Kees van Dongen
1877-1968 | Dutch-French
Devant le Restaurant de la Paix
(In front of Restaurant de la Paix)
Oil on canvas
Signed "Van Dongen” (lower right)
This dazzling work of art by Kees van Dongen depicts a bustling scene of Parisian fashionable society in the iconic Place d'Opéra. Painted at the height of his popularity in Paris in the 1920s, Devant le Restaurant de la Paix showcases one of the artist's favorite subjects using his distinct avant-garde compositional techniques and vibrant color palette.
While many of van Dongen’s earlier works captured the cast of players in his bohemian lifestyle, the artist changed course at the onset of World War I. In 1918, the artist began a relationship with the fashion director Léa Alvin who introduced him to Parisian fashion circles and elite socialites. Devant le Restaurant de la Paix captures this pivotal moment in van Dongen’s career, when he is exploring and reveling in his newfound place among the upper crust of Parisian society. This work is a vibrant celebration of the boisterous fashion and nightlife of the Place d’Opéra during the Années folles, while at the same time staying true to van Dongen’s avant-garde and Fauvist influences. Painted in a kaleidoscope of jewel tones, van Dongen captures many of his figures from behind, choosing to identify them through daring swathes of unblended color. Painted with expressionist fervor, this work perfectly displays van Dongen’s well-known zest for the exuberance of the 1920s, once exclaiming: “I passionately love the life of my time, so animated, so feverish! Ah! Life is even more beautiful than painting.”
Van Dongen received his early artistic training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam and later moved to Paris in the early 1900. After settling in the Montmartre district, then the artistic hub of the city, van Dongen found himself immersed in an environment that stimulated his creativity and inspired him to begin exhibiting his paintings. Even in his earliest shows his works were showcased alongside the artistic masters of the day. At the 1905 Salon d'Automne, van Dongen's paintings were hung in the same gallery as the highly esteemed artist Henri Matisse, a deep honor for the younger van Dongen. Importantly, it was from this pivotal showing that Fauvism — the "wild beasts" of the early 1900s — was born. Matisse had pioneered the Fauvist technique, exemplified by intensely expressive colors and intense brushwork. Van Dongen's early paintings bore the hallmarks of this explosive expression, ushering him into the circle of the leading avant-garde painters of the day.
An artist whose career was defined by coloristic expression and unyielding originality, Kees van Dongen and his unique style grabbed the attention of early 20th-century art connoisseurs, ranking him among the leading Modernists of the era. Above all, van Dongen was dedicated to the subject of the modern urban woman, and they remained central to his output throughout his career. While he painted everyone from celebrities—such as Josephine Baker and Brigitte Bardot—to dancers, singers, and prostitutes in Paris' infamous brothels, his portraits of society ladies remain among his most important.
Today, van Dongen's artworks grace museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, among others.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Institute.
