[imagesource:renemagritte.org]

A René Magritte painting portraying an eerily lighted streetscape sold for more than $121 million (R1.2 billion) at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday, well above its $95 million (R1.7 billion) estimate and breaking the auction record for the Surrealist artist’s works.

The 1954 canvas, one of the biggest paintings in a series of 27 pieces named “L’empire des lumières” (“The Empire of Light”), is well recognised among 20th-century art specialists for its grandeur, perfect condition, and delicate details.

The selling price, which exceeded expectations, is an encouraging sign amid a decline in global art sales and an art market plagued by economic uncertainty.

The artwork was described by the auction house as the “crown jewel” of its former owner, the late American interior designer Mica Ertegun, whose collection was part of the sale on Tuesday. The sale also included works by other modern masters such as Ed Ruscha and Max Ernst.

The artwork shows a home with a solitary streetlamp in front. The lamp’s flame illuminates the entire canvas, even the dark trees in the foreground, which are practically black in colour, and the scene is serenely mirrored in a pool of water. Above the streetscape, a bright blue sky speckled with fluffy white clouds reaches the canvas’s top.

Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th to 21st Century Art, told CNN that the work had an “extraordinary glow in person.”

“The motif is one of the few truly iconic images in 20th-century art and the painting, particularly the sky and flickering light in the foreground.”

The auction also featured two more Magritte pieces, “La cour d’amour” and “La Mémoire,” which sold for $10.53 million (R109 million) and $3.68 million (R65 million), respectively.

According to Art Basel and UBS’s 2024 Survey of Global Collecting, Christie’s public auction sales totalled $2.1 billion in the first half of this year, a 22% decrease from the same time the previous year, and the second consecutive year of dropping first-half sales.

Christie’s did, however, have some increases in 2024, especially in its sale of Asian art and overall online sales, which witnessed a 3% year-on-year growth in worldwide share of bids since 2023.

A recent 20th and 21st-century art sale in Hong Kong saw works by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh fetching prices close to and below estimates –– a sign that buyers are still cautious.

Though most recognised for his surrealist representations of bowler hat-wearing men, such as the below The Son of Man (Le fils de l’homme), Magritte spent 15 years studying the ephemeral change from day to night in landscape painting. He created 17 oil paintings and 10 gouaches (water-based paintings) all titled “L’empire des lumières” — with minor variations between versions.

René Magritte was born in 1898. Initially opting to study at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels between 1916 and 1918, he quit the school because he believed it was a waste of time. All of his subsequent works reflect cubism, a trend established by Pablo Picasso and very popular at the time.

In 1922, he married Georgette and worked a variety of modest jobs, including painting cabbage flowers for a wallpaper manufacturer, to help pay the expenses.

During the early period of his career, shortly following his marriage, René Magritte would spend the free time that he had, creating art forms and working on a number of pieces; it was during this time period that he realized surrealism was the art form which he most enjoyed. In 1926 he showcased The Menaced Assassin in the surrealist style which he had been working on.

Over the course of his career, he produced a number of variants of his art and changed the format to recreate what the viewer was experiencing.

His paintings have become extremely popular, especially after a big version painted in 1954 was displayed in the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and sold to renowned collector Peggy Guggenheim. To avoid disappointing other collectors, Magritte created three equally huge canvases, including the one sold on Tuesday, that same year.

[source:cnn]