Master Drawings New York

In this charcoal study, Suzanne Fabry presents a poised and contemplative female figure, modelled on her own likeness, holding an open book and rendered with the quiet monumentality characteristic of the artist’s mature period. The figure, depicted with an erect posture, steady gaze, and sculptural clarity, embodies Fabry’s interest in idealised form and psychological depth. Executed in charcoal, the drawing balances expressive line with a restrained tonal range, giving the figure a commanding stillness that resonates with her broader engagement with classical and allegorical subjects.

Created during the 1930s or early 1940s, the work belongs to Fabry’s most inventive and assured phase, when she consolidated the visual language shaped by her training under Jean Delville and Constant Montald at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Both mentors were leading proponents of L’art monumental, a movement that sought an elevated, culturally resonant art rooted in universal themes and idealised archetypes. Under their influence, and through the example of her father, the Symbolist painter Émile Fabry, Suzanne Fabry refined a style defined by lyrical serenity, formal equilibrium, and an engagement with timeless, often introspective figures.

This self portrait study reflects Fabry’s ongoing dialogue with the classical canon. Her stance; calm, frontal, dignified, recalls the composure of muses, sibyls, or allegorical personifications. The book she holds, gently cradled yet firmly secured, introduces a note of intellectual agency. Rather than presenting the female figure as passive or purely decorative, Fabry positions her as a bearer of knowledge. This shift aligns with the artist’s broader project of reimagining feminine archetypes through a modern, self aware lens.

A recurring strategy in Fabry’s work of this era was the incorporation of her own likeness into figures of women, sometimes multiplied, as in her triple self portraits, and sometimes subtly embedded within single protagonists, as in this case.