Paul Delvaux

Parting the curtain of a modern-day loggia, Delvaux’s entranced lady-in-waiting exists in a desolate world of dark corners, shadowy pathways and smoky illumination. Executed in 1948, L’Attente includes many of the images that characterise Delvaux’s most accomplished works: the disaffected, fawn-eyed maiden, the dramatically lit architecture, the juxtaposition of the interior and the exterior and of the day-time and nocturnal setting (fig. 1). This elegant work has an atmosphere of timelessness typical of Delvaux’s art, whilst at the same time being a reflection of the very time in which it was created. L’Attente was painted at the closing of the 1940s, when an eerie quietude had settled upon Europe in the aftermath of the war and the world waited for new troubles to appear on the horizon. Artists across the continent were affected by this mood of unease, which the avant-garde often translated into images of sinister beauty. Delvaux, who was most famous for incorporating the style of the Renaissance into his pictures, was also receptive to this contemporary aesthetic. The woman in this composition, with her flawless complexion and a blond chignon, is as much a Botticelli Venus (fig. 2), whose pose she is adopting, as she is a modern-day femme fatale. However the details of her dress and of the black-and-white tiled setting are more reminiscent of Vermeer’s interiors.

Although Delvaux never formally associated himself with the Surrealist movement, L’Attente certainly has a strong Surrealist undercurrent of psychological and sexual tension. The melancholy of a quiet suburban street, in which the time seems to have stopped, was certainly influenced by Giorgio de Chirico’s depictions of Italian piazzas (fig. 3). It is this ethereal quality of his compositions, rather than a narrative, that is the key element in Delvaux’s art. In fact, he denied that his works had any hidden meaning and rejected any attempts at analysing them. ‘My painting refers only it itself,’ he once remarked. ‘One can project any interpretation onto it, and I’m happy that it’s that way, but don’t ask me if I intended it […] Don’t ask me, for example if I wanted my characters to symbolize the inexpressible and if the women, while they are certainly dominant in my work, are superior […] I have no idea […] My motivations are above all artistic’ (quoted in Marc Rombaut, Paul Delvaux, New York, 1990, p. 8).

The same year that he painted L’Attente, Delvaux participated in the Venice Biennale, where critics were scandalised by the erotic undertones of his art. The artist was surprised by this morally-based critique, and he defended his art as a type of visual poetry, created simply for the enjoyment of the beholder. Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque has written: ‘there is no need whatsoever of psychological analyses or psychoanalytical interpretations, which by the way the artist firmly rejected, to understand the world of Paul Delvaux. It is made of simplicity and reality. It is the blossoming and affirmation of poetry by means of the contrasts that exist between the great monumental figures and the anachronistic settings in which they move. In this the artist agrees with the thinking of Breton who declared that the more the relationships between two connected realties were distant and exact, the more powerful the image would be. More than Delvaux the painter, it was Delvaux the surrealist poet whom Eluard and Breton hailed because his pictorial universe exists out of time, eludes fashion and defies any attempt at classification’ (G. Ollinger-Zinque, ‘The Making of  Poet-Painter’, in Paul Delvaux (exhibition catalogue), Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1997,  p. 27). 

Delvaux was always fascinated with representing the effects of light and shadow, and his mastery at manipulating tone to this end is demonstrated quite beautifully in the present work. While the sun has just set off in the distance, the woman stands in a portico that is bathed in a light of unspecified origin. The building on the left casts a full shadow across the road, but its façade is half-illuminated. The logistical improbability of this scenario creates an unsettling incandescence, and the viewer is thus left to consider the oddities of this ‘twilight zone’, also painted by Magritte in his series of L’Empire des lumières (fig. 4). Discussing Delvaux’s fascination with light in his paintings, Barbara Emerson wrote: ‘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 on oil lamp’ (B. Emerson, Delvaux, Paris & Antwerp, 1985, p. 174).

Fig. 1, Paul Delvaux, Les Cariatides, 1946, oil on masonite, Private Collection

Fig. 2, Sandro Botticelli, La Nascita di Venere, circa 1485, tempera on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Fig. 3, Giorgio de Chirico, The Enigma of the Day, 1914, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Fig. 4, René Magritte, L’Empire des lumières, 1954, oil on canvas, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels