Also see Magritte at Auction Part II
René Magritte’s Le Droit chemin, a compelling exemplar of the clarity of thought, compositional purity and precise execution the artist reached in his mature works, amongst other important highlights.
René Magritte (1898 – 1967), Torse nu dans les nuages. Oil on canvas, signed ‘Magritte’ (lower left), 28 1⁄2 x 24 in (71.4 x 61 cm). Painted circa 1937. Estimate: $6,000,000 – 9,000,000. Photo: Bonhams.
René Magritte’s Torse nu dans les nuages (circa. 1937) leads Bonhams sale of The Collection of Amalia de Schulthess on Tuesday, December 7, in New York. The work, which has remained unseen for the last 70 years – and has never before been offered at auction – has an estimate of $6,000,000 - 9,000,000.
Combining the classical and the deeply surreal, Torse nu dans les nuages includes two of René Magritte’s signature motifs: clouds and a female torso. The work dates from circa 1937, during the height of the Surrealist movement. It comes to Bonhams from the distinguished private collection of Amalia de Schulthess (1918-2021) and leads the dedicated single-owner sale of selected works from her impressive collection. Torse nu dans les nuages was notably included in the 1948 Magritte exhibition at the Copley Galleries in Los Angeles.
René Magritte, Le mois des vendanges, oil on canvas, 51.1/4 x 63 in. (127.6 x 160 cm.), Painted in 1959, Estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000
Christie's annual auction The Art of the Surreal will continue on from the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 5 February 2020, marking the launch of ‘20th Century at Christie’s’. Painted in 1962,
René Magritte’s À la rencontre du plaisir (Towards Pleasure) (estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000) combines several of the artist’s most iconic motifs into a single, evocative image, creating an elegant summation of the poetic imagination which fuelled his unique form of Surrealism. Purchased directly from the artist shortly after its creation, the painting has remained in the same family collection for over half a century, and is coming to auction for the first time.
Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s: “It is with great expectation that we present this unique masterpiece by Magritte to the market for the first time on behalf of the family who were close friends of the artist and frequent guests at his famous Saturday gatherings of poets and other Surrealist intellectuals. It is probably the most hyper realistically painted and most strikingly poetic composition by the artist that I have had the honour to work with. It is a powerful illustration, just as his best ‘L'empire des lumières’ paintings are, of the ways in which Magritte deployed realistic looking symbols of a normal, ordinary and conventional life to casually pull us, the viewer, into a familiar setting only to then surprise us, unsettle us, cast his magical spell on us, thereby changing forever our experience of everyday reality.”
At its centre stands one of Magritte’s most familiar and enigmatic characters, the solitary man in the bowler hat, who appears lost in thought as he gazes upon the landscape before him. The bright glow of the moon casts a subtle sheen on the dome of his hat, while a soft, creeping mist hangs in the middle-distance, blurring the boundary between the forest and the open field. Seen from behind, the gentleman seems captivated by the vista, his stance and positioning amidst the sublime beauty of the natural world calling to mind the compositions of Caspar David Friedrich, although Magritte was no Romantic. There is a palpable sense of mystery and poetry to the scene, an uncertainty as to whether or not the view is real or imagined, and what exactly this figure’s role or place is in the world that the artist conjures.
René Magritte, La magie noire , 1946, (detail) oil on canvas (est. £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 / $3,187,500 - 4,462,500)
La magie noire stands as one of the most elegant examples of the theme that preoccupied Magritte in the 1940s, that of a female nude in an unidentified landscape. Here, the artist transforms his wife Georgette Berger into a modern - day Venus. Depicting her image in a classical manner, abiding by the laws of conventional beauty and proportion, she resembles a marble sculpture or mythical figure as much as a live model. This traditional representation is juxtaposed with the unexpected colouration of the figure, as her upper body gradually acquires the tone of the sky behind. The painting’s first owner was the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, a successful businessman, who often supported the artist by buying his pictures, particularly in the early stages of his career. Frit representation is juxtaposed with the unexpected colouration of the figure, as her upper body gradually acquires the tone of the sky behind. The painting’s first owner was the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, a successful businessman, who often supported the artist by buying his pictures, particularly in the early stages of his career.
Christie’s on 27 February 2019, The Art of the Surreal
René Magritte’s masterpiece Le Lieu Commun, 1964 (estimate: £15,000,000-25,000,000), one of the finest and largest examples of his iconic bowler-hatted men, will lead Christie’s The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale on 27 February 2019. Never before offered at auction, and poised to set a new world auction record for the artist, the work offers a unique vision of the wandering icon in that it offers a view of the figure both full-face and hidden behind a column in an ambiguous landscape of either impossible or multiple reality. The large scale (39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. and 100 x 81 cm.) oil on canvas, signed ‘Magritte’ in the upper right corner, will be on view in New York from 4 to 11 November 2018 before touring to Hong Kong from 22 to 26 November 2018, Beijing 8 to 9 December 2018, Shanghai from 12 to 13 December 2018, Taipei from 15 to 16 January 2019, and LA from 31 January to 6 February 2019. The painting will be exhibited in London ahead of the auction from 22 to 27 February 2019.
