
Thomas Seaman
Specialist, Head of Sale
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£8,000 - £12,000
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Specialist, Head of Sale
Provenance
Private collection, Belgium.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 31 January 2020, lot 491.
Literature
Jacqueline Guisset, Emile Fabry: 1865-1966, Antwerp, 2005, no. 55, p. 50, illustrated.
Known principally as a Symbolist painter, Emile Fabry was born in Verviers, in Eastern Belgium. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Brussels, under the influential Orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels. He exhibited his work at the Salon de la Rose + Croix, alongside painters such as Jean Delville and Fernand Khnopff. One of Fabry's most famous works are the decorative mosaics for the Cinquantenaire in Brussels.
During the first World War, Fabry fled to St Ives, where he would live and work until the end of the conflict. During this period, he was commissioned by Robert Windsor-Clive, Lord Plymouth, to produce work for the Entrance Hall of University College, Cardiff. One work, La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace), a monumental work designed to sit above an arched entrance, was ultimately rejected (see Sotheby's, Paris, 19 June 2024, lot 124).
The present lot, completed circa 1919, continues the artist's fascination with the themes of War and Peace. Here, Fabry gives honour to the soldiers killed at the Battle of Verdun, with Victory stretching her arms towards a helmet filled with flowers and flags of Europe. For an interesting compositional comparison to the present lot, see also War (1914) in the collection of Museum Wales, (NMW A 1689).