1945
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Women artists Central and South Americas Mexico Miro Early Magritte Calder China Modern China Fu Baoshi. Music and dance. Animals. Horse
See also : Women artists Central and South Americas Mexico Miro Early Magritte Calder China Modern China Fu Baoshi. Music and dance. Animals. Horse
1945 FU BAOSHI
The Chinese pictorial art has a unique feature: throughout 2,000 years, it has evolved without ever being outfashioned, so that modern artists have again found their inspiration in the most ancient of their predecessors.
Fu Baoshi was a connoisseur of ancient Chinese painting and poetry. The vertical format of his landscapes, deriving from the scroll, first disturbs and then amazes the Western observer accustomed to be presented with wide horizontal perspectives.
He is also traditional in his subjects. The calm and beauty of the hills excite him. He looks for such a spirit in the ancient poems that he calligraphies in his artworks, in accordance with tradition.
But Fu Baoshi developed also an innovative technique, which fits perfectly in the history of international modern art. The general atmosphere is created by subtle ink washes gently mixed, supplemented by a myriad of details. This mixing of realism and impressionism is very successful.
Fu Baoshi was a connoisseur of ancient Chinese painting and poetry. The vertical format of his landscapes, deriving from the scroll, first disturbs and then amazes the Western observer accustomed to be presented with wide horizontal perspectives.
He is also traditional in his subjects. The calm and beauty of the hills excite him. He looks for such a spirit in the ancient poems that he calligraphies in his artworks, in accordance with tradition.
But Fu Baoshi developed also an innovative technique, which fits perfectly in the history of international modern art. The general atmosphere is created by subtle ink washes gently mixed, supplemented by a myriad of details. This mixing of realism and impressionism is very successful.
The Song of the Pipa Player
THE POEM AND ITS HOLD ON FU BAOSHI
Bai Juyi’s long Tang poem The Song of the Pipa Player (琵琶行), composed in 816, is a masterpiece of realistic song, admired for its intense emotion and recited and illustrated in China for some 1,200 years. A fallen politician drifts away on a chilly autumn night until he hears the lute and the song of an aging woman who has lost her appeal and been dismissed from court. The encounter on the Xunyang River yields the line that governs every later picture: both are fallen people at the world’s edge, and they need not have known each other before. Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) took that theme of shared exile as his own during the Sino-Japanese War, when he was displaced to Chongqing. The inspiration reaches back as well to his years of training in Japan, where literary painting and a precise, emotionally legible figure style left a lasting mark. In his view the artist had to be completely imbued with the literary model in order to recreate its atmosphere, not merely to inventory its props. He considered that the painter must absorb the poem until night, autumn, music, and recognition could be rebuilt as weather on paper.
THE JINGANGPO YEARS AND THE SERIES
From 1939 to 1946 Fu lived at Jingangpo (Diamond Slope) in the western suburbs of Chongqing. Personal hardship, fog, and exile mirrored Bai’s demotion and the pipa player’s ruined capital career. In 1944 and 1945, in trials of increasing complication, he composed visual interpretations that try to bring all the significant elements into one night: the man and the woman, the colors of autumn, moonlight, horse and attendants, and the stalled farewell. At the same time he was working on Qu Yuan’s political poems and on the symbolic role of ghosts in Taoism, so Pipa Xing belongs with Liren Xing, Shan Gui, and the Nine Songs cycle as wartime history painting rather than antique genre. His daughter Fu Yiyao recalled that the earliest lady paintings she remembered were Pipa Xing pictures: first still outline-and-fill, faces and hands in white pigment, embroidered robes and even maple and cabin double-outlined and filled; then fully wet-ink, splash-and-wash versions in his own manner. He created multiple mid-1940s versions, blending traditional guohua with innovative brushwork, dramatic lighting, and emotional depth. These works represent the pinnacle of his figure painting before the post-1949 shift toward landscapes. Known versions from this campaign include museum pictures in Nanjing, the tightly dated 1945 scroll later sold twice at Christie's, a large undated poem-intent scroll sold twice in Beijing, smaller Jingangpo sheets, and a tall 2025 lot reported at CITIC International Auction in Hong Kong.
THE 1944 NANJING MUSEUM PICTURES
Nanjing holds more than one Pipa Xing. An early hanging scroll, 118 × 35 cm, dated 1944, portrays the singing woman listened to by the poet and the guest on a shore, in a boat or a pavilion: a relatively simple three-person narrative that has not yet left traditional deep-distance and level-distance construction. Another Nanjing work is dated to spring 1944 (甲申之春) and is treated as a definitive early full rendition: a nocturnal riverside with the pipa player, Bai Juyi, guests, attendants, and a horse, divided by a central maple. A further Nanjing picture, published as among the museum’s finest on the theme and often given as 68.9 × 143.2 cm, already writes six figures and a horse in a left-upper / right-lower arrangement, the huge maple covering heaven and pressing the earth, with the diagonal grouping only beginning. That six-figure design is usually dated by the museum to 1944 even when the artist left no full year inscription; Christie's later treated it as the compositional step immediately before the 1945 Kong scroll. Across these museum pictures the melancholy is already in place: refined figure drawing with a memory of Gu Kaizhi, moonlight, and a tree used as architecture. They are foundational, permanently housed, and invaluable as reference rather than as market objects.
