ArtHitParade
ArtHitParade on X
  • Home
    • Contact
  • Calendar
  • Top 10
    • Origin
    • From 600 BCE to CE
    • Years 1 to 1000
    • Years 1000 to 1400
    • 15th Century >
      • Years 1400-1429
      • Years 1430-1459
      • Years 1460-1479
      • Years 1480-1499
    • 16th Century >
      • Years 1500-1519
      • Decade 1520-1529
      • Decade 1530-1539
      • Years 1540-1569
      • Years 1570-1599
    • 17th Century >
      • Decade 1600-1609
      • Decade 1610-1619
      • Decade 1620-1629
      • Decade 1630-1639
      • Decade 1640-1649
      • Decade 1650-1659
      • Years 1660-1679
      • Years 1680-1699
    • 18th Century >
      • Decade 1700-1709
      • Decade 1710-1719
      • Decade 1720-1729
      • Decade 1730-1739
      • Decade 1740-1749
      • Decade 1750-1759
      • Decade 1760-1769
      • Decade 1770-1779 >
        • 1776
      • Decade 1780-1789 >
        • 1787
      • Decade 1790-1799 >
        • 1792
    • 19th Century >
      • Decade 1800-1809
      • Decade 1810-1819
      • Decade 1820-1829
      • Decade 1830-1839
      • Decade 1840-1849
      • Decade 1850-1859
      • Decade 1860-1869
      • Decade 1870-1879 >
        • 1877
        • 1878
        • 1879
      • Decade 1880-1889 >
        • 1880
        • 1881
        • 1882
        • 1884
        • 1885
        • 1887
        • 1888
        • 1889
      • Decade 1890-1899 >
        • 1890
        • 1891
        • 1892
        • 1895
        • 1896
    • 20th Century >
      • Decade 1900-1909 >
        • 1901
        • 1902
        • 1903
        • 1904
        • 1905
        • 1906
        • 1907
        • 1908
        • 1909
      • Decade 1910-1919 >
        • 1910
        • 1911
        • 1912
        • 1913
        • 1914
        • 1915
        • 1916
        • 1917
        • 1918
        • 1919
      • Decade 1920-1929 >
        • 1920
        • 1921
        • 1922
        • 1923
        • 1924
        • 1925
        • 1926
        • 1927
        • 1928
        • 1929
      • Decade 1930-1939 >
        • 1930
        • 1931
        • 1932
        • 1933
        • 1934
        • 1935
        • 1936
        • 1937
        • 1938
        • 1939
      • Decade 1940-1949 >
        • 1941
        • 1942
        • 1943
        • 1945
        • 1946
        • 1947
        • 1948
        • 1949
      • Decade 1950-1959 >
        • 1950
        • 1951
        • 1952
        • 1953
        • 1954
        • 1955
        • 1956
        • 1957
        • 1958
        • 1959
      • Decade 1960-1969 >
        • 1960
        • 1961
        • 1962
        • 1963
        • 1964
        • 1965
        • 1966
        • 1967
        • 1968
        • 1969
      • Decade 1970-1979 >
        • 1970
        • 1971
        • 1972
        • 1973
        • 1974
        • 1975
        • 1976
        • 1977
        • 1978
        • 1979
      • Decade 1980-1989 >
        • 1980
        • 1981
        • 1982
        • 1983
        • 1984
        • 1985
        • 1986
        • 1987
        • 1988
        • 1989
      • Decade 1990-1999 >
        • 1990
        • 1991
        • 1992
        • 1993
        • 1994
        • 1995
        • 1996
        • 1997
        • 1998
        • 1999
    • 21st Century >
      • Decade 2000-2009 >
        • 2000
        • 2001
        • 2002
        • 2003
        • 2004
        • 2005
        • 2006
        • 2007
        • 2008
        • 2009
      • Decade 2010-2019 >
        • 2010
        • 2011
        • 2012
        • 2013
        • 2014
        • 2015
        • 2017
        • 2018
      • 2020 to now >
        • 2021
        • 2022
  • Ancient Painting
    • Flemish Art >
      • Pieter II Brueghel
      • Jan Brueghel
    • Rubens
    • Rembrandt
    • Early Still Life
    • Oil on Copper
  • 18th Century Painting
