Painted in 1945, Le Colloque sentimental is one of the first compositions by Magritte in which anthropomorphic bilboquets appear. An image that was to haunt Magritte's world for several years, the bilboquet appears in several paintings under various titles. A leitmotif of Magritte's art since the earliest days of his career, in this series of works the bilboquet acquires a man-like quality, appearing either as single figures or as a couple, as in Le Colloque sentimental .
This mysterious appeal of this painting fascinated Paul Eluard, who was the first to acquire the work. The two protagonists, wrapped in cloaks, stand out against a desolate background, in which a stormy gray sky merges with the water. These silent figures depicted in an unidentified, timeless landscape, convey a sense of mystery and unspoken drama that probably have their origin in De Chirico's metaphysical paintings, (S. Gablik, Magritte , London, 1970, p. 27). Mute and expressionless, these protagonists, half human and half man-made, nevertheless exude a sense of interaction and companionship that is usually absent from the artist's depictions of human beings. Virtually identical in their appearance and dress, the figures are neither male nor female. Although they appear to be mute and expressionless, they seem closely related to each other; as Magritte himself commented when writing about a later painting of the same title: "two wooden objects which have lost their banal meaning, are speaking of love and happiness" (quoted in D. Sylvester (ed.), op. cit ., p. 379). This tender communication between the figures is reflected in the title of the present work, which, according to Marcel Mariën, was, as was often the case, found by Paul Nougé, a Belgian poet and friend of Magritte's, and is no doubt taken from the eponymous poem by Paul Verlaine. (source)
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