Van Dongen moved to Paris as a young man, in 1897 and was influenced by the Nabis painter Vuillard and
GauguinÆs Synthetism. He held his first one-man show in 1904 and went on to exhibit with the Fauves at the Salon of the following year. The recurrent themes of his paintings û the circus, the cabaret, the dance hall û were depicted in bright and sensu
al colors that had an influence on the Expressionist artists of the Die Brⁿcke group, following expositions of van DongenÆs work in Germany.
