Paul Delvaux

Claude Spaak, Choisel

Estate of Millicent A. Rogers, Taos, New Mexico (sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, January 19, 1955, lot 100)

Durlacher Brothers, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Hugh Chisholm, New York

Galerie Dr. R. Horstmann, Cologne

Hans Schröder (acquired from the above in 1972 and sold: Lempertz, Cologne, December 10, 1986, lot 17)

Galerie Guy Pieters, Knokke-Heist

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Brussels, Peintres belges contemporains, 1948, no. 155, illustrated in the catalogue

San Francisco, Museum of Fine Art, 1967-68 (on loan)

Michel Butor, Jean Clair & Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin, Delvaux, Catalogue de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne & Paris, 1975, no. 163, illustrated p. 214

Very good condition. Oil on cradled panel. Four horizontal cracks in the panel and several short hairline cracks in the upper right corner, which visibly extend through the paint layers, are due to natural expansion and contraction of the panel in reaction to changes in environmental conditions. The cracks are stable and not visually disturbing. Under UV light, Minor areas of inpainting over the nail holes along the edges and a few tiny, scattered spots of inpainting, none of which can be seen in natural light. The surface is clean and fresh and in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The mysterious paintings of Paul Delvaux are regarded as some of the most sensual and alluring examples of Surrealist art. In Femme Assise (La Lampe), the artist explores his fascination with the conventions of perspective in western painting dating back to the Renaissance.  He creates a spatially-illogical interior with contradicting vanishing points that nonetheless bear the trappings of a conventional interior setting, with its crown moulding and Classical architectural details.  The spatial ambiguities are offset by the female figure in the foreground, whose inexplicable nudity is yet another startling element of this visually-engaging composition.

Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque writes of the artist in the context of the Surrealists: "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 realities 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, Paul Delvaux 1897-1994 (exhibition catalogue), Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 1997, p. 27).