  • Ancient Drawing
  • Art on Paper
  • Sculpture
    • Bust
    • Ancient Sculpture >
      • Roman Sculpture
    • Italian Sculpture
    • French Sculpture >
      • Rodin
    • Sculpture by Painters
  • Women Artists
    • Ancient Art by Women
    • O'Keeffe
    • Lempicka
    • Martin
    • Mitchell
    • Yayoi Kusama
    • Brown
  • Furniture
    • Chairs and Seats
    • Colonial Furniture
    • Ancient French Furniture
    • Modern Furniture >
      • Art Deco
      • Modern Tables
  • Prints
    • Ancient Prints
    • Modern Prints
  • Photo
    • Old Photos >
      • Travel Photos
      • Early French Photo
    • Photos 1900s 1910s
    • Photos 1920s 1930s
    • Photos 1970s 1980s
    • Sherman
    • Gursky
  • The Man
  • The Woman
  • Children
  • Man and Woman
  • Groups
  • Self Portrait
    • Self Portrait 2nd page
  • Nude
  • Abstract Art - 2nd page
  • Landscape
    • Alps
  • Cities
    • Venice
    • Paris
  • Flowers
    • Bouquet
  • Animals
    • Bird
    • Cats and Lions
    • Horse
  • Tabletop
  • Music and Dance in Art
    • Music in Old Painting
  • Sport in Art
  • Orientalism
    • Orientalism 1830-1900
  • France
    • French Painting before 1860
    • Manet
    • Degas
    • Cézanne
    • Monet >
      • Monet before 1879
      • Monet 1879-1887
      • Series by Monet
      • London and Venice
      • Bassin aux Nymphéas
    • Renoir
    • Caillebotte
    • Gauguin
    • Seurat
    • Signac
    • Lautrec
    • Matisse
    • Léger
    • Klein
    • Lalanne
    • Post War French Art
  • Italy
    • Canaletto
    • Modigliani
    • Fontana
    • Mappa by Boetti
  • Swiss Painting
  • Giacometti
    • Giacometti 1947-53
    • Femme Debout
  • Bacon
    • Bacon before 1963
    • Bacon 1963-70
    • Later Bacons
    • Head Triptych
  • UK - 2nd page
    • Ancient England
    • George III
    • British Royals
    • Turner >
      • Watercolor by Turner
    • Freud >
      • Early Freud
    • Hockney
    • Doig
    • Hirst
    • Banksy
  • Richter
    • Richter before 1983
  • Germany - 2nd page
    • Ancient Germany >
      • Cranach
    • Marc
  • Van Gogh
  • Mondrian
  • De Kooning
  • Magritte
    • Early Magritte
  • Belgium 2nd page
  • Ancient Spain
  • Picasso
    • Picasso before 1907
    • Picasso 1907-1931
    • Marie-Thérèse
    • Picasso later 1930s
    • Picasso 1940-1960
    • Picasso in Mougins
    • Prints by Picasso
  • Gris
  • Miro
  • Klimt
  • Schiele
  • USA
    • US Independence
    • Development of USA
    • US Civil War
    • US Painting before 1940 >
      • Sargent
    • Hopper
    • Rockwell
    • Calder
    • Rothko >
      • Early Rothko
      • Rothko 1957-70
    • Still
    • Newman
    • Guston
    • Pollock
    • Diebenkorn
    • Lichtenstein >
      • Lichtenstein after 1965
    • Warhol >
      • USA by Warhol
      • Celebrities by Warhol >
        • Elvis and Liz
      • Later Warhols
      • Prints by Warhol >
        • Warhol Prints 2nd page
    • Twombly
    • Johns
    • Ruscha
    • Koons
    • Marshall
    • Wool
    • Basquiat
    • Bradford
  • Wild West
  • Central and South Americas
    • Mexico
  • China
    • Ritual Bronzes
    • Song
    • Yuan
    • Ming
    • Early Qing
    • Qianlong
    • Modern China >
      • Qi Baishi
      • Zhang Daqian >
        • Zhang Daqian before 1965
      • Fu Baoshi
      • Sanyu >
        • Sanyu before 1950
      • Li Keran
      • Wu Guanzhong
      • Zao Wou-Ki
      • Cui Ruzhuo
    • Chinese Porcelain >
      • Song to Yuan Porcelain
      • Ming Porcelain
      • Qing Porcelain
    • Chinese Art
    • Mountains in China
    • Chinese Calligraphy
    • Chinese Furniture
    • Imperial Seal
    • Chinese Dragon
    • Jadeite
  • India
    • Gaitonde
    • Modern India
  • Persia
    • Safavid Carpets
  • Yoshitomo Nara
