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Shown from the waist up, a woman with a crimson-red face, dark brown eyes, and a black and white garment faces and looks out at us in this stylized, vertical portrait painting. Her face is painted as a flat field of vibrant red outlined with teal green. Her features are outlined in black, and her closed lips are light gray. Her hair is pulled back under a black head covering that falls over her shoulders. The headdress seems to be layered with a headband with bright yellow polka dots against spring green. Her dress is painted with thick, charcoal-gray lines and circles against a white background. The brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially on the garment. In the background behind her, a field of ivory white is contained within bands of steel gray above, along the top edge of the canvas, and below, behind her shoulders. Beyond her body, in the lower left corner, is a patch of sky blue.

Kees van Dongen

Saida, 1913 or 1920

East Building, Mezzanine - Terrace

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 65.1 x 54.3 cm (25 5/8 x 21 3/8 in.)

framed: 86.7 x 75.6 x 4.8 cm (34 1/8 x 29 3/4 x 1 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney

Accession Number

1998.74.2

Artists / Makers

Kees van Dongen (painter) French, born the Netherlands, 1877 - 1968

Image Use

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Inscription

lower center: van Dongen.

Provenance

Mala Stalio, Paris; (M. Knoedler & Co., London, no. A7218); sold January 1960 to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York;[1] gift 1998 to NGA.

[1]Acquisition source and date according to Whitney records now in NGA curatorial files. The painting was said to have been in the Stalio family for forty years.

Associated Names

Knoedler & Company, M.
Stalio, Mala
Whitney, John Hay
Whitney, John Hay, Mrs.

Exhibition History

1960: The John Hay Whitney Collection, Tate Gallery, London, 1960-1961, no. 21, repro.

1978: Aspects of Twentieth-Century Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1978-1979, no. 43, repro.

1983: The John Hay Whitney Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1983, no. 44, repro.

1998: Gifts to the Nation from Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998-1999, no catalogue.

2004: Fauve Painting from the Permanent Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2004-2005, no catalogue.

2009: Kees van Dongen, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2009, no. 174, repro. (shown only in Montreal and Barcelona).

2010: De grote ogen van Kees v an Dongen [All Eyes on Kees Van Dongen] (Rotterdam), Van Dongen. Fauve, anarchiste et mondain (Paris), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2010 - 2011, no. 64 (English cat.), 77 (French cat.), repros.

2014: Matisse and Friends: Selected Masterworks from the National Gallery of Art, Denver Art Museum, 2014-2015, no catalogue.