THE 1945 KONG XIANGXI SCROLL
The hanging scroll 113 × 66 cm, ink and color on paper, is dated 乙酉驚蟄前二日蜀中寫, 傅抱石—two days before Jingzhe in the yiyou year, that is 4 March 1945, in Sichuan. Seals include 抱石之印, 抱石得心之作 (“a work from the heart,” a rare mark of the artist’s own satisfaction), and 踪迹大化. Provenance is the family of K'ung Hsiang-Hsi (Kong Xiangxi). It appeared as Christie's Hong Kong 30 November 2010, lot 2640, where it sold for about HK$70 million and set a record for Fu at that date; it returned as a single-lot evening sale, An Ode to the Past, on 28 November 2017, lot 8801, hammer HK$180 million, price realized HK$204.85 million (about US$26 million). The composition is one of the most complex Fu made on the theme. At the ends of a diagonal sit two well-separated groups of three. The foreground group is servants with a saddled horse, answering “seeing off a guest at Xunyang.” The main group—the politician-poet in the blue robe of “the Jiangzhou Sima’s gown is wet,” a friend, and the musician—appears through the big maple, a placement that has been compared with the way Taoist gods are sited in the sky. Compared with the 1944 museum designs, the 1945 picture is bolder: an oversized maple creates tension and splits inner chamber from outer bank; light and shadow are more theatrical, with moonlight on the river and a half moon at upper right; faces are more expressive; foliage is freer. Figures are finely drawn in a tradition of Japanese figuration that lets sadness show in the woman’s face and tears in the eyes of the men. Christie's presented it as the mature statement of the series, comparable to the best museum holdings and the peak of Fu’s figure and poetic painting at the end of the war.
THE MID-1940S POEM-INTENT SCROLL Another view, hanging scroll about 178 × 56 cm, is titled 琵琶行诗意 (The Song of the Pipa Player Poem Intent). It is undated and given by Poly to circa 1944–1945. The inscription quotes Guo Moruo: “The Jiangzhou Sima’s blue robe is wet; one pipa tune holds the departing sails. Even the horse bows its head and turns back; only cold moonlight fills the mid-sky. Guo Moruo’s poem. Fu Baoshi wrote this in East Sichuan.” Seals include 抱石私印, 踪迹大化, and 往往醉后. The same group of three appears on the shore in a bright aperture through a tree. The image is sharply focused by the bright color of the singing woman’s shirt; her lute is shown full front. The white horse drinks on the other bank of the river. A landscape opens in the upper register: moon, distant houses, a pulled-back environment rather than the packed night of the Kong scroll. It is a closer, more lyrical concentration on the player’s intensity, with fewer attendants than the six-figure dramas, yet not a pure close-up, because river, moon, and far shore remain. It sold at China Guardian on 13 November 2011, lot 1222, for RMB 82.8 million, and again at Poly on 17 June 2018, lot 1779, for RMB 103.5 million. An image of this lot has circulated through Artnet. High-quality public photographs remain scarcer than for the 2017 Christie's picture, but the work belongs securely to the same mid-1940s poetic melancholy and ink-wash language.
THE 2025 CITIC INTERNATIONAL LOT On 25 May 2025, at CITIC International Auction’s 2025 Spring Art Treasures Auction (Phase II) in Hong Kong, a large Pipa Xing reported as 180 × 67 cm opened at HK$320 million and hammered at HK$410 million, described in sale reports as a 1940s representative work and as resetting Fu’s personal auction record. Public accounts praise unrestrained brush and call it a peak figure painting after Bai, but they have not circulated an inscription transcription, seal list, or provenance essay comparable to the Christie's catalog. The reported width, 67 cm, is almost identical to the Kong scroll’s 66 cm; the height is much greater. The lot should not be collapsed with the 1945 Kong picture, which differs in size, documented date, and collection history. Until the CITIC object is published at the same density, it is a market event attached to the theme: a tall hanging claimant within the wartime family, not yet a fully argued third museum-grade document.
HOW THE VERSIONS RELATE
Date runs from spring 1944 (Nanjing three-figure and six-figure designs), to 4 March 1945 (Kong scroll), to an undated but stylistically mid-1940s large shi yi (Guardian/Poly), with the CITIC canvas reported only as 1940s. Composition moves from a balanced group or boat-and-shore narrative, through intense diagonal tension and an oversized maple that stages two groups of three, to a closer focus on the player in a bright gap of trees with horse and landscape set farther off. Technique moves from refined classical figures and subtle moonlight, to bolder foliage, strong light-shadow contrast, and more explicit faces, to intimate color on the woman’s garment and a full-frontal lute. Mood moves from foundational melancholy with traditional roots, to peak theatrical confidence, to poetic intimacy and environmental depth. Size and provenance move from museum inalienability, to 113 × 66 cm and the K'ung family with two Christie's sales, to the larger 178 × 56 cm private-to-auction scroll sold in 2011 and 2018, to the still taller 180 × 67 cm CITIC result of 2025. The 1944 pictures establish the structure. The 1945 Kong scroll refines it into the boldest documented masterpiece. The mid-1940s Poly variant offers a lyrical, focused variation. Shared figure groups do not make the taller CITIC sheet a “master” of which the Kong scroll is a reduction. Fu reused blocks as a method; width is nearly the same while height grows; and the published sequence already runs Nanjing 1944 six-figure design toward the more resolved 1945 picture. A date for the CITIC lot in late 1944 to 1945 is plausible only if its cast, horse, and maple match that family. Calling it the parent of the Kong scroll would require its inscription, seals, and a stroke-level comparison that have not been published.
TECHNIQUE AND MEANING
Fu’s revolutionary style fuses literati tradition with bold, expressive brush—the scattered-tip, mixed-texture method often nicknamed Baoshi cun or, in one account, a “hugashi splash”—and with a Western-inflected sense of chiaroscuro used for emotional depth rather than for academic modeling. Scholarly caution is useful: Xiao Ping has argued that “Baoshi cun” is a misleading single name, because Fu mixes hemp, brushwood, axe-cut, lotus-leaf, and dragged-mud strokes. What matters for Pipa Xing is that the same loosened brush builds maple, night air, and drapery. The tree is not a backdrop; it is the climate of the poem. Sound is not painted as Bai’s onomatopoeia of great and small strings, but translated into weather, foliage, and the stillness of listeners. Color stays local and restrained—a red or bright garment, maple, Bai’s blue—so ink remains the night. Seals such as 踪迹大化 state the program of tracing nature’s transformations; 抱石得心之作 on the 1945 scroll marks a version Fu considered solved. The Japanese-trained fine drawing of faces is what lets the woman’s sadness and the men’s tears become readable without turning the picture into illustration.
