Paul Delvaux is a Belgian surrealist painter.
He was born in 1897, in the small village of Antheit in Belgium. His father, Jean Delvaux, was a respected lawyer.
In his early years, Paul Delvaux studied Latin-Greek in Sint-Gillis atheneum. His passion was music (he learned to play the piano, accordeon and organ), Jules Verne literature (and illustrations). He wasn't a very good student when it came to Latin, Greek and maths and he had no intention to become a lawyer like his father.

In 1916 he left school and went to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, he horribly failed his exams due to lack of interest in engineering. His mother wanted him to pursue his musical skills, but Paul had more interest in painting.

Paul Delvaux met Frans Courtens, it was he who convinced Pauls parents to financially back him up when going for his dream as painter. They agreed to support him for 3 years, and Paul enrolled in the Academy again, this time to become a painter.

After graduation, his parents saw his potential, and got him his own work shop. This was a huge boost to Pauls career.

His early works (1920+) as painter were influenced by nature. He started out painting landscapes, evolving over stations and marines to attractions displayed in Brussels.
1926 featured the human form, and especially female nudes in his works.

The early 1930s brought big changes. Paul Delvaux wasn't satisfied with his work in a sense that he got all of his expressions from someone else. In anger he destroyed about 100 paintings.

Starting then, his work had humans who were absent. Watching some distant event, hypnotized. The start of his surreal period.

Paul Delvaux, The Village of the Mermaids (1942)

His paintings dating 1935 and later make Delvaux the surrealist that he is. However surreal they are, the paintings would always contain something from Delvaux's youth or environment.

Paul Delvaux, The Rose (1936)

The 50's were another turning point in his work. he painted a series of night views of trains seen by a little girl. Unlike his work before this period, the trains were pictured truthfully, not really surrealistic. However, some details and accents of parts of the paintings gave them a strange feeling (examples are the moon).

Paul delvaux, Small Train Station at Night, 1959

Delvaux was named director of the Académie royale des Beaux-arts in 1965, he died in 1994 in Veurne.