Your art history post for today: by Suzanne Fabry (1904-1985), Triple Self-Portrait, 1934, oil on canvas, 77.5 x 89.5 cm (30½ by 35¼ inches, photo: Sotheby’s Paris, March 2023. #WomensHistoryMonth #womanartist #womenartists #art #painting #oilpainting

The catalogue note: “Suzanne Fabry was the daughter of the Symbolist painter Emile Fabry (1865–1966) and was immersed from her early childhood in an artistic environment. Her father’s many friends became her teachers: Jean Delville, Constant Montald, Fernand Khnopff and Victor Horta. Although she was not herself a Symbolist painter, she was possessed of a lyrical and dreamlike temperament and a very distinctive sensibility, especially evident in her portraits.

Between 1932 and 1934, Suzanne Fabry produced several canvases in which her face is depicted in multiples. This was not simply a question of presenting herself to the viewer, or even to herself, frontally and in profile, nor of experimenting with the art of portraiture, in which she excelled, but rather of a deeper self-examination, marked by a piercing, investigative gaze and an absence of complacency.

The Triple Self Portrait focuses less on an analysis of her incisive gaze. Here, the eyes are turned towards some other, unspecified place, lost in the distance or modestly lowered. The hand gestures are equally revealing, suggesting that the artist is protecting, controlling or restraining herself. Suzanne Fabry had a very gentle nature, calm but rarely smiling. At thirty years old, this young woman was in full artistic bloom yet retained a certain reserve.”