The Lady of Loos 1969

Paul Delvaux painted 'The Lady of Loos' in oils with this wonderfully thin almost transparent application of paint. It’s so smooth, it's like he's trying to hide the fact that it's a painting at all. I love how the colour feels both real and unreal at the same time. Take for example the flesh tones of the figure, these are almost translucent, built up with layers of subtle washes, and there's this uncanny feeling of watching something emerge slowly, as if by a photographic process. The brushstrokes are really understated, yet they describe this very definite form. The way he's handled the white cloth is so strange, its draped across the figure almost like a ghostly afterthought. It’s a painting about painting. It reminds me of some of the earlier surrealist painters like de Chirico, this uncanny combination of dream and reality, but with a touch of something very human and vulnerable.