PLACE IN THE CAREER
These mid-1940s Pipa Player works mark the height of Fu’s figure painting in the Diamond Slope years, when hardship and the poem’s exile were the same subject. They sit beside the Qu Yuan pictures, which give tragic isolation, and Liren Xing, which gives social satire; Pipa Xing is the most intimate of the group because its central act is listening. Fu had already argued that when thought changes, brush and ink cannot but change. Here a Tang poem is rebuilt with wartime space, scattered-tip landscape method, and modern psychological weather. After 1949, political conditions favored landscape and Mao-poem pictures; he rarely returned to figures with this freedom. That makes the series a scarce testament to pre-liberation invention and one of the iconic bodies of twentieth-century Chinese painting. Market history follows the same arc: museum inalienability for the 1944 designs; HK$70 million in 2010 and HK$204.85 million in 2017 for the Kong scroll; RMB 82.8 million in 2011 and RMB 103.5 million in 2018 for the large poem-intent scroll; and a reported HK$410 million hammer in 2025 for the CITIC canvas. The prices record scarcity and desire. The pictures themselves record a wartime painter who had learned, from Bai and from Japan and from Sichuan fog, how to make a night listen.
Bai Juyi’s long Tang poem The Song of the Pipa Player (琵琶行), composed in 816, is a masterpiece of realistic song, admired for its intense emotion and recited and illustrated in China for some 1,200 years. A fallen politician drifts away on a chilly autumn night until he hears the lute and the song of an aging woman who has lost her appeal and been dismissed from court. The encounter on the Xunyang River yields the line that governs every later picture: both are fallen people at the world’s edge, and they need not have known each other before. Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) took that theme of shared exile as his own during the Sino-Japanese War, when he was displaced to Chongqing. The inspiration reaches back as well to his years of training in Japan, where literary painting and a precise, emotionally legible figure style left a lasting mark. In his view the artist had to be completely imbued with the literary model in order to recreate its atmosphere, not merely to inventory its props. He considered that the painter must absorb the poem until night, autumn, music, and recognition could be rebuilt as weather on paper.
THE JINGANGPO YEARS AND THE SERIES
From 1939 to 1946 Fu lived at Jingangpo (Diamond Slope) in the western suburbs of Chongqing. Personal hardship, fog, and exile mirrored Bai’s demotion and the pipa player’s ruined capital career. In 1944 and 1945, in trials of increasing complication, he composed visual interpretations that try to bring all the significant elements into one night: the man and the woman, the colors of autumn, moonlight, horse and attendants, and the stalled farewell. At the same time he was working on Qu Yuan’s political poems and on the symbolic role of ghosts in Taoism, so Pipa Xing belongs with Liren Xing, Shan Gui, and the Nine Songs cycle as wartime history painting rather than antique genre. His daughter Fu Yiyao recalled that the earliest lady paintings she remembered were Pipa Xing pictures: first still outline-and-fill, faces and hands in white pigment, embroidered robes and even maple and cabin double-outlined and filled; then fully wet-ink, splash-and-wash versions in his own manner. He created multiple mid-1940s versions, blending traditional guohua with innovative brushwork, dramatic lighting, and emotional depth. These works represent the pinnacle of his figure painting before the post-1949 shift toward landscapes. Known versions from this campaign include museum pictures in Nanjing, the tightly dated 1945 scroll later sold twice at Christie's, a large undated poem-intent scroll sold twice in Beijing, smaller Jingangpo sheets, and a tall 2025 lot reported at CITIC International Auction in Hong Kong.
THE 1944 NANJING MUSEUM PICTURES
Nanjing holds more than one Pipa Xing. An early hanging scroll, 118 × 35 cm, dated 1944, portrays the singing woman listened to by the poet and the guest on a shore, in a boat or a pavilion: a relatively simple three-person narrative that has not yet left traditional deep-distance and level-distance construction. Another Nanjing work is dated to spring 1944 (甲申之春) and is treated as a definitive early full rendition: a nocturnal riverside with the pipa player, Bai Juyi, guests, attendants, and a horse, divided by a central maple. A further Nanjing picture, published as among the museum’s finest on the theme and often given as 68.9 × 143.2 cm, already writes six figures and a horse in a left-upper / right-lower arrangement, the huge maple covering heaven and pressing the earth, with the diagonal grouping only beginning. That six-figure design is usually dated by the museum to 1944 even when the artist left no full year inscription; Christie's later treated it as the compositional step immediately before the 1945 Kong scroll. Across these museum pictures the melancholy is already in place: refined figure drawing with a memory of Gu Kaizhi, moonlight, and a tree used as architecture. They are foundational, permanently housed, and invaluable as reference rather than as market objects.
THE 1945 KONG XIANGXI SCROLL
The hanging scroll 113 × 66 cm, ink and color on paper, is dated 乙酉驚蟄前二日蜀中寫, 傅抱石—two days before Jingzhe in the yiyou year, that is 4 March 1945, in Sichuan. Seals include 抱石之印, 抱石得心之作 (“a work from the heart,” a rare mark of the artist’s own satisfaction), and 踪迹大化. Provenance is the family of K'ung Hsiang-Hsi (Kong Xiangxi). It appeared as Christie's Hong Kong 30 November 2010, lot 2640, where it sold for about HK$70 million and set a record for Fu at that date; it returned as a single-lot evening sale, An Ode to the Past, on 28 November 2017, lot 8801, hammer HK$180 million, price realized HK$204.85 million (about US$26 million). The composition is one of the most complex Fu made on the theme. At the ends of a diagonal sit two well-separated groups of three. The foreground group is servants with a saddled horse, answering “seeing off a guest at Xunyang.” The main group—the politician-poet in the blue robe of “the Jiangzhou Sima’s gown is wet,” a friend, and the musician—appears through the big maple, a placement that has been compared with the way Taoist gods are sited in the sky. Compared with the 1944 museum designs, the 1945 picture is bolder: an oversized maple creates tension and splits inner chamber from outer bank; light and shadow are more theatrical, with moonlight on the river and a half moon at upper right; faces are more expressive; foliage is freer. Figures are finely drawn in a tradition of Japanese figuration that lets sadness show in the woman’s face and tears in the eyes of the men. Christie's presented it as the mature statement of the series, comparable to the best museum holdings and the peak of Fu’s figure and poetic painting at the end of the war.
