“I very much like being, as they say, a painter of elegance and fashion! But I am not, as many wish to believe, a victim of snobbism, of luxury, of the world. It amuses me, that’s all.”
—Kees van Dongen

Belonging to a significant series of paintings produced by Dutch artist Kees van Dongen during an extended visit to Venice in the spring of 1921, A l’ombre du campanile is suffused with a soft, bright light and an effortless sense of ease, radiating the fashionable elegance and internationalism that best characterised the European leisure classes of the early 1920s. With the iconic silhouette of San Giorgio Maggiore rising beyond the lagoon behind them, the casually arranged figures stroll arm in arm or pause to feed the pigeons, their supine, elongated forms draped in the chicest fashions of the day. One of sixteen canvases acquired by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune shortly after the artist’s return to Paris and exhibited at the gallery in the December of that year, Venise, á l’ombre du campanile epitomises both van Dongen’s own reputation as an accomplished painter of contemporary feminine beauty and sensuality, and the prominence of Venice in the European imagination as a place of romance and glamour.

 

Archival footage from Venice, Italy, circa 1920

Van Dongen in Venice
“Venice is not only a city of fantasy and freedom. It is also a city of joy and pleasure.”
—Peggy Guggenheim

The singular mysterious beauty of Venice has preoccupied artists and writers across the centuries, this same vista out from the Piazza San Marco across to the 16^th century Palladian church captured by masters including J.W. Turner and Claude Monet. Like Monet, across this series of Venetian paintings van Dongen returned to the same sites again and again, but whereas the Impressionist preoccupied himself with the careful observation of subtle shifts in light and atmospheric effects refracted from the turquoise surface of the lagoon, van Dongen’s attention is instead captivated by the energy and ineffable romance of Venice itself, a floating city at the global intersection of east and west, a place shaped in our imagination by trade and travel, the 18^th century Grand Tour, art and literature, and made newly accessible by late 19^th century luxury railways and a burgeoning tourist trade, playfully noted here in the Pocket Kodak camera held confidently by the figure to the right.  

 

Somewhat fatigued by the scandalised response of the public to the unveiling of his portrait of the celebrated writer Anatole France at the Salon de la Nationale, in the spring of 1921 van Dongen had set off for Venice with his friend the critic Michel Georges-Michel in what would prove to be an energising and highly productive trip. With the legendary socialite and eccentric femme fatale The Marchesa Luisa Casati as his guide, van Dongen found himself swept into the glamourous world of the international elite, perfectly captured in the effortless elegance of the present work.

 

A favourite muse of artists such as Augustus John and Man Ray, Casati knew Venice well, hosting infamously decadent and spectacular parties from her impressive Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal throughout the 1910s. As Cecil Beaton recalled, ‘When Luisa Amon […] married Camillio Casati, a great huntsman, the Master of the Roman hounds and president of the jockey club in Rome, she was considered by all who first saw her […] to be the mousy little wife of the Master. Little did the expect the transformation that was to take place. The mousy hair burst into flames, the eyelashes spread like peacock feathers, she dressed in a style entirely of her own invention.’ⁱ

 

The two had been introduced some years earlier, van Dongen expressing his desire to paint her portrait as early as 1914, explaining to the critic Félix Fénéon that ‘her type suits me perfectly.’ⁱⁱ Immediately identifiable by her shock of tumbling red curls, the Marchesa appeared directly in several of van Dongen’s Venetian paintings including the ethereal Quai de Venise, now held in the permanent collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Tellingly, in their bolder, more non-naturalistic palette and heavier contours, these portraits recall certain stylistic features of van Dongen’s earlier and more overtly Expressionistic and Fauvist aesthetic. While the artist’s early work was largely populated by sultry beauties of the demi-monde, in the striking and theatrical Marchesa van Dongen found a figure who, although embodying this fin de siècle decadence, introduced van Dongen to the complex social drama and elegant excesses enjoyed by the upper echelons of European society. Such experiences in turn ushered in a new and delightful phase in van Dongen’s work, best expressed in the light spontaneity and ‘balletic grace’ that best characterises the ‘charming and witty series of Venetian scenes’ to which the present work belongs.ⁱⁱⁱ

 

Himself long fascinated by the world of the theatre, in the Marchesa van Dongen found ‘an actress without a stage’, and certainly there is certainly something of the theatrical to A l’ombre du campanile’s carefully choregraphed arrangement of fashionably elegant figures moving effortlessly between the Doges Palace and Il Molo dock, the turquoise lagoon capped with gondolas stretching out beyond them. Perfectly capturing the sense of relaxed ease and glamour that best characterised the interwar experience of the international elite, van Dongen’s Venetian pictures secured his reputation as the 'peintre et roi de son temps’ and offer a fascinating insight into a lost world.'^iv

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• A chronicler of his times, Dutch artist Kees van Dongen is best known for his vibrant portraits of glamourous women that capture the decadent spirit of the period.

 

• Painted during a 1921 trip to Venice, the present work belongs to a small but significant series and was one of just sixteen canvases acquired by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and presented in focussed exhibition in the same year. 

 

• A major artist of the early 20^th century, van Dongen was especially associated with Fauvist artists such as Henri Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck. His work is now held in major institutional collections worldwide.

 

 

ⁱ Cecil Beaton, quoted in Van Dongen, exh cat, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts et. al., p. 229.

ⁱⁱ Kees van Dongen, quoted in Van Dongen, exh cat, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts et. al., 2008, p. 229.

ⁱⁱⁱ Denys Sutton, Van Dongen, Tucson, 1971, p. 48.

^iv Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen. L'homme et l'artiste, Geneva, 1967, p. 216.