Suzanne Fabry - Seated Nude - Oil On Canvas

Born in Brussels in 1904, Suzanne Fabry was the daughter of the Belgian symbolist painter Émile Fabry (1865-1966). Her brother, Barthélémy, was born in 1898. Three years before Suzanne's birth, her father was appointed professor of drawing at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he had been a student in the 1880s, and she spent her childhood in his house-studio on Rue Verte (now Rue du Collège Saint-Michel, no. 6) in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a district in the south-east of Brussels. At the outbreak of the First World War, Suzanne Fabry moved with her family to England, first to Herefordshire and then to the town of St. Ives in Cornwall. Back in Brussels, the family returned to their house on Rue Verte and, in 1923, Suzanne enrolled as a student at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where her teachers included Jean Delville (1867-1953) and Constant Montald (1862-1944), two of the founders, with Suzanne's father, of the group "L'art monumental". Their aim was to produce art for the public sphere, monumental and rooted in the cultural tradition of the time, intended to raise public awareness through the representation of idealized and universal themes. Their imposing nudes would be an important source of inspiration for Suzanne's work. After graduating from the Académie in 1928, Suzanne began her career as a painter in the 1930s, participating in the Triennial Salon in Antwerp (1930) and the Quadrennial Salon in Liège (1931). At the same time, her father completed a cycle of large paintings for the entrance and staircase of the Brussels opera, La Monnaie, where, many years later, Suzanne and her husband Edmond Delescluze (1905-1993) would be employed as costume designer and set designer respectively, a collaboration that began in 1948 and is evidenced by more than 900 sketches and models now preserved in the archives of La Monnaie. She would continue her career as a painter, alongside her work as head of the opera's costume workshop, until her death in 1985. In 1976, a retrospective of her work was given at the L'Écuyer gallery in Brussels. References: Georges Mayer, "Suzanne Fabry", in Éliane De Wilde (preface), The dictionary of Belgian painters from the 14th century to the present day from the first masters of the former Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège to contemporary artists, vol. 1, Brussels, La Renaissance du Livre, 1995, p. 429. - Paul Piron, Dictionary of Belgian visual artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, vol. 1, Ohain, Art in Belgium, p. 560.