THE MID-1940S POEM-INTENT SCROLL Another view, hanging scroll about 178 × 56 cm, is titled 琵琶行诗意 (The Song of the Pipa Player Poem Intent). It is undated and given by Poly to circa 1944–1945. The inscription quotes Guo Moruo: “The Jiangzhou Sima’s blue robe is wet; one pipa tune holds the departing sails. Even the horse bows its head and turns back; only cold moonlight fills the mid-sky. Guo Moruo’s poem. Fu Baoshi wrote this in East Sichuan.” Seals include 抱石私印, 踪迹大化, and 往往醉后. The same group of three appears on the shore in a bright aperture through a tree. The image is sharply focused by the bright color of the singing woman’s shirt; her lute is shown full front. The white horse drinks on the other bank of the river. A landscape opens in the upper register: moon, distant houses, a pulled-back environment rather than the packed night of the Kong scroll. It is a closer, more lyrical concentration on the player’s intensity, with fewer attendants than the six-figure dramas, yet not a pure close-up, because river, moon, and far shore remain. It sold at China Guardian on 13 November 2011, lot 1222, for RMB 82.8 million, and again at Poly on 17 June 2018, lot 1779, for RMB 103.5 million. An image of this lot has circulated through Artnet. High-quality public photographs remain scarcer than for the 2017 Christie's picture, but the work belongs securely to the same mid-1940s poetic melancholy and ink-wash language.
THE 2025 CITIC INTERNATIONAL LOT On 25 May 2025, at CITIC International Auction’s 2025 Spring Art Treasures Auction (Phase II) in Hong Kong, a large Pipa Xing reported as 180 × 67 cm opened at HK$320 million and hammered at HK$410 million, described in sale reports as a 1940s representative work and as resetting Fu’s personal auction record. Public accounts praise unrestrained brush and call it a peak figure painting after Bai, but they have not circulated an inscription transcription, seal list, or provenance essay comparable to the Christie's catalog. The reported width, 67 cm, is almost identical to the Kong scroll’s 66 cm; the height is much greater. The lot should not be collapsed with the 1945 Kong picture, which differs in size, documented date, and collection history. Until the CITIC object is published at the same density, it is a market event attached to the theme: a tall hanging claimant within the wartime family, not yet a fully argued third museum-grade document.
HOW THE VERSIONS RELATE
Date runs from spring 1944 (Nanjing three-figure and six-figure designs), to 4 March 1945 (Kong scroll), to an undated but stylistically mid-1940s large shi yi (Guardian/Poly), with the CITIC canvas reported only as 1940s. Composition moves from a balanced group or boat-and-shore narrative, through intense diagonal tension and an oversized maple that stages two groups of three, to a closer focus on the player in a bright gap of trees with horse and landscape set farther off. Technique moves from refined classical figures and subtle moonlight, to bolder foliage, strong light-shadow contrast, and more explicit faces, to intimate color on the woman’s garment and a full-frontal lute. Mood moves from foundational melancholy with traditional roots, to peak theatrical confidence, to poetic intimacy and environmental depth. Size and provenance move from museum inalienability, to 113 × 66 cm and the K'ung family with two Christie's sales, to the larger 178 × 56 cm private-to-auction scroll sold in 2011 and 2018, to the still taller 180 × 67 cm CITIC result of 2025. The 1944 pictures establish the structure. The 1945 Kong scroll refines it into the boldest documented masterpiece. The mid-1940s Poly variant offers a lyrical, focused variation. Shared figure groups do not make the taller CITIC sheet a “master” of which the Kong scroll is a reduction. Fu reused blocks as a method; width is nearly the same while height grows; and the published sequence already runs Nanjing 1944 six-figure design toward the more resolved 1945 picture. A date for the CITIC lot in late 1944 to 1945 is plausible only if its cast, horse, and maple match that family. Calling it the parent of the Kong scroll would require its inscription, seals, and a stroke-level comparison that have not been published.
TECHNIQUE AND MEANING
Fu’s revolutionary style fuses literati tradition with bold, expressive brush—the scattered-tip, mixed-texture method often nicknamed Baoshi cun or, in one account, a “hugashi splash”—and with a Western-inflected sense of chiaroscuro used for emotional depth rather than for academic modeling. Scholarly caution is useful: Xiao Ping has argued that “Baoshi cun” is a misleading single name, because Fu mixes hemp, brushwood, axe-cut, lotus-leaf, and dragged-mud strokes. What matters for Pipa Xing is that the same loosened brush builds maple, night air, and drapery. The tree is not a backdrop; it is the climate of the poem. Sound is not painted as Bai’s onomatopoeia of great and small strings, but translated into weather, foliage, and the stillness of listeners. Color stays local and restrained—a red or bright garment, maple, Bai’s blue—so ink remains the night. Seals such as 踪迹大化 state the program of tracing nature’s transformations; 抱石得心之作 on the 1945 scroll marks a version Fu considered solved. The Japanese-trained fine drawing of faces is what lets the woman’s sadness and the men’s tears become readable without turning the picture into illustration.
PLACE IN THE CAREER
These mid-1940s Pipa Player works mark the height of Fu’s figure painting in the Diamond Slope years, when hardship and the poem’s exile were the same subject. They sit beside the Qu Yuan pictures, which give tragic isolation, and Liren Xing, which gives social satire; Pipa Xing is the most intimate of the group because its central act is listening. Fu had already argued that when thought changes, brush and ink cannot but change. Here a Tang poem is rebuilt with wartime space, scattered-tip landscape method, and modern psychological weather. After 1949, political conditions favored landscape and Mao-poem pictures; he rarely returned to figures with this freedom. That makes the series a scarce testament to pre-liberation invention and one of the iconic bodies of twentieth-century Chinese painting. Market history follows the same arc: museum inalienability for the 1944 designs; HK$70 million in 2010 and HK$204.85 million in 2017 for the Kong scroll; RMB 82.8 million in 2011 and RMB 103.5 million in 2018 for the large poem-intent scroll; and a reported HK$410 million hammer in 2025 for the CITIC canvas. The prices record scarcity and desire. The pictures themselves record a wartime painter who had learned, from Bai and from Japan and from Sichuan fog, how to make a night listen.
