Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - La maternité au chat - 2007

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Catalog entry for the work

Artist: Robert Detheux (1932-2010)
* Title: Cat Maternity
2007
* Technique : Pencil and white chalk highlights on paper
* Dimensions: 51.5 cm × 40 cm
* Signature and date: artist's stamp on the back

* Condition: Very good. The stains, surface irregularities, tonal variations and visible textural effects are deliberately integrated by the artist and play a full role in the artwork's perceptual construction.

Framing: Sold unframed
* Shipping: Artwork shipped flat, with appropriate professional protection.

* Series: Late Figurative Works

Description of the work

The drawing depicts a naked female figure, with soft, deliberately undefined shapes, holding a small cat against her chest. The arm gesture, enveloping and protective, unmistakably evokes a maternal posture. The figure's head, with feline features, establishes a continuity between the mother and the animal, as if motherhood here transcends the limits of humanity to become a universal state.

White chalk highlights shape the volumes with gentleness and confer the body a nearly diaphanous quality. The contours, sometimes interrupted, allow the figure to partially blend into the background, intensifying the idea of a fragile presence, but deeply rooted in the gesture of care.

Thematic lecture: motherhood

Maternity, in this work, is neither idealized nor described in a realistic way. It is suggested by the proximity of the bodies, by the restraint of movement, and by the concentration of attention on the kitten. The slightly marked belly, the visible breast, and the arm wrapped around the small figure compose an image of calm protection, devoid of any dramatic tension. Maternity appears here as an inner state, silent, almost motionless.

The choice of the cat, an animal associated with independence and vigilance, reinforces this reading: motherhood is not fusion-focused, but attentive, grounded in a discreet and ongoing presence.

Artistic context

At the end of the 2000s, Robert Detheux recurrently engages with solitary female figures, often associated with animals. These works convey a reflection on the fundamental states of existence — vigil, withdrawal, protection — rather than on narrative scenes.
This maternity, stripped of any setting and any temporal context, sits fully within this approach of reduction and interiorization.

Aesthetic approach

The work is driven by inner surrealism, where the transformation of forms does not seek estrangement, but a poetic immediacy.
The fusion between woman and cat does not arise from spectacular metamorphosis, but from a natural, almost tender slip.
The drawing prioritizes line, matter, and silence, leaving the viewer time to enter into a contemplative relationship with the image.

Provenance
* The artist's family collection

Original and unique work, Maternity with the Cat constitutes a particularly sensitive example of Robert Detheux's late production. Through its formal sobriety and the depth of its theme, this drawing offers a vision of motherhood that is both universal and deeply intimate, grounded in restraint, tenderness, and silent presence.