Paul Delvaux
Belgian, 1897-1994

The Village of the Mermaids, 1942

Oil on panel
41 1/16 x 48 7/8 in. (104.3 x 124.1 cm)
Signed and dated, l.r.: "P.DELVAUX/ 4-42"
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice E. Culberg, 1951.73

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, "Paul Delvaux,"
16 December 1944–14 January 1945, no. 26, as
Village des sirènes.

London, Redfern Gallery, 1946.

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery,"Twentieth-Century Young Masters," 24 April–20 May 1950.

Chicago, Arts Club, "Surrealism Then and Now," 1–30 October 1958, no. 14.

Mechelen, Belgium, Centre Culturel, 1960.

St. Louis, Washington University, Steinberg Hall,
2–29 April 1962.

San Francisco Museum of Art, "Man: Glory, Jest,
and Riddle: A Survey of Human Form through the
Ages," 10 November 1964–3 January 1965, no.
243.

Publication History

Cahiers d’Art 19 (1944), p. 230.

René Gaffé, Paul Delvaux ou les rêves éveillés (Brussels, 1945), pl. 14.

Camille Goemans, "Paul Delvaux," Horizon 13,
no. 73 (1946), ill. opp. p. 32.

Claude Spaak, Paul Delvaux, Monographies de l’art belge, 2nd series, 6 (1948), pl. 9.

Emile Langui, Paul Delvaux (Venice, 1949), p. 13, pl. 22.

"Chicago’s Fabulous Collectors," Life 33, no. 17
(1952), p. 97.

Sidney Janis Gallery, Fifth Anniversary Exhibition (New York, 1953), no. 9 (ill.), n.p.

Charles J. Rolo, "Twelve Artists: A Perspective of
the Modernists," Atlantic Monthly 193, no. 4 (1954), p. 149 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture
Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 124.

Paul Aloise de Block, Paul Delvaux: Der Mensch,
der Maler (Hamburg, 1965), p. 61, pl. 16.

Paul Aloise de Bock, Paul Delvaux: L’Homme, le
peintre, psychologie d’un art (Brussels, 1967),
p. 115, pl. 51.

William Rubin, Dada and Surrealist Art (New York, 1968), pp. 315, 318, 481, fig. 332.

John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (New
York, 1970), p. 273 (ill.).

Antoine Terrasse, Paul Delvaux (Chicago, 1973),
pp. 14–15 (ill.).

Sidney Janis Gallery, Twenty-Five Years of Janis, part 1 (New York, 1973), fig. 125.

Michel Butor, Jean Clair, and Suzanne Houbart-Wilkin, Delvaux (Brussels, 1975), p. 194, no. 115.

A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell,
Twentieth-Century European Paintings (Chicago,
1980), p. 38, pl. 1E3.

Barbara Emerson, Delvaux (Antwerp, 1985), p. 106 (ill.).

Jacques Sojcher, Delvaux ou la passion puérile
(Paris, 1991), pp. 158–59 (ill.).

Ann K. Finkbeiner, "A Matter of Choices: Memoirs
of a Female Physicist [Book Review]," Sciences
34, no. 5 (1994), p. 43 (ill.).

Larry Smolucha, The Visual Arts Companion
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1996), p. 202, fig
5.104, as Avenue of the Mermaids.

Ownership History

Théo Léger, Brussels, probably 1942 to at least 1946 [memo, Feb. 20, 2003, in curatorial file; and Goemans 1946]. Claude Spaak (1904–1985), Paris and Choiseul, France [letter from Sidney Janis Gallery, Jan. 22, 1975]. Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, by 1948 [Spaak 1948]. Maurice E. Culberg, Chicago, 1951; given to the Art Institute, 1951.