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Lot Essay
In Paul Delvaux’s epic 1942 painting, Le Temple, a Greco-Roman monument rises up against a vast and cloudless blue sky, cresting the apex of a rocky promontory, its colonnaded edifice luminous in the bright sunlight. The eponymous ancient structure is enthroned between a large female figure, posed on a tower of stones with her cheek cupped in her hand, and two silvery sculptures—one elevated on a plinth, while the other stands before her, head bowed and palm open, as if in supplication. In the foreground of this monumental canvas, a solitary, semi-nude, female figure stands on the gleaming flagstones. Her hair and lower body are veiled in drapes of celadon fabric which is embroidered with gold detailing, glittering resplendently in the intense glare of the sun. In the distance, leaning on the Doric columns of the temple, appear three other women. Here, a figure in similarly classical-inspired drapery extends a garland of pink blossoms over a reclining nude, as a woman mysteriously emerges from the shadows of the temple portico, the modest formality of her fashionable twentieth-century dress startling in comparison.
Fascinated by antiquity, Delvaux later recalled that Classical subjects had been the only lessons of any interest to him during his school days. He recollected that the impassioned introduction he received to the poetry of Virgil and Ovid from a “kind of learned man… touched me to the point of awakening something in me. That was in some way the moment of truth. After that, this taste for antiquity was transformed—Egypt, Greece and Rome all ended up as a sort of mixture for me” (quoted in M. Jacob, “Ecouter Paul Delvaux” in Paul Delvaux peintures-dessins, 1922-1982, Paris, 1991, p. 25). Le Temple embodies such a coalescence of antique cultures, the resulting temporal anachronism amplifying the hypnotic strangeness of the realm Delvaux depicts. The pose of the left-most figure is reminiscent of an Egyptian sphinx, while her angular features and hairstyle resemble Archaic Greek kore sculptures, which are similarly evoked by the striking rigid postures of the statues on the right. Standing in the foreground of the scene, the protagonist’s style of dress, along with her proffered palm, are redolent of late Minoan wall paintings, the discoveries of which, at the turn of the century had garnered major attention in newspapers and scholarship.
The nude female, who reclines on the temple steps with her hand thrown back over her head, is highly evocative of the Roman “Sleeping Ariadne” sculptural type, a motif which had similarly captivated Giorgio de Chirico. Delvaux was profoundly moved by De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, which favored Neoclassical architecture, pronouncing him the “poet of emptiness… because he suggested that poem of silence and absence” (quoted in M. Rombaut, Delvaux, Barcelona, 1990, p. 14). It was after Delvaux’s discovery of De Chirico and his otherworldly, melancholic spaces in the second half of the 1930s, that the artist began to hone his own mature style, creating powerfully evocative liminal spaces, such as Le Temple.
In the present composition, the cinematic nature and ethereality of the scene is intensified by the theatrical lighting and compositional structure of the view, inspired by the use of perspective in the città ideale paintings of the Italian Renaissance. The crisp lines of the shadows on the flagstones, as well as those of the Doric columns on the inner wall of the temple, create a stark contrast with the dazzling brightness of the light as it radiates off the white stone and the foremost figure’s skin and clothes. At the same time, Delvaux enhances the mystery of the work, conflating the boundary between stone and flesh so that women and statuary resemble each other in their poised, composed stances.
In the artist’s 1965 account of his travels around Greece, he wrote about how he found himself enchanted by each and every ancient site he visited. Though he was always in awe of the beauty of its ruined state, Delvaux would often envision the temple or building as it might have been. He remarked of the Parthenon in Athens: “one can spend long hours on the site evoking distant dreams” (“On Voyage to Greece” in exh. cat., op. cit., 2009, pp. 42-43). Le Temple is an illustration of such a fantasy—here, it as if the ruins and relics of former epochs are in the process of coming back to life before our very eyes. Acquired by the present owners in 1984, this is the first time in its history that the painting has come to auction.
Fascinated by antiquity, Delvaux later recalled that Classical subjects had been the only lessons of any interest to him during his school days. He recollected that the impassioned introduction he received to the poetry of Virgil and Ovid from a “kind of learned man… touched me to the point of awakening something in me. That was in some way the moment of truth. After that, this taste for antiquity was transformed—Egypt, Greece and Rome all ended up as a sort of mixture for me” (quoted in M. Jacob, “Ecouter Paul Delvaux” in Paul Delvaux peintures-dessins, 1922-1982, Paris, 1991, p. 25). Le Temple embodies such a coalescence of antique cultures, the resulting temporal anachronism amplifying the hypnotic strangeness of the realm Delvaux depicts. The pose of the left-most figure is reminiscent of an Egyptian sphinx, while her angular features and hairstyle resemble Archaic Greek kore sculptures, which are similarly evoked by the striking rigid postures of the statues on the right. Standing in the foreground of the scene, the protagonist’s style of dress, along with her proffered palm, are redolent of late Minoan wall paintings, the discoveries of which, at the turn of the century had garnered major attention in newspapers and scholarship.
The nude female, who reclines on the temple steps with her hand thrown back over her head, is highly evocative of the Roman “Sleeping Ariadne” sculptural type, a motif which had similarly captivated Giorgio de Chirico. Delvaux was profoundly moved by De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, which favored Neoclassical architecture, pronouncing him the “poet of emptiness… because he suggested that poem of silence and absence” (quoted in M. Rombaut, Delvaux, Barcelona, 1990, p. 14). It was after Delvaux’s discovery of De Chirico and his otherworldly, melancholic spaces in the second half of the 1930s, that the artist began to hone his own mature style, creating powerfully evocative liminal spaces, such as Le Temple.
In the present composition, the cinematic nature and ethereality of the scene is intensified by the theatrical lighting and compositional structure of the view, inspired by the use of perspective in the città ideale paintings of the Italian Renaissance. The crisp lines of the shadows on the flagstones, as well as those of the Doric columns on the inner wall of the temple, create a stark contrast with the dazzling brightness of the light as it radiates off the white stone and the foremost figure’s skin and clothes. At the same time, Delvaux enhances the mystery of the work, conflating the boundary between stone and flesh so that women and statuary resemble each other in their poised, composed stances.
In the artist’s 1965 account of his travels around Greece, he wrote about how he found himself enchanted by each and every ancient site he visited. Though he was always in awe of the beauty of its ruined state, Delvaux would often envision the temple or building as it might have been. He remarked of the Parthenon in Athens: “one can spend long hours on the site evoking distant dreams” (“On Voyage to Greece” in exh. cat., op. cit., 2009, pp. 42-43). Le Temple is an illustration of such a fantasy—here, it as if the ruins and relics of former epochs are in the process of coming back to life before our very eyes. Acquired by the present owners in 1984, this is the first time in its history that the painting has come to auction.