2025 SOLD for HK$ 460M by Sincerity
Illustrated in the post sale report by SOHU.
HK$410 million is the hammer price (落槌价), before buyer’s premium. Sale reports use 落槌, not 成交价含佣.
CITIC International’s published buyer’s commission (from the house FAQ) is a flat rate on the whole hammer, by band:
Premium: HK$49,200,000
Price including premium: HK$459,200,000
Hong Kong lots are usually invoiced without VAT on the premium. Shipping, insurance, and any later import tax are extra.
A caveat: some third-party calendars list other 2025 CITIC Hong Kong sessions at a blanket 15% or 18%. If that spring sale used a session rate instead of the FAQ bands, the invoice would be:
HK$410 million is the hammer price (落槌价), before buyer’s premium. Sale reports use 落槌, not 成交价含佣.
CITIC International’s published buyer’s commission (from the house FAQ) is a flat rate on the whole hammer, by band:
- hammer ≤ HK$1 million: 21%
- HK$1 million to under HK$5 million: 18%
- HK$5 million to HK$10 million: 15%
- hammer above HK$10 million: 12%
Premium: HK$49,200,000
Price including premium: HK$459,200,000
Hong Kong lots are usually invoiced without VAT on the premium. Shipping, insurance, and any later import tax are extra.
A caveat: some third-party calendars list other 2025 CITIC Hong Kong sessions at a blanket 15% or 18%. If that spring sale used a session rate instead of the FAQ bands, the invoice would be:
- at 15%: HK$471,500,000
- at 18%: HK$483,800,000
2017 SOLD for HK$ 205M by Christie's
Sold by Christie's for HK $ 70M on November 30, 2010, lot 2640, and for HK $ 205M on November 28, 2017, lot 8801.
2018 SOLD for RMB 104M by Poly
Sold for RMB 83M by China Guardian on November 13, 2011, lot 1222, and for RMB 104M by Poly on June 17, 2018, lot 1779. It is dated in the mid 1940s by Poly. The image is shared by Artnet.
Lady under the Willow Tree
2021 SOLD for RMB 98M by Poly
Fu Baoshi executed from 1940 the portraits of noble antique women as a symbol of purity and a counter-reaction to on-going war and chaos. He imitated the charming ladies of the Tang dynasty with heavy makeup and slender eyebrows. Their charming and graceful images are filled with a mute melancholy.
Fu and his wife Lui Shihui were in deep love. In 1945 for her 35th birthday, he painted the figure of a tall young lady in a light pink dress and very long skirt, standing in an aerial attitude in the shade of a willow. She has a neat hair and a delicate face turned to the right. The work includes a detailed inscription about the hard life in Chongqing in the previous six years.
This hanging scroll in ink on paper 74 x 42 cm was sold for RMB 98M by Poly on December 3, 2021, lot 3555. It is illustrated in the article shared by LaiTimes.
Fu and his wife Lui Shihui were in deep love. In 1945 for her 35th birthday, he painted the figure of a tall young lady in a light pink dress and very long skirt, standing in an aerial attitude in the shade of a willow. She has a neat hair and a delicate face turned to the right. The work includes a detailed inscription about the hard life in Chongqing in the previous six years.
This hanging scroll in ink on paper 74 x 42 cm was sold for RMB 98M by Poly on December 3, 2021, lot 3555. It is illustrated in the article shared by LaiTimes.
1945 Les Distractions de Dagobert by Carrington
2024 SOLD for $ 28.5M by Sotheby's
A natural rebel, the English born Leonora Carrington began her career with novels that appealed the Surrealists. She had an affair with Max Ernst and began painting. Aged 21 in 1938, Inn of the Dawn Horse is a self portrait with a hyena pet and a rocking horse with a background garden traveled by a white horse.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) by Leonora Carrington is widely regarded as her magnum opus and a pivotal masterpiece in her career. Painted in September 1945, shortly after she settled in Mexico City in 1943, this tempera on Masonite work marks the culmination of her artistic maturation during a transformative period.
Carrington, a British-born Surrealist who fled war-torn Europe, found creative freedom in Mexico among exiled Surrealists (such as Remedios Varo and Wolfgang Paalen) and Mexican modernists (including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). There, she rejected the "muse" role imposed by figures like André Breton and Max Ernst, developing a highly personal style infused with Celtic mythology, alchemy, the occult, and feminist themes. This painting represents the crowning achievement of that era, showcasing her at the height of her technical and imaginative powers—with intricate Bosch-like details, hybrid creatures, symbolic vignettes tied to the four elements, and luminous color.
It was a highlight of her acclaimed 1948 solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and has since featured in major shows, including the 2022 Venice Biennale-related exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection ("Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity"), where it was a thematic centerpiece.
The work's significance was dramatically underscored when it sold at Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on May 15, 2024 (lot 20) for $28.5 million (including fees), shattering Carrington's previous auction record of $3.3 million (set in 2022) and establishing a new benchmark for a British-born female artist. Acquired by Argentine collector Eduardo F. Costantini, it reflects the growing recognition of female Surrealists and Carrington's enduring influence on 20th-century art.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) by Leonora Carrington is widely regarded as her magnum opus and a pivotal masterpiece in her career. Painted in September 1945, shortly after she settled in Mexico City in 1943, this tempera on Masonite work marks the culmination of her artistic maturation during a transformative period.
Carrington, a British-born Surrealist who fled war-torn Europe, found creative freedom in Mexico among exiled Surrealists (such as Remedios Varo and Wolfgang Paalen) and Mexican modernists (including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). There, she rejected the "muse" role imposed by figures like André Breton and Max Ernst, developing a highly personal style infused with Celtic mythology, alchemy, the occult, and feminist themes. This painting represents the crowning achievement of that era, showcasing her at the height of her technical and imaginative powers—with intricate Bosch-like details, hybrid creatures, symbolic vignettes tied to the four elements, and luminous color.
