Paul Delvaux

Foundation Paul Delvaux, Idesbad
J. Vyenano, Antwerp
Sale: Christie's, London, 23rd June 1986, lot 58
Sale: Christie's, New York, 12th May 1987, lot 63
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Osaka, Umeda Modern Museum of Art; Himeji, Municipal Art Museum; Tokyo, Isetan Art Museum & Toyama, Museum of Modern Art, Paul Delvaux, 1983, no. 31
Turin, Palazzo Bricherasio, Il surrealismo di Paul Delvaux tra Magritte e de Chirico, 2005-06, no. I.38, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

The mysterious oil paintings of Paul Delvaux are regarded as some of the most alluring examples of late Surrealist Art. His paintings are renowned for their hallucinatory scenarios and dream-like imagery. Many of these pictures present a conventional architectural setting, of a modern or ancient town, that is populated by enigmatic women, usually depicted in the nude. L'echafaudage is a particularly poignant and sensual depiction of the nude unnervingly situated under a grand scaffold, which recalls the Romanesque architecture that often occurs in his later works (fig. 1).  The subtle rendering of light and shade in the present work exemplifies the artist’s debt to traditional forms of representation. Barbara Emerson has written of the way that '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).

The present work was painted in 1977, a year in which he was accorded the honour of being elected to the Institut de France and a celebratory exhibition of his work, Hommage à Paul Delvaux was held at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels. David Scott has noted the importance of his mature works and the effect his public recognition had upon his art: 'It is remarkable how in the 1960s and 1970s, in the second flowering of his genius, Delvaux combined and reinterpreted elements in his paintings that were fundamental to the structure and iconography of ones he painted thirty and forty years before' (D. Scott, Paul Delvaux: Surrealizing the Nude, London, 1992, p. 112). One such element of L'echafaudage, in which the antiquity that was a feature of his earliest works is subtly evoked, was inspired by a trip Delvaux took to Habay-la-Neuve with his wife Tamand Charles van Deun (the founding Director of the Fondation Paul Delvaux). They visited a nearby museum of Greco-Roman antiquities called the Musée Archéologique d'Arlon where he saw a Roman bas-relief. Taken by the beauty of this object Delvaux painted it into the present work where it can be seen directly behind the female figure. This precise detail of the sculpture acts as an elegant but emphatic gesture of the sparcity of the overall composition in which the otherwise featureless town is occupied by the presence of the mysterious nude.