3262 - PAUL DELVAUX

PAUL DELVAUX (Wanze 1897–1994 Veurne) Les cerf-volants/Les dames aux cerfs-volants. 1950. Oil on panel. Signed, inscribed and dated lower right: P. DELVAUX / ST. IDESBALD / 1-50. 92.3 × 122.2 cm. Provenance: - André Delvaux, Rhode-Saint-Genèse. - Staempfli Gallery, New York. - Richard S. Zeisler, New York, acquired from the above gallery on 19 May 1965. - National Gallery of Art, Washington, received as a gift from the above. - Auction Sotheby’s, New York, 7 November 2007, lot 57. - Swiss collection, acquired at the above auction. Exhibited: - Venice 1950, XXV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, 8 June–15 October 1950, no. 337 (label on verso). - Antwerp 1951, L’Art contemporain. Salon 1951, Stedelijke Feestzaal Meir, April–May 1951, no. 180. - Amsterdam 1952, Dertien Belgische Schilders, Stedelijk Museum, 17 October–30 November 1952, no. 36. - Charleroi 1957, XXXIe Salon du Cercle Royal Artistique Littéraire de Charleroi. Rétrospective Paul Delvaux, Salle de la Bourse, March–April 1957, no. 56 (label on verso). - Boitsfort 1957, XIIe Salon, Maison Haute, 23 November–8 December 1957, no. 10. - Ostend 1962, Paul Delvaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1 July–31 August 1962, no. 37 (label on verso). - Arnhem 1964, Réalité et imagination. Surréalistes belges, Gemeentemuseum, 12 July–6 September 1964, no. 11 (label on verso). - Mons 1965, Hainaut Cinq. Hommage à Paul Delvaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts, March 1965, no. 5. - New York 1969, Paul Delvaux, Staempfli Gallery, 11–29 March 1969, no. 9. - Rotterdam 1973, Paul Delvaux, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 13 April–17 June 1973, no. 47. - Tokyo/Funabashi/Yamanashi/Asahikawa/Osaka 1983, The Surrealism Exhibition, Isetan Museum, 27 February–22 March 1983/Seibu Museum, 25 March–19 April 1983/Prefectural Museum of Art, 15 May–19 June 1983/Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, 25 June–7 August 1983/Daimaru Museum, 24 August–12 September 1983, no. 61 (label on verso). - Brussels 1997, Rétrospective Paul Delvaux, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 21 March–27 July 1997, no. 78 (label on verso). Literature: - Michel Butor, Jean Clair and Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin: Delvaux. Catalogue de l’œuvre peint, Lausanne/Paris 1975, p. 230, no. 199 (ill.; with incorrect dimensions). - Paul-Aloïse De Bock: Paul Delvaux. Der Mensch. Der Maler, Hamburg 1965, p. 30 (ill.). - Paul Caso: Le Cercle Hainaut Cinq au Musée de Mons. Un hommage à Paul Delvaux, in: Le Soir, Brussels, 18 March 1965. - Paul-Aloïse De Bock: Paul Delvaux, Brussels 1967, p. 296, no. 101 (ill.). - José Vovelle: Le Surréalisme en Belgique, Brussels 1972, p. 187. - Peter Sager: Paul Delvaux, in: Das Kunstwerk, Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne/Mainz, May 1973, vol. XXVI, no. 3, p. 41. - Jacques Sojcher: Paul Delvaux ou la passion purifiée, Paris 1991, no. 87, p. 63 (ill.). When Paul Delvaux painted ‘Les cerfs-volants’ in January 1950, his distinctive pictorial language had already been established for several years. Since the mid-1930s, the Belgian artist had been developing a highly individual approach to painting, transforming everyday situations and familiar places into scenes of unusual, often disquieting strangeness. His precise figurative style contrasts with the ambiguity of the narratives his paintings seem to suggest. Women occupy a central place in his work, and here Delvaux brings this recurring subject together with a coastal landscape and the activity of kite-flying. An important influence on the development of his art was his encounter with the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, particularly at the ‘Minotaure’ exhibition of Surrealist art in Brussels in 1934. De Chirico’s deserted squares, classical architecture and unconventional perspectives left a lasting impression. Yet Delvaux fashioned a pictorial world entirely his own, combining female figures, architectural fragments, railway stations and landscapes in unexpected ways. Although he is regarded as one of the leading figures of Belgian Surrealism, his place within the movement is distinctive. Deliberate provocation was less central to his work than to that of Surrealists more deeply engaged with theoretical and psychoanalytical ideas. Even so, the heightened artificiality of his compositions gives them an unmistakably bizarre, Surrealist character. Delvaux painted the present work at Saint-Idesbald on the Belgian North Sea coast, where he had spent time regularly since the 1940s. Coastal landscapes, and the sea in particular, were important subjects for him. Throughout the 1940s he repeatedly returned to maritime imagery, including mermaids. Whereas these figures often inhabit fantastical settings, the shore in ‘Les cerfs-volants’ becomes the backdrop to a scene that initially appears entirely ordinary. Sketches and drawings show that Delvaux had begun exploring the subject of women flying kites as early as 1949. In the present painting he develops it into a careful