Le Bal Bullier, 1913, by Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), 3ft by 12½ft, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Marco Forgione says: I fell completely in love with this painting because of its sheer joy, movement and carefree energy. It captures the radical principles of the artist, inviting the viewer to leap into a liberating festival of sensual exuberance. The mix of couples, tightly pressed, dancing the tango, captured in such vibrant colour, provides a vivid portrayal of euphoria and freedom. However, its context—having been created just before the start of the First World War—leaves me with a sense of foreboding. All of which serves as a personal reminder to be focused and present in the moment.
Marco Forgione is CEO of the British Antique Dealers’ Association
John McEwen comments on Le Bal Bullier: Colour brings me joy,’ said Sonia Delaunay. Born Sara Elievna Stern to modest Jewish parents in Odessa, Ukraine, at seven, she was entrusted to the care of a rich maternal uncle and his wife in St Petersburg, adopting their surname, Terk, and always called Sonia. With the Terks, she travelled widely throughout Europe, visiting the great museums, and, at 17, was sent to art school at Karlsruhe. She finished her training in Paris, where she lived from 1906.
To avoid returning to St Petersburg, Sonia married Wilhelm Uhde, whose Parisian gallery was among the first to exhibit Cubist and naïve art and the first to show her pictures. It was a marriage of convenience, encouraged by the vogue among russian intellectuals for non-sexual marriages blancs, based on shared social or intellectual interests. The avant-garde Sonia was always passionately Russian in attitude. Through Uhde, she met a French pioneer of abstract art, Robert Delaunay, whom she married in 1910. This was a sexual union, but also a meeting of minds. ‘As they wake up, the Delaunays speak painting,’ said the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Colour and dance were the Parisian rage. ‘Fauvism’ introduced figures and landscapes painted in violent unrepresentational colours. The bright colours of Russian folk art were sensationally incorporated into Diaghilev’s Russian ballet productions.
Le Bal Bullier was a Parisian dance hall celebrated for the latest dance fads: the tango and the foxtrot. In Sonia’s semi-abstract celebration of the animated scene, the dancers can be interpreted as three couples or one in sequence, the globes of the still exciting electric lights glowing overhead.
My favourite painting: Amy Meyers
'Stubbs’s portrayal is one of the subtlest and most poignant commentaries on the troubling displacements that were accruing from the
My favourite painting: Charles H. Cecil
'It embodies what oil painting can attain.'
-
The real name of a 'ghost' rainbow, the first ever omnishambles, and golf on the moon: Country Life Quiz of the Day 20 February 2025Some real brainteasers for you in our Quiz of the Day. Good luck!
-
Tom Parker Bowles's favourite recipe: French onion soupThis dish is no mere Gallic broth, rather pure bonhomie in a bowl — a boozy, beefy, allium-scented masterpiece that cries out for the chill depths of winter
-
'As a child I wanted to snuggle up with the dogs and be part of it': Alexia Robinson chooses her favourite paintingAlexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, chooses an Edwin Landseer classic.
-
The Pre-Raphaelite painter who swapped 'willowy, nubile women' for stained glass — and created some of the best examples in BritainThe painter Edward Burne-Jones turned from paint to glass for much of his career. James Hughes, director of the Victorian Society, chooses a glass masterpiece by Burne-Jones as his favourite 'painting'.
-
'I can’t look away. I’m captivated': The painter who takes years over each portrait, with the only guarantee being that it won't look like the subjectFor Country Life's My Favourite Painting slot, the writer Emily Howes chooses a work by a daring and challenging artist: Frank Auerbach.
-
My Favourite Painting: Rob HouchenThe actor Rob Houchen chooses a bold and challenging Egon Schiele work.
-
My Favourite Painting: Jeremy Clarkson'That's why this is my favourite painting. Because it invites you to imagine'
-
The chair of the National Gallery names his favourite from among the 2,300 masterpieces — and it will come as a bit of a shockAs the National Gallery turns 200, the chair of its board of trustees, John Booth, chooses his favourite painting.
-
'A wonderful reminder of what the countryside could and should be': The 200-year-old watercolour of a world fast disappearingChristopher Price of the Rare Breed Survival Trust on the bucolic beauty of The Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer, which he nominates as his favourite painting.
-
My favourite painting: Andrew Graham-Dixon'Lesson Number One: it’s the pictures that baffle and tantalise you that stay in the mind forever .'
