Image: Libretis, Paris
Paris-based gallery Libretis is highlighting a circa-1950 lithograph by Kees van Dongen, ‘Hommage à Marie-Claire’, a work that brings together the artist’s interest in female portraiture, simplified graphic form and vivid contrasts. The lithograph measures 75 by 54 centimetres and is listed in Libretis’s catalogue at €4,000.
The work depicts Marie-Claire through a deliberately synthetic treatment, with emphasis placed on the intensity of the gaze, the presence of the face and the expressive relationship between line and colour. Rather than pursuing detailed description, the image concentrates on the visual force of the female figure and on the contrast between its principal forms.
Portraits of women occupied a central position in van Dongen’s work, particularly from the 1910s onward. Libretis describes his models as often marked by accentuated features and strong colours, reflecting an interest in a modern form of beauty presented as elegant and independent. The gallery frames ‘Hommage à Marie-Claire’ as a late example of this continuing engagement with the female image.
Van Dongen was born in 1877 and died in 1968. The gallery’s presentation connects the lithograph to his Fauvist inheritance while also stressing the freedom of its graphic language. The work’s date, around 1950, places it well after the period in which he became associated with early twentieth-century Fauvism, but the description identifies a continuing role for intense colour and heightened facial features in his approach to portraiture.
The name Marie-Claire also recalls the artist’s involvement with Victor Margueritte’s novel ‘La Garçonne’. In 1925, van Dongen illustrated the book, whose female protagonist asserts her independence by smoking and cutting her hair. Libretis presents that earlier project as a relevant context for considering van Dongen’s recurring representations of modern womanhood, while distinguishing the 1950 lithograph as its own work.
The listing appears within Libretis’s broader catalogue of modern and contemporary works on paper, prints, drawings and rare illustrated books. Founded in Paris in 2012, the gallery began with a specialisation in rare books and subsequently expanded into modern and contemporary prints and drawings. It is open by appointment and states that it belongs to the Chambre Syndicale de l’Estampe et du Dessin. ‘Hommage à Marie-Claire’ is available through the gallery’s catalogue as a lithograph from circa 1950.
