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Lot Essay
A forest full of naked figures, most of them female-- are these the bathers of Titian and Cézanne? Or are they stranger, more alien nymphs? Painted in 1928, Les filles de la forêt dates from the very year that Delvaux first began to explore what would become his most famous theme, the female nude. It therefore dates from the formative years during which he was beginning to touch upon the strange poetry that lends his works their engaging potency. Les filles de la forêt is permeated with a sense of mystery that anticipates his Surreal pictures. While in his own statements Delvaux claimed that his first Surreal picture was painted in 1934, the fact that sleeping Venuses and other similar themes had featured in his works for several years shows that the process was slower, and that it began much earlier. Indeed, the initial epiphany that would ultimately lead to Delvaux' exploration of the surreal was his discovery of the Pittura Metafisica of Giorgio de Chirico, several years before Les filles de la forêt was painted.
While Les filles de la forêt shares little in terms of visible content with de Chirico, it nonetheless shares an affinity in its use of strange juxtapositions that seem to teeter on the brink of our understanding, of elements from the everyday world given a new context that introduces an atmosphere that is faintly discomforting. In a sense, Delvaux has used a de Chirico-like recipe in order to evoke his own unique insight into the unusual and the uncanny. For this scene, littered with serious-faced yet frolicking female figures, has overtones of the ritual, as though there was some hieratic purpose behind their actions. The impression that the orgy in the background is somehow a part of some strange ceremony, that we are being granted a privileged yet perhaps stolen glance at a world of arcane activity, is heightened by the presence of the two women in the foreground. The confrontational gaze of the left-hand figure engages the viewer with a directness that speaks of authority, of certainty, of the logic and rightness of the happenings within the world of the picture. And in the slight smile that plays across her lips, Les filles de la forêt hints that for the people in their realm, enlightenment of some form lies within their grasp.
The art historical importance of Les filles de la forêt is reflected in the extensive list of exhibitions in which it featured, and is likewise matched by its links to Belgian history: this picture was formerly in the collection of Paul-Henri Spaak, a classmate of Delvaux who later came to be the Belgian Prime Minister both before and after the Second World War. He also participated prominently in the government-in-exile. His brother, Claude Spaak, was one of the foremost supporters and patrons of Belgian Surrealism, a great friend of Magritte, and accumulated an impressive array of works by both that painter and Delvaux.
While Les filles de la forêt shares little in terms of visible content with de Chirico, it nonetheless shares an affinity in its use of strange juxtapositions that seem to teeter on the brink of our understanding, of elements from the everyday world given a new context that introduces an atmosphere that is faintly discomforting. In a sense, Delvaux has used a de Chirico-like recipe in order to evoke his own unique insight into the unusual and the uncanny. For this scene, littered with serious-faced yet frolicking female figures, has overtones of the ritual, as though there was some hieratic purpose behind their actions. The impression that the orgy in the background is somehow a part of some strange ceremony, that we are being granted a privileged yet perhaps stolen glance at a world of arcane activity, is heightened by the presence of the two women in the foreground. The confrontational gaze of the left-hand figure engages the viewer with a directness that speaks of authority, of certainty, of the logic and rightness of the happenings within the world of the picture. And in the slight smile that plays across her lips, Les filles de la forêt hints that for the people in their realm, enlightenment of some form lies within their grasp.
The art historical importance of Les filles de la forêt is reflected in the extensive list of exhibitions in which it featured, and is likewise matched by its links to Belgian history: this picture was formerly in the collection of Paul-Henri Spaak, a classmate of Delvaux who later came to be the Belgian Prime Minister both before and after the Second World War. He also participated prominently in the government-in-exile. His brother, Claude Spaak, was one of the foremost supporters and patrons of Belgian Surrealism, a great friend of Magritte, and accumulated an impressive array of works by both that painter and Delvaux.