Theophile Pierre Wagner

'Vague Lumineuse' (Luminescent Wave) — Late 19th Century Surrealism

c. 1895

Benton Spruance, 'Girl with Hands to Face', two-color lithograph, 1940, edition 30, Fine and Looney 180. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Ed. 30' in pencil. A superb impression, on cr...

Boris Lovet-Lorski, Untitled (Nude with Geometric Forms), lithograph, edition 250, 1929. Signed and numbered 8 in pencil. Number 8 of Volume 1, a series of 10 lithographs published b...

’The Dance’ By Paul Delvaux Medium - Lithograph Edition - 8/75 Signed - Yes Size - 360mm x 460mm Date - 1969 Condition - Excellent. 10 out of 10. Colour of print may not be accurate when viewed on a monitor. Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter noted for his dream-like scenes of women, classical architecture, trains and train stations, and skeletons, often in combination. He is often considered a surrealist, although he only briefly identified with the Surrealist movement. He was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, but developed his own fantastical subjects and hyper-realistic styling, combining the detailed classical beauty of academic painting with the bizarre juxtapositions of surrealism. Throughout his long career, Delvaux explored "Nude and skeleton, the clothed and the unclothed, male and female, desire and horror, eroticism and death – Delvaux's major anxieties in fact, and the greater themes of his later work. Delvaux was born on 23 September 1897 in Antheit (now part of Wanze) in the Belgian province of Liège. His parents lived in Brussels, but his mother went to her own mother's home to have her first child. The birthplace house would later be destroyed by fire, in 1940. The father was Jean Delvaux, a prosperous barrister at the Court of Appeal Brussels. The mother was the musician Laure Jamotte, who became a strong, dominant presence in his life, directing, controlling, and repressing his childhood and adolescent desires. The young Delvaux studied Greek and Latin, and absorbed the fiction of Jules Verne and the poetry of Homer's Odyssey. His artwork was to be greatly influenced by these readings, starting with his earliest drawings showing mythological scenes. His music lessons were conducted in the school's museum room, where a human skeleton in a glass cabinet was always present. From 1910 to 1916, he studied Classics at the Atheneum of Saint-Gilles, where he was a middling or average student. Upon his graduation, his parents got him an office job with a shipping company in Brussels. It was soon evident that he had no skills or interests in business or law, and he was grudgingly allowed to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts despite his ambition to become a painter. In 1916, he started at the Académie, initially learning the basics of architecture and perspective drawing. He was then disqualified due to his weakness in mathematics, and dropped out after his first year Delvaux was worried about his future career, and passed the time by copying postcards. His mother advised him to paint from nature, and in 1919 he produced his first watercolors, some scenic vistas. On a family vacation in Zeebrugge in 1919, he met by chance the painter Franz Courtens...

Three women. 9/50., Paper, etching, 23x58 cm