  • Russia and Eastern Europe
    • Russia 1700-1900
    • Kandinsky
    • Brancusi
    • Chagall
    • Soutine
    • Ghenie
  • Munch
    • Prints by Munch
  • Egypt
  • Tropical Africa
    • Congo
    • Gabon
    • Mask
  • Tribal Oceania
    • Easter Island
  • Australia
    • Colonial Australia
  • Islam
  • Buddhism
    • Early Buddhist Sculpture
    • Tibet and Nepal
  • Judaica
  • Christianity
    • Madonna and Child
  • Cars
    • Birth of Automobile
    • Cars of the 1910s
    • Cars of the 1920s
    • Cars of the 1930s >
      • Cars 1930-33
      • Cars 1934-35
      • Cars 1936-37
      • Cars 1938-39
    • Post War Cars
    • Cars of the 1950s >
      • Cars 1953-54
      • Cars 1955
      • Cars 1956-57
      • Cars 1958-59
    • Cars of the 1960s >
      • Cars 1960-61
      • Cars 1962-63
      • Cars 1964-65
      • Cars 1966-67
    • Cars 1970s 1980s
    • Supercars
    • Hypercars
    • Ferrari >
      • California Spider
      • Big Five
    • Alfa Romeo
    • Mercedes-Benz
    • Porsche
    • Aston Martin
    • Jaguar
    • McLaren
    • Bugatti
    • French Cars
    • Duesenberg
    • Ford and Shelby
    • Cars in Movies
  • Motorcycles
  • Jewels
    • White Diamond
    • Pink Diamond
    • Blue Diamond
    • Jewels - 2nd page
    • Cartier
  • Silverware
    • Old Silverware
  • Coin
    • Antique Coins >
      • Roman Coins
    • Coins 1000-1775
    • Coins 1776-92
    • Coins 1793-1819
    • Coins 1820-49
    • Coins 1850-69
    • Coins 1870-99
    • 20th century Coins
    • US Gold Coins
    • Silver Dollar
    • Cent and Dime
    • British Coins
    • Japanese Coins
    • Chinese Coins
  • Paper Currency
  • Medal and Decoration
  • Time Pieces
    • Clocks >
      • Old Clocks
    • Mechanical Craft ca 1800
    • Jaquet-Droz and Followers
    • Modern Watches
    • New Watches >
      • OnlyWatch
    • Patek Philippe >
      • Patek Philippe before 1950
      • World Time
      • Perpetual Calendar
    • Rolex
    • French Time Pieces
    • Daniels
  • Glass and Crystal
    • Glass before 1900
    • Tiffany Studios
  • Terracotta and Porcelain
    • Meissen
  • Textiles
  • Books
    • Incunabula
    • 16th Century Books
    • 17th Century Books
    • Fine Books 1700-1850
    • The Birds of America
  • Literature
    • Literature in French
  • Poems and Lyrics
  • Autograph
  • Manuscript
    • Paleography
    • Illuminated Christian Manuscript
  • Political Writing
  • Comic Books
  • Illustration Art
    • Tintin
  • Travel
  • Ancient Maps
  • Space
  • Movies
  • Screen Worn
  • Music
  • Musical Instrument
    • Stradivarius
    • Violin 2nd page
    • Guitar
    • Chinese Instrument
  • The Beatles
  • Poster
  • Sport
    • Sport Equipment
    • Sport Document
    • Sport Rewards
    • Sport Cards >
      • Sport Images before 1942
      • T206 Wagner
      • Babe Ruth Cards
      • Sport Cards 1942-92
      • Topps Mantle
      • Modern Sport Cards
    • Baseball >
      • Baseball Bat
      • Baseball Jersey
      • Babe Ruth
      • Lou Gehrig
    • Basketball >
      • Michael Jordan
      • Kobe Bryant
    • Ice Hockey
    • Sport 2nd page
  • Olympic Games
  • Origins of Sports
  • Historical Arms
    • Blade and Armour
    • Colt in Lifetime
    • Later Colts
    • Winchester
    • Firearms
  • Toys
  • Doll
  • Games
  • Stamps
    • US Stamps
    • Inverted Jenny
  • Inventions
  • Leica
  • Sciences
    • Ancient Science
    • Sciences 1600-1800
    • Astronomy
    • Physics
    • Medicine
  • Dinosaur
  • Computing
  • Nobel Medals
    • Nobel in Medicine
  • Whisky
    • Whisky 2nd page
  • Wine
  • Plus
    • Plus 17C Art
    • Plus 18C Art
    • Plus 1910s
    • Plus 1982 Basquiat
    • Plus Ferrari
    • Plus US Cars
    • Plus Qing Porcelain
    • Plus Tribal
  • Work in Progress

