Surrealist Lesbian Love (Les demoiselles de Tongres by Paul Delvaux)

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) Les demoiselles de Tongres.

Watercolour, gouache and pen and India ink on paper.

Dated 30 October 1961. 28¾ x 21½ inches – 73 x 54.5 cm

We see two main protagonists in an outdoor setting, both young women. They embrace each other.

The woman on the left is viewed from the back, her face unseen. She wears a black hat, a black lace necklace and a blue revealing dress open at the back exposing her back and the top of her buttocks. The other woman wears a red cloak kind of garment and a black hat with a bow. We can see her face.

We see an exposed breast from each woman. Both women are illuminated from an unseen light source. In the background on the left is a small classical-looking building with a lantern illuminating the façade. Behind the building is a silhouetted tree. On the right is a large tree with another silhouetted tree in the distance. A full moon shines through the outer branches of the large tree.

Tree leaves litter the floor.

This work is executed in watercolour, gouache, pen and Indian ink on paper. The painting is rapid and brash washes of paint with intense pen-work, notably in the treatment of the hair and the dense close meticulously detailed cross-hatching to describe the night sky which contrasts with the full moon that is white with light brown washes on the outer edges. The background is overlaid with black ink to describe the tree branches and leaves. The main trunk of the tree has washes of ink and brown and grey colour.

The close-cropped image and vertical format of the painting focus our gaze on a mysterious relationship that has an atmosphere of intensely deep intimacy with bared flesh and the erotic charge of lesbian love and passion. It oozes a strange surreal disconnected foreboding and emotional characteristics of the wider somnambulist works of Paul Delvaux. Love Art, Love Life. Talking Art with Paul Woods