Night Train 1947

Paul Delvaux conjured this odd scene, Night Train, with oils on canvas. I can imagine him in his studio, a world of quiet concentration, the smell of oil paint, and the soft scratching of brush against canvas. It's like the act of painting becomes a kind of meditation. The palette is muted, full of earth tones, punctuated by the cool blue wall and the warm glow of the chandelier. The brushstrokes are gentle, giving the scene a dreamlike quality. I wonder what Delvaux was thinking as he worked, carefully placing each figure in this strange, theatrical space? The train in the background is a phantom and the women are ghostly apparitions, but there is something about the detail that lends the whole scene a weight of reality. What are these women thinking? What is behind the unseeing stare? We can only guess, but that is the joy of painting: to open a space of uncertainty where nothing is fixed and all is possible.