Early Magritte

Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Magritte
​Chronology : 1926  1933  1936  1937  1945

first solo exhibition
​Intro

In 1921 the young René Magritte is hired as a draftsman in a wallpaper factory in Brussels. He frequents Surrealist and Dadaist literary circles and would like to become independent as an advertising illustrator.

Attentive to avant-garde art, Magritte is subjugated in 1923 by an image of the Canto d'amore, a surrealist work painted in 1914 by De Chirico. Ordinary objects constitute a poetic universe if their positioning is absurd. He transposes in an ordinary surrounding the irrational and antique-inspired scenes by De Chirico.

​In 1926 in Brussels the Galerie Le Centaure invites René Magritte to prepare paintings for his first solo exhibition to be held in April and May of the next year. The young artist builds his own surreal world where the main characters are bilboquets.

In this set of 49 paintings and 12 papiers collés, Magritte questions the nature of the human being, often limited to several cut organs. He simplifies his drawing so that the objects are immediately recognizable, making their interactions even more bizarre. 

Visitors are not interested in his intentionally illogical vision of the world. In August 1927 Magritte joined the surrealist group in Paris where the audience was also reluctant. Returning to Brussels in 1930 he exploited through four decades his original idea of ​​the incongruous relations between disparate objects.

1
​​1926 Le Groupe Silencieux
​2018 SOLD for £ 7.2M by Christie's

Le Groupe silencieux, oil on canvas 120 x 80 cm painted in 1926, was the no. 9 at Le Centaure in 1927.

The walls of the room are pink, the color of the female nude which also excites Magritte at that time. An almost complete humanoid silhouette is a thick cropped board. Three eyes are folded on the edges of a flesh-colored cube in an iconography that anticipates Dali's soft watches.

Art did not escape this grotesque setting with the image of a castle that dissolves in the curtain and a large landscape painting carelessly leaning against the wall on the left.

It was sold for £ 7.2M by Christie's on February 27, 2018, 
lot 107.
1926

​2
1926-1927 La Lumière du Pôle
2022 SOLD for £ 6M by Christie's

René Magritte based his whole career on the observation that the image of an object is not the real object. The consequence is that a landscape may be populated by surrealist elements and that the apparent textures and shapes must disturb the expectation of the viewer. Stylized mountain ranges are used for the backdrop of surrealist sceneries.

Painted in 1926-1927, La Lumière du Pôle is a complex composition with three elements spanning the whole foreground. A pair of bald women in the nude may be wax mannequins. Their integrity is conjured by the sheared edges featuring them as mere paper shells with empty interiors. The third element, a standing dove that looks like the fur wrap of a vase, is a wink to a company that were commissioning the catalogues of their fur collection to the artist. The threatening sky is in the style of De Chirico.

