Le Terrain de croquet de la reine by Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí
Spanish I 1904-1989

Le Terrain de croquet de la reine

Signed Dalí and dated 1968 (upper center)
Gouache, watercolor, ink wash and India ink on paper

Salvador Dalí’s Le Terrain de croquet de la reine is a rare and visionary work that unites two of the most imaginative and intellectually complex figures in Western culture: Lewis Carroll and Salvador Dalí. This painting was a preparatory study for Dalí’s 1969 Alice in Wonderland print series, which is a masterful collision of Victorian fantasy and Surrealist dreamscapes.

Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland stands among the rare works that seamlessly fuse art, science and philosophy. Though Carroll dismissed deeper interpretations, his tale has been widely analyzed for its surreal logic and allegorical depth. Nearly a century later, Surrealist icon Marcel Duchamp, in his 1961 lecture Where Do We Go From Here, predicted that future artists, “like Alice in Wonderland, will be led to pass through the looking-glass of the retina, to reach a more profound expression.” In 1968, Dalí brought this prediction to life when he was commissioned by Random House to illustrate Carroll’s classic for an exclusive book-of-the-month edition. The result was a set of twelve heliogravures, including this gouache painting, which would later evolve into one of Dalí’s most sought-after print series.

Dalí's interpretation of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland exemplifies the perfect alliance between two visionary creators. In this scene of Alice's croquet match, Dalí's distinctive motifs—two large flamingo mallets and the executioner in the background—transport viewers into the depths of the subconscious. The Queen of Hearts, possibly representing the viewer, dominates the composition. Her commanding presence mirrored in the playing cards, embodies an unrestrained passion—both startling to the Victorian sensibilities of Carroll's audience and perfectly aligned with Dalí's fascination with dream logic. His depiction of Alice—a recurring motif in all twelve illustrations—features a floating figure skipping rope, a form he first painted thirty years earlier and repeatedly revisited as a symbol of suspended reality.

Born in Catalonia in 1904, Dalí was formally educated in the fine arts in Madrid, particularly falling under the influence of the Impressionists and the Renaissance masters. At a young age, he became associated with the Madrid avant-garde group Ultra, though he eventually became more acquainted with other major movements such as Cubism, Dada and Futurism. By the late 1920s, his mature Surrealist style had already begun to emerge, and in 1929 he officially burst onto the avant-garde art scene with his Un Chien Andalou, a short film he made with Spanish director Luis Buñuel.

Today, Dalí is remembered as one of the most legendary and significant contributors to Surrealism. Two museums—one in St. Petersburg, Florida and another in Catalonia—are entirely devoted to his oeuvre; other important works by the artist can be found in the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), among many others.

Nicolas and Olivier Descharnes have kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.

Dated 1968

Paper: 22" high x 15" wide (55.88 x 38.10 cm)
Frame: 31 7/8" high x 24 7/8" wide x 1 3/4" deep (80.96 x 68.18 x 4.45 cm)

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Literature:
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: 150th Anniversary Edition, ed. Mark Burstein and Thomas Banchoff, illus. Salvador Dalí (New York: Princeton University Press, 2015), 65.

Provenance:
Galería Jorge Juan, Madrid
Private collection, Spain
M.S. Rau, New Orleans