.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Painted in 1936, Paul Delvaux’s Les belles de nuit (Comédie du soir ou La comédie) is a scene on the periphery of a civilisation, sparsely populated by a quartet of elegant and poised female figures. In an otherwise desolate landscape, a pristine flagstone path leads into a Neoclassical structure, the route flanked by two semi-nude women whose composed stances and swathes of white drapery are reminiscent of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture. One leans on an elaborate support in a Classical contrapposto stance, while the other gesticulates to her left, her arm extended and her head demurely tilted, perhaps in reference to something beyond the scope of the viewer’s gaze. Behind them, further along the pathway, a woman approaches the entrance of the labyrinthine arcade, her burgundy gown flowing behind her. Her dress resembles the fashions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enhancing the strange, surreal nature of the composition. Directly ahead of her, deep in the heart of the arched atrium, a fourth figure, with an almost identical appearance, emerges. Framed by the echoing arches, it is as if these figures are mirrored images of each other.
Rocks and pebbles are scattered across the landscape of Les belles de nuit, and three prominent mountain peaks rise up against the sweeping blue sky in the background. Scholars have noted that the present work is the first of Delvaux’s compositions to clearly feature the craggy mountainous backdrop that would become a favoured motif in his paintings of the following decade, drawing similarities to the mountains of the Pays Noir, in the Walloon region of south west Belgium. Named for its abundant geological presence of coal, the Pays Noir was rapidly industrialised in the Nineteenth Century as a mining region, and it was a place that Delvaux was familiar with. His paternal grandfather had been a miner by trade, and although the artist’s parents had moved away from the area, to Brussels, shortly before his birth, Delvaux consistently returned to the Wallonian countryside in school holidays.
In the dreamy and ethereal world of Les belles de nuit, Delvaux not only looks to his personal heritage, but to the Western art historical canon, and his artistic ancestors too. In these early years of his career, the artist was honing his individual, signature style, and elements of his compositions acknowledge and pay homage to his forebearers. In addition to the classicising nudes and architecture, Delvaux took inspiration from Renaissance styles and themes, seen in the present work with the geometric perspective and skull motif. Additionally, the nude figure on the left is adorned with an extraordinary hat, composed of curling red plumes, fruit and flowers, and crowned with a black bird. Simultaneously over and under-dressed, her vibrantly-coloured and extravagant headdress accentuates and exaggerates her nudity. Les belles de nuit is one of the first paintings in which Delvaux uses this motif, and it is one which he will go on to employ time and again throughout his oeuvre.
Les belles de nuit’s dreamlike vision of the familiar and the unexpected appealed to collectors almost immediately. Shortly after it was completed it was acquired by Claude Spaak, a key member of Brussels’ literati. An avid admirer of Delvaux’s work, Spaak had been appointed director of the Société auxiliare des expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Brussels at the end of the 1920s, and it was there that Delvaux’s first major solo exhibition took place in 1933. Les belles de nuit was subsequently purchased by the pivotal Surrealist collector and poet Edward James, who inextricably shaped the Surrealist movement through his patronage of its artists. James extolled Delvaux’s enigmatic style, and hung the present work in pride of place at Monkton House, a traditional English country house on his extensive West Dean estate that he ‘Surrealized,’ – completely renovating the building with the Surrealist Salvador Dalí’s creative input. Les belles de nuit was displayed on the first floor landing, thoughtfully hung in a place where house and painting echoed and enhanced each other. Monkton’s coved ceiling and archways paralleled the arches of the painted arcade in Delvaux’s composition, and the running pawprints on the carpet, which James had specially woven to the print of one of his wolfhounds, drew the viewer’s eye onward, towards the flagstone avenue of Les belles de nuit. Creating a powerful mise-en-abyme effect, the physical and painted spaces seemed to extend into each other, and the threshold between real and imaginary was made tangible.
Rocks and pebbles are scattered across the landscape of Les belles de nuit, and three prominent mountain peaks rise up against the sweeping blue sky in the background. Scholars have noted that the present work is the first of Delvaux’s compositions to clearly feature the craggy mountainous backdrop that would become a favoured motif in his paintings of the following decade, drawing similarities to the mountains of the Pays Noir, in the Walloon region of south west Belgium. Named for its abundant geological presence of coal, the Pays Noir was rapidly industrialised in the Nineteenth Century as a mining region, and it was a place that Delvaux was familiar with. His paternal grandfather had been a miner by trade, and although the artist’s parents had moved away from the area, to Brussels, shortly before his birth, Delvaux consistently returned to the Wallonian countryside in school holidays.
In the dreamy and ethereal world of Les belles de nuit, Delvaux not only looks to his personal heritage, but to the Western art historical canon, and his artistic ancestors too. In these early years of his career, the artist was honing his individual, signature style, and elements of his compositions acknowledge and pay homage to his forebearers. In addition to the classicising nudes and architecture, Delvaux took inspiration from Renaissance styles and themes, seen in the present work with the geometric perspective and skull motif. Additionally, the nude figure on the left is adorned with an extraordinary hat, composed of curling red plumes, fruit and flowers, and crowned with a black bird. Simultaneously over and under-dressed, her vibrantly-coloured and extravagant headdress accentuates and exaggerates her nudity. Les belles de nuit is one of the first paintings in which Delvaux uses this motif, and it is one which he will go on to employ time and again throughout his oeuvre.
Les belles de nuit’s dreamlike vision of the familiar and the unexpected appealed to collectors almost immediately. Shortly after it was completed it was acquired by Claude Spaak, a key member of Brussels’ literati. An avid admirer of Delvaux’s work, Spaak had been appointed director of the Société auxiliare des expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Brussels at the end of the 1920s, and it was there that Delvaux’s first major solo exhibition took place in 1933. Les belles de nuit was subsequently purchased by the pivotal Surrealist collector and poet Edward James, who inextricably shaped the Surrealist movement through his patronage of its artists. James extolled Delvaux’s enigmatic style, and hung the present work in pride of place at Monkton House, a traditional English country house on his extensive West Dean estate that he ‘Surrealized,’ – completely renovating the building with the Surrealist Salvador Dalí’s creative input. Les belles de nuit was displayed on the first floor landing, thoughtfully hung in a place where house and painting echoed and enhanced each other. Monkton’s coved ceiling and archways paralleled the arches of the painted arcade in Delvaux’s composition, and the running pawprints on the carpet, which James had specially woven to the print of one of his wolfhounds, drew the viewer’s eye onward, towards the flagstone avenue of Les belles de nuit. Creating a powerful mise-en-abyme effect, the physical and painted spaces seemed to extend into each other, and the threshold between real and imaginary was made tangible.