Once in the collection of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, this large size oil on canvas 139 x 105 cm was sold by Christie's for £ 6M on March 1, 2022, lot 102 and for £ 4.9M on March 5, 2025, lot 114.

It had been the no. 47 in the 1927 solo exhibition at Le Centaure after being  illustrated in March 1927 as Le Sommet du Pôle in a Brussels magazine.

​The no. 12 at Le Centaure was Le Toit du Monde, oil on canvas 65 x 75 cm. A violin stick is raised in the middle of the table. The stage is curled to imitate the folds of the mountain and its surface is holed like a cheese of Gruyere. It was sold for € 2.7M by Sotheby's on October 19, 2017, lot 8.

The no. 13 was Les Signes du soir, oil on canvas 75 x 65 cm executed in 1926. The large frame is a trompe-l'oeil, leaving to the viewer to choose whether the tree is in the painting or elsewhere. It was sold for £ 1.8M by Christie's on February 27, 2018, lot 118.

The no. 33 was L'Esprit du voyageur, 65 x 75 cm. A tall bowling pin positioned inside a group of three porticoes admires the immensity of nature. The foreground of the mountain appears in space like a flat cardboard. It was sold for £ 460K by Christie's on February 9, 2011, lot 118.

1928 Les Jours Gigantesques
2012 SOLD for £ 7.2M by Christie's

A fan of the Fantômas movie series, René Magritte manages to express the sexual violence, a trending theme in the Parisian Surrealist group.

The rape stages a clothed man holding high a nude woman. She is in terror with an extended arm which mimics the Ratto delle Sabine by Giambologna.

Magritte adds his own special wit. The man is in front of his victim but is trimmed in his head and back so that he does not overlap her outline. In a close view the woman is indeed threatened by a part of herself, somehow composed like a movie poster. Her struggle is psychological. The artist originally proposed the title La Peur de l'Amour, describing a balance between violence and union.

The 30 year old artist appealed his Surrealist poet friends to coin a better title. He was ready to accept L'Aube désarmé suggested by Nougé before converging with Scutenaire for a megalomaniac Les Jours Gigantesques.

This oil on canvas 72 x 54 cm painted in 1928 was sold for £ 7.2M from a lower estimate of £ 800K by Christie's on June 20, 2012,
lot 56.

​1928 Les Chasseurs au Bord de la Nuit
2024 SOLD for $ 9.6M by Christie's

In 1928, René Magritte is in Paris. Same as Dali and Ernst, he expresses his vision of life by creating parallel universes. He is passionate about Poe but he is also still shocked by the suicide of his mother in the Sambre river 16 years earlier when he was 14.

Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit (Hunters at the edge of night), oil on canvas 81 x 116 cm, was sold by Christie's for £ 6.6M on February 4, 2014, lot 114 and for $ 9.6M on November 19, 2024, lot 38A. It was the largest format used at that time by Magritte. 

Two bulky men with boots and rifles are desperately clinging to a wall. On the right, the space is free to the horizon. Nothing explains why these men do not circumvent the edge of the wall excepted the hostile vacuum of this endless landscape.

It was assumed that the wall came suddenly for separating them from any logical reality, as the Pit and the Pendulum in Poe's short story. A hunter is a killer who does not have to attract sympathy but the attitude of these men is a masterpiece of the surrealist expression of anguish and a beautiful symbol of the impotence of humanity.

The artist plays with day and night. The angle of the shadow is from twilight but the blank light does not come from the sun which just set off at the opposite.

masterpiece
1929 La Trahison des Images
Los Angeles County Museum

From 1926 Magritte observes that an image of an object remains an image and is not the object. He begins to confront the drawing of his pipe with the word 'pipe' or with an abstraction. In 1929 La trahison des images is an artistic manifesto of a sublime simplicity, in just six words: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."

In the same period Miro also was appreciating that the new poetic dimension of modern art was a personal work that could not be attached to a movement and even less to a political affiliation.

1933 La Reconnaissance Infinie
2025 SOLD for £ 10.3M by Christie's

In 1933 a solo exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels featured more than 50 works by René Magritte, most of them executed in the later 1920s.

