Paul Delvaux (1897 – 1994) 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.
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"
A recurring theme in Delvaux’s work is nude women, incongruously reclining or wandering silently through classical buildings or train stations, combined with motifs such as skeletons and other unexpected objects. Deeply indebted to the works of Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte, Delvaux’s scenes are characterized by long shadows, oppressive atmospheres, and unsettling juxtapositions. Of de Chirico’s influence, Delvaux once said, “With him I realized what was possible, the climate that had to be developed, the climate of silent streets with shadows of people who can’t be seen.”
Delvaux was born in Antheit 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. His birthplace house would later be destroyed by fire, in 1940.
His father was Jean Delvaux, a prosperous barrister at the Court of Appeal in Brussels. His 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 works, 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 of some scenic vistas.[
On a family vacation in Zeebrugge in 1919, he met by chance the painter Franz Courtens. Upon seeing some of the watercolor landscapes Delvaux had painted, Courtens told the parents, "Your son has talent and has a great future in front of him". Courtens encouraged the failed student to return to the Académie to study painting, and the parents finally acquiesced to this plan.
In 1919, Delvaux returned and studied with decorative painter Constant Montald (a former student of Puvis de Chavannes), and other teachers. The painter Alfred Bastien and symbolist painter Jean Delville also encouraged Delvaux, whose works from this period were primarily naturalistic landscapes.[18] During 1920–1921, he also performed his mandatory military service as a minor logistics clerk, while studying with Delville at the Académie
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Paul Delvaux or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| Paul Delvaux |
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| Girls, circa 1929 |
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| Les belles de nuit (Comédie du soir ou La comédie), circa 1936 |
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| Woman in a Cave, circa 1936 |
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| (L’aurore), circa 1937 |
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| The Joy of Life, circa 1937 |
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| Phases of the Moon, circa 1939 |
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| The Man in the Street, circa 1940 |
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| The Village of the Mermaids, circa 1942 |
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| Skeletons in an office, circa 1944 |
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| The Annunciation, circa 1955 |
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| Nuit de Noël, circa 1956 (detail) |
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| Loneliness, circa 1956 |
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| The Focus Tombs, circa 1957 |
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| Small Train Station at Night, circa 1959 |
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| Station Forestiere, circa 1960 |
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| All the lights, circa 1962 |
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| The Wise Virgins, circa 1965 |
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| The Blue Sofa, circa 1967 |
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| The Lady of Loos, circa 1969 |
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| The Office of Evening, circa 1971 |
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| Tribute to Jules Verne, circa 1971 |
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| Ruins of Selinunte, circa 1973 |
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| The Visit to Ephesus, circa 1973 |
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| Dialogue, circa 1974 |
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| L'imperatrice, circa 1974 |
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| Night Sea, circa 1976 |
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| 1977 The Next, circa 1977 |
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| The Tunnel, circa 1978 |
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| Messaging, circa 1980 |
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