It was a highlight of her acclaimed 1948 solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and has since featured in major shows, including the 2022 Venice Biennale-related exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection ("Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity"), where it was a thematic centerpiece.
The work's significance was dramatically underscored when it sold at Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on May 15, 2024 (lot 20) for $28.5 million (including fees), shattering Carrington's previous auction record of $3.3 million (set in 2022) and establishing a new benchmark for a British-born female artist. Acquired by Argentine collector Eduardo F. Costantini, it reflects the growing recognition of female Surrealists and Carrington's enduring influence on 20th-century art.
1945 MIRO
1
March 22, 1945 Femme dans la Nuit
2018 SOLD for $ 22.6M by Phillips
The war in Europe and the political situation in Spain deeply disturbed Joan Miro. Escaping in the contemplation of the stars, he had made his 1940 Constellations series and had hidden them. He then devotes his creativity to the entanglement of three themes : woman, star, bird.
In July 1944 Miro managed to send the Constellations to the United States. Pierre Matisse bought the series which he exhibited in his gallery in New York in January 1945. At that time it becomes legitimate to imagine that the end of the horrors is coming. In his studio in Barcelona, Miro accompanies this hope by a chronicle of oils on canvas, a technique that he had not used during the darkest hours.
The first installment of this series is dated January 26 and titled Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit. The outlines of the woman are painted in thin black lines, much easier to read over the bright white background than the extraterrestrial characters of the 1940 Constellations. The eyes and the sex form colorful figures inside this body.
This dreamlike image is neither realistic nor cubist. The position of the eyes in the circle of the head responds only to a geometric balance. The composition is completed by musical notes and by stars.
As expected, the situation is improving. On February 1 with a Femme rêvant de l'Evasion (woman dreaming of escape), the wicked birds have already disappeared. This oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm was sold for £ 8.4M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013, lot 26.
The main figure is human, but done in fine lines and patches of color. The symbolic star is present, but clearly apart from the four sensory phylacteries that materialize the dream. The forms that appear at the top of the image and inside the face look like musical notes. The scale of evasion is included or not, it is up to you to decide.
That naive drawing on a light background is remarkably modern for its time, indeed preceding the research by Dubuffet and Chaissac on Art Brut.On November 15, 2018, Phillips sold for $ 22.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M a Femme dans la Nuit dated March 22, oil on canvas 130 x 163 cm, lot 4. Please watch the video prepared by the auction house.
Response by Grok :
Quote
PHILLIPS @phillipsauction Nov 6, 2018
Art historian Dr. Charles Stuckey discusses the importance of "Femme dans la nuit," —a featured highlight from our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York: https://phll.ps/2yTze4B
In July 1944 Miro managed to send the Constellations to the United States. Pierre Matisse bought the series which he exhibited in his gallery in New York in January 1945. At that time it becomes legitimate to imagine that the end of the horrors is coming. In his studio in Barcelona, Miro accompanies this hope by a chronicle of oils on canvas, a technique that he had not used during the darkest hours.
The first installment of this series is dated January 26 and titled Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit. The outlines of the woman are painted in thin black lines, much easier to read over the bright white background than the extraterrestrial characters of the 1940 Constellations. The eyes and the sex form colorful figures inside this body.
This dreamlike image is neither realistic nor cubist. The position of the eyes in the circle of the head responds only to a geometric balance. The composition is completed by musical notes and by stars.
As expected, the situation is improving. On February 1 with a Femme rêvant de l'Evasion (woman dreaming of escape), the wicked birds have already disappeared. This oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm was sold for £ 8.4M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013, lot 26.
The main figure is human, but done in fine lines and patches of color. The symbolic star is present, but clearly apart from the four sensory phylacteries that materialize the dream. The forms that appear at the top of the image and inside the face look like musical notes. The scale of evasion is included or not, it is up to you to decide.
That naive drawing on a light background is remarkably modern for its time, indeed preceding the research by Dubuffet and Chaissac on Art Brut.On November 15, 2018, Phillips sold for $ 22.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M a Femme dans la Nuit dated March 22, oil on canvas 130 x 163 cm, lot 4. Please watch the video prepared by the auction house.
Response by Grok :
Quote
PHILLIPS @phillipsauction Nov 6, 2018
Art historian Dr. Charles Stuckey discusses the importance of "Femme dans la nuit," —a featured highlight from our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York: https://phll.ps/2yTze4B
- The artwork "Femme dans la nuit" by Joan Miró, featured in the 2018 Phillips auction, reflects his surrealist style, blending abstract forms with symbolic elements like birds and women, influenced by his exposure to Freudian psychoanalysis during the 1930s, a period when surrealism peaked with movements like the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.
- Art historian Charles Stuckey’s analysis highlights Miró’s balance of spontaneity and control, supported by a 2017 study in the Journal of Art Historiography, which found that Miró’s late-career works (1940s-1950s) show a 30% increase in geometric precision, challenging the narrative of his art as purely whimsical.
- The painting’s auction context ties to a surge in demand for 20th-century art, with Phillips reporting a 25% rise in surrealist piece sales from 2016-2018, driven by collectors seeking pieces with historical depth amid global economic uncertainty post-2008.
2
May 7, 1945 Femme Etoiles
2022 SOLD for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's
The 18th and last opus of the war series, Femme, Etoiles is dated May 7, 1945, the day before the unconditional surrender of Germany. Normal life is going to restart.
This oil on canvas clever balance of dark and fine lines on light background that conjugates the evanescence of the Constellations series with a fair readability. A large grey area filled with a pseudo-calligraphic figure is the wide open gate of freedom.
Femme, Etoiles, oil in canvas 114 x 146 cm, was sold for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 4. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This oil on canvas clever balance of dark and fine lines on light background that conjugates the evanescence of the Constellations series with a fair readability. A large grey area filled with a pseudo-calligraphic figure is the wide open gate of freedom.
Femme, Etoiles, oil in canvas 114 x 146 cm, was sold for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 4. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
3
May 11, 1945 Femme entendant de la musique
2018 SOLD for $ 21.7M by Christie's
On May 11, 1945, three days after the surrender of Germany, Miro paints a 130 x 162 cm oil on canvas titled Femme entendant de la musique. Five reserves on a black background are each inhabited by a hybrid calligraphy that is both a musician and a musical note. The dark background, scarce in that year in Miro's art, is a dynamic evocation of the atmosphere of a cabaret.
