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Lot Essay
Charles Van Deun has kindly confirmed the authenticity of these drawings.
Encased in a green leather-bound portfolio that was presented to Dr and Mme Demol in Brussels by Delvaux in 1975, these sixty-one sketches are predominantly studies for one of Delvaux's largest, most complex paintings, the 1941 wartime masterpiece La ville inquiète (The Anxious City).
This painting, begun in May 1940 on the eve of the Nazi invasion of his native Belgium and worked on under the ensuing Occupation for nearly a year, was an extraordinarily complex and powerful dream-like vision of universal unrest. Rendered in the manner of Mantegna or Poussin and borrowing imagery from all periods of history, it depicted an unspecified classical city with its Athenian Acropolis, Mycenaean Lion Gate, Egyptian Pyramid and industrial chimney in complete turmoil, its inhabitants having seemingly gone berserk. 'I believe' Delvaux said of this extraordinary vision of confusion and angst, 'that it was inspired by its times, an anxious time, a time of upheaval. I simply tried to express this upheaval in my own particular way' (Paul Delvaux quoted in the film Nächte ohne Lachen 1980, reproduced in Barbara Emerson, Delvaux, Antwerp, 1985, p. 97). The sketches and details outlined in this portfolio give a unique insight into the full complexity and detail of this memorable masterpiece.
Encased in a green leather-bound portfolio that was presented to Dr and Mme Demol in Brussels by Delvaux in 1975, these sixty-one sketches are predominantly studies for one of Delvaux's largest, most complex paintings, the 1941 wartime masterpiece La ville inquiète (The Anxious City).
This painting, begun in May 1940 on the eve of the Nazi invasion of his native Belgium and worked on under the ensuing Occupation for nearly a year, was an extraordinarily complex and powerful dream-like vision of universal unrest. Rendered in the manner of Mantegna or Poussin and borrowing imagery from all periods of history, it depicted an unspecified classical city with its Athenian Acropolis, Mycenaean Lion Gate, Egyptian Pyramid and industrial chimney in complete turmoil, its inhabitants having seemingly gone berserk. 'I believe' Delvaux said of this extraordinary vision of confusion and angst, 'that it was inspired by its times, an anxious time, a time of upheaval. I simply tried to express this upheaval in my own particular way' (Paul Delvaux quoted in the film Nächte ohne Lachen 1980, reproduced in Barbara Emerson, Delvaux, Antwerp, 1985, p. 97). The sketches and details outlined in this portfolio give a unique insight into the full complexity and detail of this memorable masterpiece.