保羅·德沃爾

Claude Spaak, Belgium (commisioned from the artist)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Brussels, Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Paul Delvaux, 1997, no. 203, illustrated in the catalogue

(I) Executed on cream wove paper, laid down on card which is hinged to the mount at the reverse of the top edge. (II, III & IV) Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount at the reverse of the top edge. There is a round sticker in the lower right corner on the reverse. Apart from a very faint spot of foxing in the lower centre of (IV), this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the yellow tone is softer in the original.
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These masterful drawings represent one of the most important relationships of Delvaux’s life. Delvaux was introduced to Claude Spaak by his brother, the future Prime Minister of Belgium, Paul-Henri, who had shared classes with the artist at secondary school in Saint-Gilles. Claude Spaak was a leading member of the artistic scene in Brussels. Appointed the first director of the Société auxiliaire des expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles in 1929, this influential figure provided support and encouragement for the young artist throughout his career. It was at the Palais des Beaux-Arts - the magnificent art-deco edifice designed by Victor Horta and built in 1928 - that Delvaux was granted his first major solo exhibition in 1933. It was through the auspices of Spaak that Delvaux became acquainted with the two predominant artistic trends of the 1920s and 1930s. While the Expressionism espoused by James Ensor and Constant Permeke dominated contemporary Belgian art at the time, as is evidenced by some of Delvaux’s early works, Spaak introduced him to the Surrealist art of René Magritte. Although Delvaux was initially sceptical of his countryman’s extraordinary pictures, eventually the enigmatic tone of Magritte’s work impressed him greatly. Spaak’s leadership of the Palais des Beaux-Arts made a significant impact on Belgian art and culture at the time. By staging exhibitions of emerging artists such as Delvaux, Brussels became a centre for new artistic movements, most notably Surrealism. The following two lots are wonderfully indicative of both Spaak and Delvaux’s vivid imagination. They were commissioned by Claude Spaak to illustrate two of his own stories - L’Orage and Le Laid - which were first published in Le pays des miroirs. Contes et nouvelles in 1962. Delvaux depicts these two ghoulish stories with intricately drawn details and soft washes, and they perfectly express the psychological anxieties and ambiguities that are central to Spaak’s writing.

In the drawings for L'Orage Delvaux has interwoven key moments from Spaak's narrative into individual tableaux that are as complex and beguiling as those of his most accomplished paintings (fig. 1). Rather than making oblique references to the psychoanalytical theories that concerned the work of his fellow Surrealists, Delvaux was more subtle in his representation of the uncanny: without being overtly grotesque or offensive with his imagery, he would interrupt the peacefulness and banality of a given scene with instances of the bizarre. 

In L’Orage Spaak tells the story of a writer who, in order to escape from an unhappy love-affair and financial distress, goes to live in an isolated house in the middle of the woods and far from the nearest settlement. At first he takes walks about the countryside in between writing, but gradually the lush setting of the woods nauseates the writer and he is forced to stay indoors. One morning he awakes to find his house completely surrounded by rats, so numerous that the grass appears to have become a writhing ploughed field of grey. Inspired by fear and disgust, the writer prepares his house against invasion, blocking all the doors and windows, only to find that a rat has entered through his chimney. After dispatching the intruder, the protagonist lights a fire in the grate, building it up fiercely to prevent further intrusion, as represented in the first drawing in the sequence. In the second and third drawings Delvaux captures the oppressive nature of the besieged house, and the writer’s growing despair as the creatures swarm above his head on the roof and as he runs out of wood to keep the fire alight. Preferring to fight his way out, rather than wait for the rats to inundate him, the writer boldly charges outdoors only to end up between the horns of a bull which happened to be passing by at that moment. In the fourth drawing Delvaux has left this ending ambiguous, offering instead a shock encounter between the writer and a nymph rather than a bull, whilst the rats are nowhere to be seen.