All we know of the sitter is her first name, which is writ- ten in large block letters (in the Artist’s or perhaps the dealer?s hand) on the stretcher of the unlined, lightly primed canvas. In keeping with his usual practice, van Dongen did not date the picture. He limits the portrait to the sitter?s head, neck, shoulders, and upper torso. –Maria” is a young woman who exudes a warmth and accessibility that is not overtly sexual, but whose beauty directly engages the viewer?s attention. She wears a bright red dress with latticework sleeves, the left one exposing the bare skin of her shoulder and upper arm. Her pink cheeks are flushed, and the highlight on her lower lip suggests that her lips are wet. Her enormous eyes and sensuous mouth are hallmarks of van Dongen?s female portraits, expressive devices that here are further exag- gerated in the width of the eyes and the size of the pupils. There are touches of green on her neck and left cheek and in the area over her upper lip. At the left, along the edge of her black hair, a dark blue area perhaps denotes a hat or an ornament of cascading feathers, which appears to be held in place by a shiny gold barrette, or bandeau.

The artist used a fairly large brush, working quickly and leaving the canvas slightly unfinished, especially in the area of the sleeve (although some overpainting was employed to change the contour of the shoulder at the right), which only adds to the freshness of the work. It is likely that the portrait was painted sometime between 1907 and 1910, based on the close resemblance of Maria?s black hair and eyes, heart-shaped face, well- defined eyelids, and straight nose to the features of the sitter in van Dongen?s Woman with a Green Hat of 1907, implying that the same model may have posed for both paintings. Another clue in establishing an approximate date for the Lehman painting is the style of the sitter?s dress, its scoop neck and openwork sleeve invit- ing comparison to the gown worn by Agathe Gravestein in a van Dongen portrait of 1909 ; unlike many of his female subjects, Maria wears no jewelry." The fact that only her first name is used as the title of the painting suggests that she was a paid model, or perhaps a friend, and consequently, that the work was not a commissioned portrait.

Dating Maria between 1907 and 1910 assigns it to the period in which van Dongen was experimenting with Fauvism and Expressionism,‰ yet this is a far more conservative painting than other contemporary examples by van Dongen3ƒ4as, for example, his boldly erotic Le Hussard, or Liverpool Light House at Rotterdam, a wildly colorful image of the transvestite soprano of 1907 (Fondation Fridart, Geneva), and Modjesko, Soprano Singer of 1908 (see note 1, below). The immediacy and primitive power of the Lehman portrait evoke early twentieth-century portraits by Matisse, such as Woman with a Hat of 1905. Although the Lehman painting is not quite so intense and colorfully inventive as the Matisse (or as the two van Dongen pictures mentioned above), the artist does employ a vivid red for Maria?s dress and bright greens in certain areas of her skin, in line with the Fauveà preference for brilliant, unblended color. Van Dongen acknowledged Matisse?s influence not long after he settled in Paris in 1899: –In Holland my paintings were much darker and much heavier, the way Dutch cooking and Dutch people are heavy. But in Paris everything seems light, and we all wanted to get that lightness into our painting. So we used pure colors, sometimes almost brutal in their intensity. In those days Matisse had already become a kind of high priest of the young painters.”

Because van Dongen?s portraits3ƒ4especially those of women3ƒ4are characterized by a certain stylization, it is tempting to suggest that his painted subjects resemble one another more closely than they do the actual appear- ance of the individual sitters. However, when a photo- graph of van Dongen?s model is available for comparison with the painted image, the likeness is striking. This cer- tainly holds true for his portraits of Fernande Olivier, whose square face and almond-shaped eyes, well docu- mented in contemporary photographs, are given their due in van Dongen?s studies of 1905-7 (she and Picasso lived above the van Dongen family in the ramshackle warren of artistà studios and flats in Montmartre known as the Bateau-Lavoir).

Portrait painting was a lucrative endeavor for van Dongen throughout his long career. From the portrait sketches he sold for a few francs during his first stay in Paris in 1897 to his portraits of the actress Brigitte Bardot featured in Life magazine in 1960,SÀ he could always count on this art form to provide a goodly portion of his livelihood, considerable fame, and on occasion, notori- ety.? Although van Dongen was not always flattering to his sitters, from 1920 on, he was in great demand as a portrait painter in Paris, Deauville, Versailles, Venice, and Monaco. Van Dongen?s models included his elderly, bearded father; wives and mistresses; and his daughter and son. Following the birth of his daughter Augusta (–Dolly”) in 1905, he painted a series of intimate family scenes, including one of his wife, Guus, and Dolly when the baby was only a few hours old. In one image of Dolly as a toddler in 1909, she is dressed in her father?s clothes. In 1910, van Dongen depicted Guus seated (Guus in Blue) and standing, three-quarter length (Guus on a Red Ground). His meeting in 1938 with Marie-Claire3ƒ4who would later become his second wife73ƒ4resulted in several paintings of her and of their son, Jean-Marie, who was the subject of portraits in 1941, 1950, and 1955, and of color lithographs and a poster made after the 1950s paintings.

However, portraits of females were by far van Dongen?s preferred theme. A portfolio called –Femmes,” containing lithographs after six of his drawings of women?s faces, was published in Paris in 1927 by Editions Les Quatre Chemins,? and from about 1925 to 1930, van Dongen worked on another series of hand-colored litho- graphs of women wearing hats, but the project was never finished." Among those who commissioned portraits in oil were the actress Paulette Pax, the poet Anna de Noailles, and the song-and-dance performers the Dolly Sisters3ƒ4but perhaps his favorite model of all was the Marchesa Luisa Casati, whose kohl-encircled eyes so well suited van Dongen?s portrait style.** Nevertheless, many men sat for van Dongen portraits: as early as 1908, the artist had participated in the exhibition –Portraits d?hommes” at Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, and with charac- teristic impudence, included Modjesko, his startling por- trayal of the female impersonator, as one of the two works he submitted to the gallery (see above, and note 1). Among van Dongen?s more conventional male sitters were art dealers, poets, writers, theatrical personalities, aristocrats, businessmen, diplomats, and military and political figures, such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paul Guillaume, Charles Malpel, Maurice Chevalier, André Citroén, Cosmo Sotero, Charles Rappoport, Colonel Edouard Réquin, the Aga Khan, and King Léopold III of Belgium. Van Dongen also painted numerous self- portraits beginning in 1894, among them, one of himself as Neptune (1922) and two nude studies (1935). Sometimes, in an act of sublime self-confidence, he signed his portraits simply –Le Peintre.” Maria, the only portrait of the four paintings by van Dongen in the Lehman Collection (see cat. nos. 91, 92, 93), is the earliest of these works but the last to have been acquired by Robert Lehman, who purchased it only three years before his own death in 1969 and just two years before the death of his friend Kees van Dongen.

Signature:Signed in faint gray paint (bottom left): Van Dongen Inscribed in large black letters (on the verso of the horizontal stretcher): MARIA

Provenance:

Ed. Hentch, Paris; acquired from Jacques Lindon, Inc., New York, by Robert Lehman, Sands Point, Long Island, March 1966.