Kees van Dongen was a Dutch-born painter who started his career in Rotterdam and moved to Paris in 1899. In 1905 he took an active part in the famous fauvist exhibition ‘Salon d’Automne’. His best art works were portraits.

He once said:

His favorite characters were representatives of the artistic community in Paris: ‘femmes fatales’, night club singers, variety dancers, and demimondaines, who could shamelessly pose in front of spectators. The artist gained his fame from these paintings, where the exquisite figurativeness clashed with the depravity of the characters. Van Dongen was fascinated by the night life of Montmartre; its nonchalant exhilaration was attractive and frightening at the same time. In his exploration of this domain, he became a follower of Toulouse-Lautrec; his poster style and ironic interpretations were appealing to van Dongen.

In ‘Lady with Black Glove’ he creates an impressive eye-catching character. The model tries to captivate the viewers, strike them to the heart. The painter used wide color strokes, and he outlined the shapes with thick hued contours. The gloved hand and the legs in stockings are not defined by a solid line, but by a bold contour with zigzag edges.

Kees van Dongen started using this expressive trick after 1907. This is the time when his expressionistic techniques became easily distinguishable in his artworks, and in 1908 van Dongen joined the German art group of expressionists ‘The Bridge’. He nearly abandoned pastose painting with its twitchy staccato strokes, which was his exclusive manner in the early years.

The generalized figure and face of the model are rendered with vibrant accentuated colors and rhythms. The painter visualizes the inward world of his heroine with colors and contours that enhance the expressiveness of the character.