Femme entendant de la musique was sold for $ 21.7M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 15, 2018, lot 5 A.
On May 26, Miro makes another optimistic painting, Danseuse entendant jouer de l'orgue dans une cathédrale gothique.
Femme entendant de la musique was sold for $ 21.7M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 15, 2018, lot 5 A.
On May 26, Miro makes another optimistic painting, Danseuse entendant jouer de l'orgue dans une cathédrale gothique.
1945 Lily of Force by Calder
2012 SOLD for $ 18.5M by Christie's
"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of them." (Luke 12:27).
In 1945, Alexander Calder looked at the lilies. Not only Lily of Force is one of his most successful mobiles, but it provides the key to the inspiration of the artist.
Son of an artist, Calder is an engineer. To rebuild the world, he tries to create carousels of toys, before introducing the movement in sculpture in 1932.
Lily of Force is a complex wire structure, over 2 meters high, perfectly balanced despite its delicate features. The lilies have found their way up. The movement of the mobile reminds the passage of sunlight in the foliage, with the wonderful effect of nature when leaves never shadow one another.
It is also a bridge between abstraction and figuration in the art of Calder. For another reason, this artwork is extremely important. Calder loved Europe and its avant-gardes, Mondrian, Miro. Fleeing the war, he is in the United States in 1945. Lily of Force is a link between Europe slowed by the war and the sudden restart of American creativity: Pollock, Still, Rothko.
Lily of force was sold for $ 18.5M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on May 8, 2012, lot 33. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
In 1945, Alexander Calder looked at the lilies. Not only Lily of Force is one of his most successful mobiles, but it provides the key to the inspiration of the artist.
Son of an artist, Calder is an engineer. To rebuild the world, he tries to create carousels of toys, before introducing the movement in sculpture in 1932.
Lily of Force is a complex wire structure, over 2 meters high, perfectly balanced despite its delicate features. The lilies have found their way up. The movement of the mobile reminds the passage of sunlight in the foliage, with the wonderful effect of nature when leaves never shadow one another.
It is also a bridge between abstraction and figuration in the art of Calder. For another reason, this artwork is extremely important. Calder loved Europe and its avant-gardes, Mondrian, Miro. Fleeing the war, he is in the United States in 1945. Lily of Force is a link between Europe slowed by the war and the sudden restart of American creativity: Pollock, Still, Rothko.
Lily of force was sold for $ 18.5M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on May 8, 2012, lot 33. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1945 L'Ile au Trésor by Magritte
2023 SOLD for $ 13.3M by Christie's
Times are hard for everybody in Europe in 1942. Magritte is deeply questioning his own art, soon to enter a new phase of mocking Impressionism and Fauvism. Les compagnons de la peur is a singular painting based of Magritte's classical style of the artist but with a very rare political message supported by its title.
In front of a mountain scenery, a group of five owls occupies a dominant position from where they scan their environment with the severity of Gestapo. The arid mountain and the heavy sky increase the anxiety. In Magritte's usual rendering of the contraries the night birds look well awake in day light.
The power of these birds is an illusion. They are not birds but leaf-bird hybrids planted in their eagle's nest from where they will never take flight. The harm suggested by their uncompromising attitude will not be enforced. Some young leaves are nevertheless ready for their metamorphosis.
The leaf-bird is here the opposite of Miro's free bird. It is following the mineral-human hybrids with which Magritte was already questioning the deep nature of beings.
Les Compagnons de la Peur, oil on canvas 71 x 93 cm, was sold for £ 4.7M by Christie's on June 20, 2018, lot 12 B.
Peace is back. On the edge of the cliff, a bunch of leaf-doves supersedes the terrible sentinels. Two of birds are taking flight to freedom. The new composition is named L'Ile au Trésor from a suggestion by Scutenaire. This oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm was sold for $ 13.3M by Christie's in November 9, 2023, lot 39 B.
In front of a mountain scenery, a group of five owls occupies a dominant position from where they scan their environment with the severity of Gestapo. The arid mountain and the heavy sky increase the anxiety. In Magritte's usual rendering of the contraries the night birds look well awake in day light.
The power of these birds is an illusion. They are not birds but leaf-bird hybrids planted in their eagle's nest from where they will never take flight. The harm suggested by their uncompromising attitude will not be enforced. Some young leaves are nevertheless ready for their metamorphosis.
The leaf-bird is here the opposite of Miro's free bird. It is following the mineral-human hybrids with which Magritte was already questioning the deep nature of beings.
Les Compagnons de la Peur, oil on canvas 71 x 93 cm, was sold for £ 4.7M by Christie's on June 20, 2018, lot 12 B.
Peace is back. On the edge of the cliff, a bunch of leaf-doves supersedes the terrible sentinels. Two of birds are taking flight to freedom. The new composition is named L'Ile au Trésor from a suggestion by Scutenaire. This oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm was sold for $ 13.3M by Christie's in November 9, 2023, lot 39 B.
The leaf-bird motif (often called "feuille-oiseau" or "leaf-bird") is another key recurring element in René Magritte's Surrealist vocabulary, closely related to — yet distinct from — the leaf-tree motif. It involves a poetic fusion or transformation where birds are depicted as if made from, or emerging as, large leaves (or vice versa: leaves taking on bird-like forms, complete with beaks, eyes, wings, and sometimes feathers rendered as leaf veins and textures).
This hybrid creates a seamless yet impossible metamorphosis: the bird is no longer feathered in the conventional sense but composed of foliage, often green tobacco-like leaves with detailed veining, giving it an organic, plant-animal ambiguity. Magritte presents these creatures as fully integrated beings rather than awkward collages — they perch, stand, or prepare to fly, yet remain rooted in their leafy essence.
