Van Dongen - Fun

After starting out in Holland, where he was originally from, Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) chose in 1899, like many European artists of the time, to move to Paris. He was influenced very early on by Henri Matisse and Fauvism. From the very beginning, his favourite subject was women, bourgeois or prostitutes, dressed in long flowing dresses by the couturier Paul Poiret, naked and provocative, in suggestive poses, or dressed in traditional Moroccan or Egyptian costumes.

In "Amusement", held by the Musée de Grenoble, Van Dongen manages to combine these three facets of the female figure, in a multiple mise en abyme. A female painter with a slender silhouette, dressed in a sheath dress by the great couturier, stands in a studio facing a painting placed on an easel. This is another work by the artist, depicting three prostitutes, treated in the same color, on a uniformly red background, "Intérieur / Mlle Miroir, Mlle Collier et Mlle Sopha", dated the same year. On the wall, another composition by Van Dongen, "Marchandes d'herbes et d'amour", depicts two women of oriental type painted during his trip to Egypt in 1913.

With cheerful cynicism he said that to be successful with women "the essential thing is to lengthen the feminine forms, and above all to make them thin. Then enlarge their jewelry. Painting is the most beautiful of lies."

Amusement, 1914
Grenoble Museum