Christie's is expecting multimillion euro sales from its auction in London on Wednesday 5 March of three paintings by Belgian surrealist pioneer Paul Delvaux. The works have been hidden from view for decades.
The three masterpieces – 'Les belles de nuit' (1936; estimate: €600,000-€1.2m), 'La ville endormie' (1938; estimate: €1.45m-€2.2m), and 'Nuit de Noël' (1956; estimate: €1.2m-€2.4m) – are said to epitomise Delvaux's signature blend of lyricism and melancholia.
The highlights of Christie's The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, the three works spent more than 30 years in a Christie's warehouse in London, seen only by the unnamed owner, who died last year. "He was totally passionate about Delvaux and only Delvaux," says Olivier Camu, Christie's Deputy Chairperson.
"He would come and visit them once in a while, spend a long time looking at them and discussing with me, and then go away happy and come back to start again only a few years later."
'La ville endormie', from Delvaux's series of cityscapes, is described as a haunting vision of nude and semi-clothed female figures, bathed in soft moonlight amidst the ruins of a dreamlike city featuring implausibly juxtaposed architectural styles.
'La ville endormie' (Left) and 'Les belles de nuit' (Right).
'Les belles de nuit' was once owned by Surrealism patron Edward James, who displayed the painting at Monkton House in West Sussex in southern England. The house's neoclassical architecture echoed the work's surreal blend of antiquity and modernity.
'Nuit de Noël' portrays a serene and dreamlike scene of a young girl at an urban train station, bathed in the silvery glow of a full moon, painted while Delvaux was a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art et d'Architecture in Brussels.
'A testament to his enduring legacy'
The sale comes at the end of the Surrealist centenary celebrations – André Breton's first Surrealist manifesto was published in the autumn of 1924 – and the three works have not been seen in museum exhibitions since the 1970s.
Camu says the paintings capture pivotal moments in Delvaux's career. "They are from the best years of his oeuvre and stand as a testament to his enduring legacy within the Surrealist movement," he says.
"There are so many stories in these paintings, with influences from world history and the history of architecture, the influence of Giorgio de Chirico whose work he became acquainted with in the late 1920s, the influence of Renaissance painting and other old master painters which he 'Surrealised,'" he says.
"You stand in front of 'La ville endormie' and there are dozens of things to look at: vignettes, details, fun things and anachronistic juxtaposition of architecture of totally different periods: archaic, Roman, Greek, Babylonian, 18th century Brussels, etc."
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Delvaux, who died in 1994 at the age of 96, was born in Wanze, near Huy. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and was inspired by Surrealists such as Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, and Salvador Dalí but kept his distance from them. He incorporated dreamlike, fantastical images into his paintings, including naked women and corpses – with death gaining more prominence in his art during the Nazi invasion of Belgium.
Delvaux's current auction record was for his 1936 work 'Le Miroir', sold by Sotheby's London for €10.1 million. However, it is still a long way off the record set by a Surrealist painting: last November, Magritte's 'L'empire des lumières' ('The Empire of Light') fetched $121.16 million (€114 million).
Last week, La Boverie museum in Liège held a nighttime naked visit to its exhibition The Worlds of Paul Delvaux. It aimed to allow visitors to "experience art from a new perspective."
