Paul Delvaux

Dr. Paul Brien, Brussels

Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, London, June 24, 2002, lot 33)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Ostende, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Paul Delvaux, 1962, no. 104

Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Paul Delvaux 1897-1994, 1997, no. 198

New York, Bern'Art, Belgian Paintings, 1998

Although Delvaux's art is renowned for its hallucinatory spectacles and dream-like imagery, the artist claimed not to be a proponent of the writings of Sigmund Freud and did not invest his compositions with the blatantly psychoanalytic references that were favored by Dalí, Miró and his fellow Belgian, René Magritte. By the time he painted the present work in 1949, Delvaux had developed a style that was distinct from his contemporaries.   The most recogninzable elements of his pictures are the nude or partially clothed women set inexplicably against meticulously rendered architectural backdrop.   While the setting of the present picture recalls the Futurist compositions of de Chirico and the odd subject juxtapositioning of Dalí, it bears the unmistakable fawn-eyed female figure that became Delvaux's leitmotif.  Delvaux's young and usually fair-haired women never interact or engage with each other and exist in states of psychological isolation.   By dehumanizing these beauties Delvaux renders his women as objects to behold, investing the compositions with yet another element of the uncanny. The coronated mermaid in this work also appears in a larger related oil that Delvaux completed the same year. 

Delvaux was always fascinated with the effects of light and shadow in his pictures, and his mastery at manipulating tone to this end is demonstrated quite beautifully in this picture.  As the glow of the setting sun casts light over the horizon, the figures cast imposing shadows.  The scene as a whole takes on an unsettling incandescence, and the viewer is thus left to consider the oddities of this "twilight zone."  Discussing Delvaux’s fascination with light in his paintings, Barbara Edmonson has written,  “Delvaux uses light to great effect, almost as if he were manipulating theatrical equipment of spots and dimmers.  With consummate skill, he contrasts cool white shafts of moonlight with the warm, gentle glow from an oil lamp” (Barbara Emerson, Delvaux, Paris and Antwerp, 1985, p. 174).