The box set

Description of the artwork

Realised in 1925, this elegant female figure fully belongs to Walter Sauer’s corpus of the interwar period, a time when the artist developed a pictorial language of great formal purity, nourished by a subtle dialogue with classical tradition. The young woman, depicted seated and leaning toward a small black casket—likely a lacquered jewelry box highlighted with delicate gold lines—is captured in a quiet, introspective attitude that lends the scene an almost meditative quality.

The treatment of the face with its idealized features, the smooth hairstyle, and the simplification of volumes recall the lasting influence of Italian Quattrocento painting, a reference frequently embraced by several Central European artists during the 1920s. The composition, sober and balanced, favors clear line and stability of form, placing the figure within a deliberately pared-down space.

The mixed technique employed—paint applied over a ground of silver leaf—gives the work a distinctive luminous vibration. The metallic surface, perceptible beneath the pictorial layers, recalls certain early panel-painting techniques and contributes to the precious character of the composition.

As early as 1922, the critic Alex Salkin noted this evolution in Sauer’s work: “His latest works are imbued with a gentler vision. Around the women he draws, he now spreads accessories that clearly show they also live within life. … When they emerge from their dream, in which a trace of eroticism remains, they make use of everyday objects” (L’Art Belge, April 1922). The presence of the small casket, carefully held by the young woman, perfectly illustrates this observation: the object, both intimate and ordinary, situates the figure in a suspended moment between reverie and domestic reality.

Through this union of modern stylization, the heritage of the old masters, and refined decorative sensibility, the work perfectly illustrates the intimate and contemplative aesthetic that characterizes Walter Sauer’s production in the mid-1920s.

Origin

Sale Brussels, Galerie Moderne, April 15, 2003, lot 362
Private collection, Brussels (acquired from the latter)
To the current owner by descent

Literature

Michel Massant, Walter Sauer, Ed. Bern'Art, reproduced on p.104 under the title ‘Le Coffret Noir, 1925’