Paul Delvaux

Amiel E. Najar, Israel
Jean Krebs, Brussels
Private Collection

Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Exposition rétrospective des oeuvres de Paul Delvaux, 1966, no. 43
Ixelles, Musée d'Ixelles, Paul Delvaux, 1967, no. 45

Paul-Aloise Debock, Paul Delvaux, Brussels, 1967, illustrated pl. 148
Michel Butor, Jean Clair & Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin, Delvaux, Brussels, 1975, no. 273, illustrated pl. 258

Work is in excellent condition. Board is stable. Image is painted onto rectangular board with rounded corners, as framed. Surface is clean. Under UV light: no inpainting is apparent.
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Much has been written about the impossibility of easy or singular interpretation of Delvaux’s artwork, as well as the extent to which the artist’s unique style is derived from the Surrealist school. “Delvaux prized craftsmanship and worked like a painstaking artisan, taking from surrealism only what was useful to him in the pursuit of his poetic aim—an atmosphere, be it formal elements such as a painting within a painting, be it the confrontation of interior-exterior, the creation of a setting or closed rooms… Delvaux was not, like Magritte, a painter of ideas but a painter of poetic emotions. His pictures must be read between the lines, because in them the figurative reality is transfigured and made irreal” (Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, “The Making of a Painter-Poet,” in Paul Delvaux 1897-1994 (exhibition catalogue), Saint-Idesbald, 1997, p. 21).

Certain themes are nevertheless constant throughout the artist’s career, and many have been linked to the artist’s memory and personal experience. For example he developed an early fascination with Ancient Greece and Rome, avidly reading Homer in adolescence and later rendering classical imagery in his painted compositions. La Halte may not represent classical architecture or recognizable characters, but the fiery shadows cast at upper right in the distant background offer a direct and compelling allusion to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” a story that—like Delvaux’s art—underscores the risk of confusing image for reality.

Shadows, like mirrors, are among the most elusive clues found within the artist’s enigmatic paintings, and accordingly it has been written that, “Delvaux expresses his mysteries through his images, sources of poetry and disorientation, since although all the components of his painting are realistic, the complete image is not. In it the dream world and the natural world fuse to create the extraordinary, like the mirror that appears so often in his pictures. It reflects a double, but a double that is different from reality—disturbing and mysterious. At times one doubts whether it is a mirror at all and not, rather, an opening, a doorway to the world of the unseen? The person who is mirrored sees himself differently and that uncertain view adds to his expressive force since if the phenomenon were logical the ‘sense of its mystery would be destroyed.’ The mental image, a second view of the artist’s world or a meeting place for the internal and the external, heightens the significance of that world and serves the artist’s concept” (ibid., p. 25).