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Lot Essay
The figure of the courtesan is a favourite motif in Delvaux's art. Delvaux used the figure of the nude woman repeatedly in his art as a way of introducing, the eroticism, mystery and structure of the figure as a purely pictorial device that lent a brightness to the work where and when he felt it was needed. The deliberate and often mystery-enhancing contrast of the nude with an intricate, stage-set like architectural background formed one of the basic structures on which his painting was built. "The nudes", Delvaux was often keen to point out, participate in his paintings "purely as a presence without any particular role. They form part of the pictorial structure, the aim of which is purely poetic, they are active only in the lyrical sense; they have no mission in the picture beyond that of the poetic." (Jacques Meuris/Paul Delvaux : Sept Dialogues Brussels, 1987, pp. 22 and 58 ) At the same time it is chiefly the nude female, not the male, that Delvaux uses and around which he weaves his pictorial enigmas. This was primarily because of the eroticism and the enigma of desire that is contained within the figure of the female nude. "Without eroticism" Delvaux told Jacques Meuris, "I would find painting impossible. The painting of the nude in particular. A nude is erotic - even when indifferent, when glacial. What else would it be? The eroticism of my work resides in its evocation of youth and desire".(quoted in 7 dialogues avec Paul Delvaux accompanés de 7 lettres imaginaires, Jacques Meuris , Paris, Le Soleil Noir,1971, p. 42,112.)
In Les courtisanes rouges (The Red Courtesans) Delvaux uses the figure of several female nudes to tell a strange pictorial story. Delvaux identifies his nudes as courtesans by adorning them with the kind of elaborate turn-of-the-century head-gear worn by the central nude in this painting. This combination of elaborate decoration and naked flesh, along with the often sharp features and direct gaze of the woman's face, has its origins in a celebrated group of sixteenth century paintings from the school of Fontainbleau with which Delvaux was familiar. Here, such finery is augmented by the elaborate 19th Century interior which these strange muse-like figures inhabit.
With its deep red carpeted floor and its rich neoclassical paneling, this formal interior is lent the appearance of a harem by the presence of the nude figures. The central three characters appear, like the three graces of antiquity, to be representing different aspects. With one fixing her hair in the mirror, the central figure, offering the spectator a rose and the third forlornly hugging a pillar, they seem to represent the past, present and future of some romantic story - a story that is perhaps yet to take place, for overall, there is a pervasive atmosphere of both waiting and of expectation generated by the work. The chief cause of this is the strangely posed seated nude to the right of the picture and her skeletal mirror-image sitting beside her. Delvaux had first begun to incorporate skeletons into his work in the 1940s, but, as with his use of the nude, they were not intended to symbolise or represent any single idea or meaning but were rather, mere pictorial elements used to impregnate the work with a sense of poetry. "I was attracted" to the skeleton, he said, "because primarily it is a structure. Then it is life. It is life in essence after all. A skeleton is the frame of the living creature. A frame is important and the extraordinary thing is that this frame already preserves within it the general outline of the living creature, the form of the bones, the hip, the tibia, the fibula, you can feel the shape of the arms (for example) when you see a skeleton's arms." (Paul Delvaux speaking in Paul Delvaux; the Sleepwalker of Saint Idesbald, a film by Adrian Maben.)
At the centre of this painting with its parade of silent, waiting, figures, seemingly sleepwalking in some hypnotic trance-like state that isolates them and makes them unaware of each other, is an enigma, one here represented by the view of a carefully manicured garden extending endlessly towards the horizon. Using a device common in his art Delvaux deliberately leaves it uncertain as to whether this vista is real or artificial. Its presence at the centre of the work however is a vital part in generating the sense of the passage of time, of a journey that somehow this parade of naked women also articulates.
"I do not feel the need to give a temporal explanation to what I do," Delvaux has said, " neither do I feel the need to account for the human subjects who exist only for the purpose of painting. These figures recount no history: they are." (cited in ibid., p. 22.)
In Les courtisanes rouges (The Red Courtesans) Delvaux uses the figure of several female nudes to tell a strange pictorial story. Delvaux identifies his nudes as courtesans by adorning them with the kind of elaborate turn-of-the-century head-gear worn by the central nude in this painting. This combination of elaborate decoration and naked flesh, along with the often sharp features and direct gaze of the woman's face, has its origins in a celebrated group of sixteenth century paintings from the school of Fontainbleau with which Delvaux was familiar. Here, such finery is augmented by the elaborate 19th Century interior which these strange muse-like figures inhabit.
With its deep red carpeted floor and its rich neoclassical paneling, this formal interior is lent the appearance of a harem by the presence of the nude figures. The central three characters appear, like the three graces of antiquity, to be representing different aspects. With one fixing her hair in the mirror, the central figure, offering the spectator a rose and the third forlornly hugging a pillar, they seem to represent the past, present and future of some romantic story - a story that is perhaps yet to take place, for overall, there is a pervasive atmosphere of both waiting and of expectation generated by the work. The chief cause of this is the strangely posed seated nude to the right of the picture and her skeletal mirror-image sitting beside her. Delvaux had first begun to incorporate skeletons into his work in the 1940s, but, as with his use of the nude, they were not intended to symbolise or represent any single idea or meaning but were rather, mere pictorial elements used to impregnate the work with a sense of poetry. "I was attracted" to the skeleton, he said, "because primarily it is a structure. Then it is life. It is life in essence after all. A skeleton is the frame of the living creature. A frame is important and the extraordinary thing is that this frame already preserves within it the general outline of the living creature, the form of the bones, the hip, the tibia, the fibula, you can feel the shape of the arms (for example) when you see a skeleton's arms." (Paul Delvaux speaking in Paul Delvaux; the Sleepwalker of Saint Idesbald, a film by Adrian Maben.)
At the centre of this painting with its parade of silent, waiting, figures, seemingly sleepwalking in some hypnotic trance-like state that isolates them and makes them unaware of each other, is an enigma, one here represented by the view of a carefully manicured garden extending endlessly towards the horizon. Using a device common in his art Delvaux deliberately leaves it uncertain as to whether this vista is real or artificial. Its presence at the centre of the work however is a vital part in generating the sense of the passage of time, of a journey that somehow this parade of naked women also articulates.
"I do not feel the need to give a temporal explanation to what I do," Delvaux has said, " neither do I feel the need to account for the human subjects who exist only for the purpose of painting. These figures recount no history: they are." (cited in ibid., p. 22.)