Dutch Modernism: Kees van Dongen
The Gypsy (La gitane), 1917–1918
Oil on canvas
100.2 × 81 cm (39½ × 31 7/8 in.)
Auctioned at Christie’s in 2009 for GBP 7,097,250

This post is based on the 2009 Christie’s auction note.

La gitane carries the lingering brightness of Van Dongen’s travels through Spain and North Africa, journeys that had once pulled him away from the staged exoticism of Parisian nightlife and into a world of unfiltered colour and heat. Even years later, that southern light seems to rise again in this canvas. The woman stands with her hands on her hips, her posture open and assured, her mouth slightly parted in a gesture that feels both playful and quietly triumphant. Her dark hair is gathered with vivid red flowers, and the deep blue‑black of her dress is cut by a sharp red neckline that glows against her pale skin — details that heighten the sense of presence and immediacy.

Behind her, the ochre and terracotta buildings, with their arched windows and tall tower, place her firmly in a southern cityscape. The turquoise sky above her feels almost weightless, a soft counterpoint to her grounded stance. Though the setting evokes Spain, she also carries the unmistakable aura of Van Dongen’s Parisian muses: confident, magnetic, and entirely at ease in her own radiance.

The Fauve fire that had dimmed in the years before the war returns here with a gentler but unmistakable intensity. The reds flare, the blues deepen, the warm tones breathe. Painted around 1917–18, at a moment when Europe was still shaken by the final years of the First World War, the work feels like a quiet insistence on vitality. Many artists had fled Paris under bombardment, yet Van Dongen held to the belief that beauty — especially the beauty of women — could lift the spirit when the world grew heavy.

He would later say that all women possess a beauty he sought to exalt, and that a painting must affirm life. La gitane embodies that conviction. She stands not as an idealised symbol but as a living presence, bright and grounded, holding her place with warmth and ease. In her, Van Dongen lets colour rise again, offering a moment of clarity and joy at a time when the world outside the frame struggled to find either.