Recently introduced in the Surrealist group of Brussels, the young poet Paul Colinet was dazzled. He prepared a sketch which is a synthesis of Magritte's surrealist vision.

A scenery of majestic stylized mountains is bordered by a window whose left side is missing. A gigantic white orb is floating in mid air with a tiny gentleman standing in its top. The shadows of mountain and orb are in contradiction.

The orb may be the ball of a bilboquet, that game introduced in art by Morandi and extensively recuperated by Magritte in his early works. It may also be an oversized crystal ball.

After the closure of the exhibition, Magritte executed a painting from Colinet's composition. This oil on canvas 100 x 70 cm was sold for £ 10.3M from a lower estimate of £ 6M by Christie's on March 5, 2025, lot 108.

The title, La Reconnaissance infinie, probably coined by Colinet, is based on the double meaning of the word, used both for acknowledging Magritte's pioneering style and for the geographical survey of the man looking straight into some infinity.

Probably by chance, this painting matches the everlasting quest in Chinese art for the position of small men within the huge sceneries of the world.
1933

​1936 La Vengeance
2021 SOLD for € 14.6M by Christie's

In every work René Magritte invites the viewer in a dreamlike world where the juxtaposition of familiar objects becomes paradoxical. His limitless fantasy integrates a reflection about the deep nature of the images, which must be considered by themselves and not as a trial to reconstitute a reality or a truth.

Some artifacts get a major role in his surrealistic demonstration, especially when they mingle together. The world of the artist is a confusion between outside and inside, still enhanced by the role of the door which loses its separation role. The image within the image provides also a major role to the easel.

In 1931 in La Belle Captive, a continuous pastoral landscape incorporates an easel so that the viewer cannot know whether the frame on the easel is empty or includes a picture in the exact continuity of the landscape. In 1933 La Condition Humaine brings a further confusion between the easel and a porch.

On June 30, 2021, Christie's sold for € 14.6M from a lower estimate of € 6M La Vengeance, oil on canvas 55 x 65 cm painted in 1936, lot 108.

The easel is inside an empty room. It supports a landscape painting with a cloudy blue sky. The white clouds escape on the wall around the easel. A single grelot (jingle bell) on the floor is a signature artifact by the artist as a frequently used alternative to his baluster bilboquet.

The ultimate compositions from that trend are painted in 1939. A single white cloud is stuck in a half opened transparent door that stands alone in a seaside landscape, in La Victoire, or in a door embedded within a wall, in Le Poison (not to be confused with another Poison which is a precursor to L'Empire des Lumières).
1936

​1937 Le Principe du Plaisir
​2018 SOLD for $ 27M by Sotheby's

Edward James is the son of an American railroad boss and of a supposed natural daughter of King Edward VII. He lives in England. He is a wealthy poet, and his interest in psychoanalysis is transformed into a passion for surrealist art.

In 1937 James is 30 years old. Dali introduces him to Magritte. Their connivance is immediate and perfect. Magritte proposes to make two surrealist portraits of his new patron.

Magritte sends a preparatory drawing to his model. He has chosen the theme of the portrait whose head is entirely replaced by a dazzling light. To make sure of James' enthusiasm, Magritte asks him to take care of the photographic preparation in the pose that matches the drawing. James has the picture taken by Man Ray.

On November 12, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 27M from a lower estimate of $ 15M this portrait of James by Magritte, oil on canvas 73 x 55 cm painted in 1937, lot 35. Magritte has friendly chosen a Freudian title, Le Principe du Plaisir. The outline of the head is embedded in a halo that makes the image even more laudative.

The provenance testifies to the lasting success of this portrait. It belonged to James and then to his foundation until 1978 and remained in another collection since 1979.

The second portrait, also painted in 1937, is titled La Reproduction Interdite. It is another development of the theme of the visible and the hidden. James looks at himself in a large mirror in which his reflection is seen from behind.

Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
Magritte
1937

​1938 Le Domaine d'Arnheim
​2017 SOLD for £ 10.2M by Christie's

The titles of René Magritte's artworks are mostly the result of chance. Le Domaine d'Arnheim is a counter-example.

