Bouquet of Imaginary Flowers was part of the very first solo exhibition dedicated to Van
Dongen, organised by the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. In 1908, two major historic galleries
celebrated Van Dongen’s work: the Bernheim Gallery and the Kahnweiler Gallery. Marius
and Ary Leblond, writers, journalists and art critics, penned a glowing foreword for the
catalogue: ‘Kees Van Dongen’s talent and originality, with his undulating lines and
harlequin-like colours, achieve a complex virtuosity in the depiction of the faces, bodies
and movements of acrobats, clowns, jesters and horse-riders. ” The exhibition was both
a critical and commercial success. A year later, on 29 November 1909, Van Dongen
signed a seven-year contract with Messrs Bernheim Jeune.
First exhibited in 1908 at the Salon des Indépendants and later at the Bernheim-Jeune
Gallery—Van Dongen’s first dealer in Paris—this work belongs to the artist’s most
radically Fauvist period, when color ceased to be merely descriptive and became a
language in its own right. In the lower corner of the painting, Van Dongen places his
signature between the blazing yellow of the table and the blue-gray of the background.
The ochre yellow, applied in broad, flat areas, vibrates against the deep purple of the
stem winding around it. Here, there are no gradations, no modeling: Van Dongen
deliberately forgoes depth of field to work solely through chromatic contrasts.
At the heart of the bouquet, Van Dongen works with sharp contrasts: the reds against
the dark blue of the background, the white breaking away from the blacks, and the green
applied in isolated touches.
Form is reduced to its color, and color to its intensity.
The brushwork—quick and unfinished—reflects a pictorial economy characteristic of his
Fauvist practice in 1907.