The Awakening of the Forest

<p>Paul Delvaux painted <em>The Awakening of the Forest</em> in the late 1930s, after having adopted Surrealism as a visual language to give form to his inner world—one populated with childhood memories and fantasy. For this monumental painting, the artist transformed an episode from Jules Verne’s <em>Journey to the Center of the Earth</em> (1864), in which Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel discover a prehistoric forest deep inside the earth. Delvaux showed the professor at left, examining a rock or fossil; behind him stands Axel, who bears a striking resemblance to the artist himself. Under a full moon, a group of women in the background appear like automatons. In the foreground, several figures combine human and vegetal elements; these ambiguous figures seem to embody a primordial, as yet undifferentiated, state. A woman in the right foreground and another in the left middle ground, both in Victorian dress, hold lamps and try in a vain to shed light on the unyielding mystery of the scene. Despite the multitude of naked figures and their detailed description, <em>The Awakening of the Forest</em> retains a detachment that adds to its strange and mysterious effect.</p> <p>This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. <a href="https://www.artic.edu/the-winterbotham-collection">Click here to learn more about the collection.</a></p>