Kees van Dongen: The Painter of Brothels

Kees van Dongen - Le Coquelicot (The Corn Poppy) - c. 1919 - Oil on canvas - 21 1/2 x 18 in - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (click photo for larger image)Dutch-French painter Cornelis Theodorus Maria (“Kees”) van Dongen (1877-1968) was one of the leading members of the Fauve group of artists that grew up in Paris during the early 20th century. (He was also briefly a member of the German Expressionist group “Die Brücke” (“The Bridge”).

“Nicknamed ‘the painter of brothels’ van Dongen was especially enthralled with the red light district, depicting its dancers, singers, and prostitutes. He later graduated to painting society ladies, who liked the way he elongated their forms and made them look both elegant and slightly dangerous. Despite unfavorable critical comparisons to Matisse (who loathed him), and the apparent absence of any moral compass (van Dongen traveled with a Nazi propaganda tour in 1941), he left a remarkable record of fashions and social attitudes in Paris over the first half of the 20th century.…” (The Art Story) 

“Van Dongen absorbed all the styles that converged on Paris in the early 1900s and made out of them something new. In addition, van Dongen's path as a portraitist prefigures the interaction between art and commerce that would become central to art after the 1950s. (The Art Story)