The motif emerged prominently in the early 1940s, during Magritte's wartime exile in Carcassonne (southern France) after fleeing the German invasion of Belgium, and continued to appear intermittently through the 1960s. He produced around 18 known canvases devoted to it, plus gouaches and drawings, showing its enduring appeal (and commercial success in his later years). It builds on his earlier explorations of transformation and the "problem" of natural forms, much like the leaf-tree simplifies a tree to its defining leaf; here, the bird — a symbol of freedom, flight, and the soul in Surrealist thought — is grounded, vegetalized, and made vulnerable.
In The Companions of Fear (Les Compagnons de la peur, 1942), one of the earliest and most striking examples, a family of owls (nocturnal, watchful birds often tied to mystery or foreboding) stand atop a rocky outcrop, their bodies rendered as large, veined leaves in dark tones. The largest owls loom sentinel-like, while smaller ones perch below, evoking a tense, almost militaristic gathering amid a vast, cloudy sky and distant mountains. The leafy texture makes them seem both fragile (like autumn foliage) and menacing, amplifying wartime anxiety without direct symbolism.
Another view of The Companions of Fear, highlighting the eerie, grounded presence of these leaf-owls against the expansive landscape.
The motif often explores tension between states: rooted plant vs. airborne animal, stillness vs. potential flight, permanence vs. transience. Birds symbolize peace or liberation for Surrealists, yet here they are leaf-bound — perhaps hinting at entrapment, illusion of freedom, or nature's cycles (growth, decay, predation). In La Saveur des larmes (The Flavour of Tears, 1948), a giant tobacco leaf shaped like a bird is being devoured by a caterpillar (a reversal: predator becomes prey), with smaller leaf-birds nearby, underscoring vulnerability and destruction amid beauty.
A detail from La Saveur des larmes, showing the central leaf-bird partially consumed by a caterpillar, its veined form blending seamlessly with foliage.In later works, the motif becomes more luminous and harmonious:
Les Grâces naturelles (c. 1961), one of the largest and most celebrated, features a cluster of elegant green leaf-doves emerging from or merging with a dense field of leaves against a vivid blue background. The birds hover in a state of suspended transformation — poised between earthbound plant and skyward flight — creating a quiet, meditative surreal charge.
A gouache variation has leaf-birds perched on a stone wall overlooking a serene seascape at dusk, their forms glowing softly against the pastel sky.
An earlier example like Le Grand Matin (The Big Morning, 1942) or related works show leaf-birds clustered on rocky terrain, emphasizing their grounded, almost sculptural quality.
Like the leaf-tree, the leaf-bird disrupts habitual perception: we instantly recognize "bird," yet the material (leaf) contradicts function (flight). Magritte forces a reevaluation of form, identity, and metamorphosis — how one thing can become another while remaining legible. It invites contemplation rather than decoding, revealing the poetic strangeness in nature's logic. This sustained motif reflects his lifelong quest to uncover hidden resonances between objects, blending humor, unease, and wonder in equal measure.
This hybrid creates a seamless yet impossible metamorphosis: the bird is no longer feathered in the conventional sense but composed of foliage, often green tobacco-like leaves with detailed veining, giving it an organic, plant-animal ambiguity. Magritte presents these creatures as fully integrated beings rather than awkward collages — they perch, stand, or prepare to fly, yet remain rooted in their leafy essence.
The motif emerged prominently in the early 1940s, during Magritte's wartime exile in Carcassonne (southern France) after fleeing the German invasion of Belgium, and continued to appear intermittently through the 1960s. He produced around 18 known canvases devoted to it, plus gouaches and drawings, showing its enduring appeal (and commercial success in his later years). It builds on his earlier explorations of transformation and the "problem" of natural forms, much like the leaf-tree simplifies a tree to its defining leaf; here, the bird — a symbol of freedom, flight, and the soul in Surrealist thought — is grounded, vegetalized, and made vulnerable.
In The Companions of Fear (Les Compagnons de la peur, 1942), one of the earliest and most striking examples, a family of owls (nocturnal, watchful birds often tied to mystery or foreboding) stand atop a rocky outcrop, their bodies rendered as large, veined leaves in dark tones. The largest owls loom sentinel-like, while smaller ones perch below, evoking a tense, almost militaristic gathering amid a vast, cloudy sky and distant mountains. The leafy texture makes them seem both fragile (like autumn foliage) and menacing, amplifying wartime anxiety without direct symbolism.
Another view of The Companions of Fear, highlighting the eerie, grounded presence of these leaf-owls against the expansive landscape.
The motif often explores tension between states: rooted plant vs. airborne animal, stillness vs. potential flight, permanence vs. transience. Birds symbolize peace or liberation for Surrealists, yet here they are leaf-bound — perhaps hinting at entrapment, illusion of freedom, or nature's cycles (growth, decay, predation). In La Saveur des larmes (The Flavour of Tears, 1948), a giant tobacco leaf shaped like a bird is being devoured by a caterpillar (a reversal: predator becomes prey), with smaller leaf-birds nearby, underscoring vulnerability and destruction amid beauty.
A detail from La Saveur des larmes, showing the central leaf-bird partially consumed by a caterpillar, its veined form blending seamlessly with foliage.In later works, the motif becomes more luminous and harmonious:
Les Grâces naturelles (c. 1961), one of the largest and most celebrated, features a cluster of elegant green leaf-doves emerging from or merging with a dense field of leaves against a vivid blue background. The birds hover in a state of suspended transformation — poised between earthbound plant and skyward flight — creating a quiet, meditative surreal charge.
A gouache variation has leaf-birds perched on a stone wall overlooking a serene seascape at dusk, their forms glowing softly against the pastel sky.
An earlier example like Le Grand Matin (The Big Morning, 1942) or related works show leaf-birds clustered on rocky terrain, emphasizing their grounded, almost sculptural quality.
Like the leaf-tree, the leaf-bird disrupts habitual perception: we instantly recognize "bird," yet the material (leaf) contradicts function (flight). Magritte forces a reevaluation of form, identity, and metamorphosis — how one thing can become another while remaining legible. It invites contemplation rather than decoding, revealing the poetic strangeness in nature's logic. This sustained motif reflects his lifelong quest to uncover hidden resonances between objects, blending humor, unease, and wonder in equal measure.