The composition shows a large snowy mountain seen from a chalet. Everything is normal except that the horizon is centered on an eagle's head in profile, suggesting the intervention of a sculptor for shaping the mountain as in Mount Rushmore. The surprise occasioned by this discovery leads the viewer to perceive the landscape as the extended wings of the bird. In the foreground two beautiful eggs are placed on a low wall.

The artist has thus grouped two dualities which are among the permanent themes of his surreal world : the living and the rock form an impossible pair while egg to bird is somehow a metamorphosis similar as caterpillar to butterfly. From 1932 the artist had placed eggs in bird cages.

The title also has a double meaning. Arnhem in the Netherlands has as its etymological origin 'the home of the eagle' from an Old German word. The Domain of Arnheim is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe in which a man with unlimited wealth remodels the landscape to make it more beautiful than what nature alone can do. This title chosen by Magritte is also an acknowledgment of Poe as a forerunner of Surrealism.

The original version, oil on canvas 73 x 100 cm painted in 1938, was sold for £ 10.2M from a lower estimate of £ 6.5M by 
Christie's on February 28, 2017, lot 112. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.

Magritte executed his sublime landscape ten times, always with the same title : three paintings and seven gouaches. 

Domaine d'Arnheim, painted in 1949, features the same landscape with significant surrealist additions in a new demonstration of the treachery of images. This oil in canvas 100 x 81 cm was sold for $ 19M by 
Sotheby's on May 16, 2023, lot 9.

The landscape is now framed in a full arched window between a pair of curtains. The eggs have gone, superseded on two shelves by pieces of shattered glass duplicating the landscape. The largest piece features the eagle's head. The picture itself is cracked like a jigsaw puzzle in the same element shapes as the shattered glass panes.

1938 Le Miroir Universel
2023 SOLD for HK$ 78M by Sotheby's

Under the title La Magie noire, René Magritte displays in 1934 his wife Georgette as a naked woman, like a Venus of Milo who would have retrieved her arms, in frontal view. References to the Medici Venus and to Botticelli's Birth of Venus are also suitable.

​The head and torso imitate the cerulean blue of the evening sky behind her, in contradiction with the lower body treated in the color of the flesh in sunlight. A white dove is tenderly resting on a shoulder, beak near cheek.

The title is related to an explanation provided by Magritte to Breton about the mingling of the woman into the sky. The hand resting in a stone refers to the attachment of mankind to the earth. The juxtaposition of night and day is Magritte's symbol of the most delightful poetry.

La Magie noire had a lot of followings. Le Miroir universel begins its exhibition history in 1938 but is dated 1939 possibly after a rework. The image is revealed as a wall paper, half torn before an interior boiserie. This jagged shearing may refer to the estrangement of the artist with his wife at that time. The dove is absent.

This oil on canvas 116 x 89 cm was sold for $ 6.7M by Christie's on November 12, 2015, lot 22C and for HK $ 78M by Sotheby's on October 5, 2023, lot 8510. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.

Magritte and Georgette reconcile in 1940. A variant 73 x 54 cm painted in 1942 of La Magie noire reusing that title was sold for £ 4.6M by Christie's on March 7, 2024, lot 112. Le Beau navire, 93 x 70 cm painted ca 1946, was sold for £ 3.8M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2010, lot 30. The dove has not reappeared. A hand holds an ephemeral rose.

Another version of La Magie noire, oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm, was sold for £ 4.2M by Sotheby's on June 19, 2019, lot 17. This remake painted in 1946 for his brother Raymond includes the main elements of the previous versions : the two-colored woman with empty eyes, a hand on a rock serving as a guéridon. Peace has come back, same for the dove.

Variants in other staging of the full front nude standing woman with a hand on a rock include L'Aimant, oil on canvas 130 x 90 cm painted in 1941, sold for £ 4.75M by Christie's on February 9, 2011, lot 104, with a heavy red curtain, and L'Ingénue, oil on canvas 80 x 60 cm painted in 1945, sold for € 5.5M by Sotheby's in October 26, 2021, lot 5, within a crowd of stupid zoomorphic bilboquets. Please watch the video prepared by the auction house.

1945 L'Ile au Trésor
​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.
1945
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.