Upon the advent of the First World War and the subsequent invasion of Belgium by German forces, a young Suzanne Fabry was forced to flee to England along with her father, the renowned Symbolist painter Émile Fabry. Having spent t.mes in Herefordshire and St Ives, the family returned to Brussels at the end of the conflict, where Fabry’s upbringing continued to be influenced by the political turmoil and ideological upheaval that defined the earlier part of the twentieth century.

Later deciding to become an artist herself, Autoportrait was painted in 1932, in the years following Fabry’s graduation from the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. A relatively early work by Fabry, this monumental self-portrait nevertheless depicts an artist who is fully confident in her skills and assured of her own sense of artistic identity. Influenced by her father’s symbolist tendencies, Fabry was never overshadowed by his legacy. Using her own distinctive style, she went on to create an enigmatic body of work which was dominated by assured yet dream-like portraiture and subtle interrogations of the female form in the post-war environment.

This current work recalls classical depictions of female beauty, whilst also calling them in to question. The slight contortion of Fabry’s limbs suggests a certain artifice to the pose, whilst her direct gaze and the prominent positioning of her brush reinforce a sense of authority that pre-emptively rejects any attempt to perceive the sitter as a mere aesthetic object. The stripped-back composition further emphasises the sitter’s commanding presence, whilst also drawing focus to the intricacies of her clothing, this delicate rendering of fabric recalling Fabry’s later prolific output as cost.mes designer for the Belgian national opera house, La Monnaie. Taking the dual role of artist and muse, Fabry creates a self-portrait that examines the viewer as much as they examine the work itself, and it is through such confrontations that Fabry’s inimitable skill as a portraitist truly shines.