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The first time I watched “Rosine” -an oil by the surrealist Belgian painter Paul Delvaux, from 1968- I said to myself “this tall, slim girl with the red hat and the fan looks very much like Ariel”. As a matter of fact, quite a few women in Delvaux’s paintings of the two last decades have a noticeable resemblance of my sister, but that one in “Rosine” was just ersatz (at least, seen -as is the case- from the side and a little from behind). – [You may see the complete painting in my second post on P. Delvaux over here.]
Not many of these young (perhaps teenaged) women wear such a distinctive red hat, however; only one as far as I’m aware of: the shiniest figure in “Hommage à Jules Verne”, from 1971. This one looks younger than Rosine, and is accompanied by a equally young boy and another girl (or boy?) in a second plane, turned backwards.
This painting was once regarded by Ariel herself, fancifully, as a “portrait de famille avant l’heure” (a family portrait before its time), figuring her, her partner and me. Now it makes me think, rather more, of an allegorical triple portrait of her at puberty (even if she never had much pubic hair -which was blond, aside of scanty- and her eyes were light grey). The ship on sea, at the left hand side, would represent departure, since she is physically gone now.
Because of it, and due to the symbolic position of magenta midway between blue and red, its extra-spectral nature and Ariel’s own taste for it, I have edited this painting’s colours to show magenta-hued skins:
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Here down is a larger fragment in its original colours:
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[You may also see the complete painting in my second post on P. Delvaux over here.]
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And now, to end this humble tribute to Ariel, I must add the header picture in full, since the design of this page does not allow a proper view:
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No unauthorised copying or redistribution. All Rights Reserved.
(Of course, the pictures of the original paintings by Delvaux are of public domain; not so my own edited versions.)
