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Artist or Maker: Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

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Description: Portrait de Mme Philips avec agneau et ange
signed and dated 'Salvador Dalí 1953' (lower right)
oil on canvas
42 1/2 x 31 3/4 in. (108 x 80.8 cm.)
Painted in 1953

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Exhibited: Toronto, The Art Gallery of Toronto, Comparisons, 1957.

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Notes: Robert Descharnes has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.

Portrait de Madame Philips avec l'ange et l'agneau is a typically lavish and sumptuous portrait by Dalí from the 1950s. Dalí portrays his sitter in flattering terms; draped in rich satins reminiscent of the classical robes worn by Gala in Dalí's monumental Corpus Hypercubus of 1955 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Mrs Philips is bathed in soft light from the dramatic parted clouds above her. As is often the case with Dalí's portraits, the artist subverts the idea of direct representation of the sitter alone by introducing into the painting narrative elements from his own repertoire of pictorial motifs. Dalí has set Mrs Philips in a barren expanse of arid landscape, recalling the void of Dalí's so-called 'white' paintings from the mid-1930s. In this landscape walks the figure of an angel; the lonely figure casting a long shadow in a vast flat landscape is a common theme in Dalí's work and is strongly identifiable with the shrouded figures of Dalí's own tortured sexual imagination.

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