Further images
Susanne Fabry was an early 20th-century painter whose work formed a gentle bridge between traditional European realism and the growing modernist movements of her era. Born in 1904, she came of age at a moment when artists were redefining how emotion, memory, and lived experience could appear on canvas; an atmosphere that subtly shaped her own visual language.
Fabry’s earliest paintings reveal an artist drawn to quiet human moments and the poetry of the everyday. She favoured scenes of domestic life, contemplative portraits, and glimpses of city streets, all rendered with a calm, observing eye. Her colours tended toward soft neutrals set off by selective bursts of brightness, suggesting an early interest in using light not merely to illuminate forms but to convey mood. Although she worked within the boundaries of representational art, her slight shifts in proportion and perspective hinted at her awareness of modernist experimentation.
By the late 1920s and 1930s, Fabry’s style had grown more assured. Her paintings carried a sense of pause; an ability to hold onto fleeting impressions and translate them into balanced, thoughtful compositions. These early explorations laid the groundwork for the more reflective and distilled approach she developed later in her career.
While she never tied herself to any single artistic movement, Fabry’s work can be seen as part of the broader conversation that defined European art in the first half of the century. Her early pieces remain notable for their subtle emotional depth and their quiet, steady engagement with the changing artistic landscape around her.
Provenance
The artist’s estate; by descent in 1985 to her husband,Edmond Delescluze (1905–1993), and thereafter bequeathed to,
the Miseur-Recourt family, Brussels, 1993 to 2024