls, rather than nature and open spaces, that excited him (see fig. 1). For Van Dongen the female form was a central source of inspiration. He painted women in all their guises—nudes, dancers, society women—and these depictions are among the most celebrated works in his oeuvre. His experience working with his fellow artists at the Bateau Lavoir, the famously dilapidated studio in Montmartre, provided him access to some of the most flamboyant figures in the Parisian demi-monde. Dancers, cabaret performers and members of the Cirque Médrano were frequent models at his studio. The present composition exemplifies the influence of this beguiling, exotic environment.
The alluring manner in which van Dongen has presented this vision of beauty—with a nude figure in an abstracted space, free of any adornment aside from a hat with floral accents—reveals his fascination with the figure. As the artist elaborated: “All women have their beauty and charm which I glorify… big eyes—I don’t know why—long eyelashes, satin-smooth or matte skin…. You have to want to touch a painting, for it to be a pleasure for all the senses” (quoted in Exh. Cat. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, All Eyes on Kees van Dongen, 2010-11, pp. 151-52). All elements of the composition are subordinate to this artistic vision, including Van Dongen’s distinctive palette. A contemporary critic commented: “From a brilliant palette, his fluid color molds the form; he has pinks and luminous grays which are a sheer delight to the eye” (M. Hamel, quoted in ibid., p. 148).
The year the present work was painted, van Dongen had successful one-man exhibitions at both Galerie Kahnweiler and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. Not only was he the subject of two dedicated exhibitions, but also he contributed several works to the Salon d’Automne including the present work and his monumental Les Lutteuses, depicting a troupe of female wrestlers (see fig. 2). Van Dongen’s works hung in a gallery alongside that of Georges Braque and André Derain, whose works seemed tied ever-more closely to that of Pablo Picasso.
Right: Fig. 4 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Picasso and van Dongen had formed a close friendship in the first years of the twentieth century. Van Dongen, his wife Guus and his newborn daughter Dolly moved into a studio in the Bateau Lavoir neighboring that of Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande Olivier. Picasso and Fernande made a pet of young Dolly, posing her in front of Picasso’s canvases and walking with her in the surrounding streets. Dolly and Guus are two of the very few individuals who posed in front of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon during its creation (see figs. 3 and 4). Similar photographs were taken of Dolly both with Fernande Olivier and on her own in front of Picasso’s Trois femmes. While the van Dongen family would move in the following years out of the Bateau Lavoir, these early memories and close friendship would remain and develop over the ensuing years.
The first owner of Nu au chapeau was the legendary Parisian dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Although Kanhweiler is primarily known for his support of the Cubist artists including Picasso, Braque and Gris, in the period between 1907 and 1913 he appears to have acquired around 140 or so works by van Dongen. On visiting his gallery in 1909, the writer and critic Jacques Rivière wrote in a letter to the painter André Lhote: "Stunning Van Dongens at Kahnweiler’s." According to Anita Hopmans, the Parisian public did not get much of a chance to see van Dongen’s paintings of this period, as they were rarely shown at the Salons, and Kahnweiler often sent them to international exhibitions and eventually sold them to collects ors outside of France. Indeed by 1920 Nu au chapeau had been exhibited more widely in Germany than in France.
