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Lot Essay
Paul Delvaux's preoccupation with stations and trains first emerged in his art during the 1920s and provided a theme that would continually recur throughout his entire oeuvre. Painted in 1956, Faubourg represents the shift in Delvaux's approach to this key subject during the mid-fifties. Whereas railways had typically provided a backdrop for an enigmatic arrangement of nude models, they became increasingly isolated as a subject at this time, occasionally accompanied by a lone girl as an expression of childhood fears and fascinations. Much of Delvaux's art stems from childhood memories and trains had always been of special interest to the artist, who never forgot the hours he spent wandering alongside the railway tracks as a boy. 'I paint the trains of my childhood and through them that childhood itself,' he stated, 'the pictures of stations and trains do not represent reality. There remains the strange, a spectacle perhaps? I know that despite the pleasure I have in painting them, railways and stations are somewhat limiting subjects; but wrenching them out of normality has the opposite effect and pushes the subject towards the universal.' (J. Meuris, 7 dialogues avec Paul Delveaux accompagnés de 7 lettres imaginaires', in Le Soleil Noir, Paris, 1971, pp. 120-122).
Although ostensibly a normal scene, Delvaux has cleverly infused Faubourg with the metaphysical sense of mystery that is common to the early work of Giorgio de Chirico. Like many Surrealist painters, Delvaux had first been motivated to attempt to create a form of visual poetry through his contact with the work of De Chirico, whose sharply defined images of eerie architectural environments could conjure up feelings of menace, nostalgia and solitude. Using a limited catalogue of commonplace imagery, Delvaux was able to construct his own uncanny universe in pictures that act as windows opening onto a reality entirely conceived in the imagination of the artist. With Faubourg, Delvaux appears to deliberately indicate the fragile dividing line between his illusory 'twilight zones' and the physical world by depicting a broken fence in its immediate foreground. In many respects, Faubourg is not a Surrealist painting in that nothing overtly unreal is evident in the painting. Yet, in the subtlest of ways, Delvaux has instilled this inconspicuous scene of an empty train passing through a generic European suburb with a pervasive sense of unease. As in all Delvaux's works, every element is clearly visible although it is night, with long, dramatic shadows cast by a slight crescent moon. This incongruous effect instantly bathes this deserted urban landscape in a dreamlike atmosphere, generating a disturbing stillness in an image that captures the disquieting nature of the everyday.
Although ostensibly a normal scene, Delvaux has cleverly infused Faubourg with the metaphysical sense of mystery that is common to the early work of Giorgio de Chirico. Like many Surrealist painters, Delvaux had first been motivated to attempt to create a form of visual poetry through his contact with the work of De Chirico, whose sharply defined images of eerie architectural environments could conjure up feelings of menace, nostalgia and solitude. Using a limited catalogue of commonplace imagery, Delvaux was able to construct his own uncanny universe in pictures that act as windows opening onto a reality entirely conceived in the imagination of the artist. With Faubourg, Delvaux appears to deliberately indicate the fragile dividing line between his illusory 'twilight zones' and the physical world by depicting a broken fence in its immediate foreground. In many respects, Faubourg is not a Surrealist painting in that nothing overtly unreal is evident in the painting. Yet, in the subtlest of ways, Delvaux has instilled this inconspicuous scene of an empty train passing through a generic European suburb with a pervasive sense of unease. As in all Delvaux's works, every element is clearly visible although it is night, with long, dramatic shadows cast by a slight crescent moon. This incongruous effect instantly bathes this deserted urban landscape in a dreamlike atmosphere, generating a disturbing stillness in an image that captures the disquieting nature of the everyday.