Le Lieu Commun was formerly owned by Gustave Nellens, the great collector who commissioned the ‘Le Domaine Enchanté’ series of eight paintings by Magritte, and owned many great works by the artist, as well as the Fuji Museum in Tokyo. It is one of four paintings featuring the bowler-hatted man from 1964 that mark the culmination of this theme in Magritte’s work. The others are
Le Fils de L’Homme, made for Harry Torczyner and which previously set the world record for the artist when auctioned in 1999,
La Grande Guerre
and L’Homme au Chapeau Melon.
René Magritte
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René Magritte (1898-1967) Le monde poétique IIEstimate GBP 1,500,000 - GBP 2,500,000(USD 1,938,000 - USD 3,230,000)Lot 103.jpg?mode=max&width=200)
René Magritte (1898-1967) Moments musicauxEstimate GBP 750,000 - GBP 1,250,000(USD 969,000 - USD 1,615,000)Lot 102.jpg?mode=max&width=200)
René Magritte (1898-1967) Le pain quotidienEstimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000(USD 2,584,000 - USD 3,876,000)Lot 105.jpg?mode=max&width=200)
René Magritte (1898-1967) Le lieu communEstimate on requestLot 108
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Led by Le lieu commun, six additional works by René Magritte will be offered for sale. In La belle captive (1931, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000), René Magritte presents, for the very first time, the image of a painted canvas standing on an easel, depicting the exact same scene that its presence within the picture seems to obscure. This was to become a familiar device for the rest of his career.
In Composition on a Sea Shore (1935-36, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000) three incongruous and impossible objects are positioned amidst a sun-soaked beach: a sheet of corrugated metal interspersed with spherical bells; a picture-within-a-picture; and an amorphous, flesh-coloured column or pillar, an object that is completely unique within the artist’s oeuvre. Floating amidst the clouds, the body of a statuesque nude woman is framed by the jagged opening of a darkened cave in Magritte’s Le pain quotidien (1942, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000). Never-before seen at auction, Le pain quotidien has remained in private hands since the time of its conception. Additional works include Le monde poétique II (1937, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000), Moments musicaux (1961, estimate: £750,000-1,250,000) and Les barricades mystérieuses (1960, estimate: £350,000-450,000).
The Art of the Surreal sale will follow the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 27 February 2018.
René Magritte , Le groupe silencieux , oil on canvas, 1926, estimate: £6,5 00,000 - 9,500,000
Magritte’s large Le groupe silencieux of 1926, one of a handful of large and important early works by the artist, is the highlight of the sale .
René Magritte
The sale includes seven paintings by René Magritte, led by Le groupe silencieux (above), (1926, estimate: £6,500,000 - 9,500,000) an important example of his early Surrealist style, and where all the pictorial devices, props and structures that go into the making of a so - called ‘figurative’ or ‘representational’ painting have been rendered in an unusual, subversive manner. The work is one of a pioneering series of oil paintings that the artist made between January 1926 and April 1927 in preparation for his first one - man show, held at the Galerie le Centaure, Brussels in the spring of 1927. In conjunction with his deconstruction of the components of landscape and still - life painting there is also a sense that the representation of the human figure has been broken down into parts. This painting is, in this respect, a landmark work that establishes some of the logic and framework of the aesthetic path that Magritte was to follow for the rest of his life.
La recherche de l'absolu (1948, estimate: £1,000,000 - 1,500,000),
L’explication (1962, estimate: £400,000 - 700,000), 
and L'oasis (1926, estimate: £1,400,000 - 2,000,000).
Property from an Important Private Collection. René Magritte (1898-1967), L’empire des lumières, Painted in Brussels, 1949. Oil on canvas, 19.1/8 x 23.1/8 in. Estimate: $14-18 million
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Le domaine d’Arnheim (1938, estimate: £6,500,000-8,500,000)
Le domaine d’Arnheim is René Magritte’s first realisation in oil of one of his most enduring pictorial motifs, the magisterial eagle-shaped mountain. The epic scale and romantic grandeur of this painting’s mountain imagery is echoed on a window ledge in the foreground of the painting where a small, almost minimal, still-life rests in the form of a pair of bird eggs. The present work formed part of the collection assembled by the great English patron and collector of surrealist art, Edward James.
Offered from a European Private Collection, Le baiser, circa 1957, a gouache on paper by René Magritte (1898-1967), presents one of Magritte’s most poetic subjects: the oiseau de ciel, or ‘Sky-Bird’ (estimate: £1.2-1.8 million). This work presents the viewer with a rare and yet greatly celebrated motif that first entered his oeuvre in 1940 in
Le retour, now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.
The ‘Sky-Bird’ would come to gain international recognition in part through the later adoption by the Belgian national air carrier, Sabena, of a variant of this theme. In the case of the Sabena image, entitled
and Le chant d'amour, circa 1962 (estimate: £300,000-500,000)
which are both offered from a distinguished private Belgian Collection, as well as
L'art de la conversation, 1955, (estimate: £300,000-500,000).
which is being sold from a private American Collection The market for works by Magritte is particularly strong with Christie’s selling all nine examples offered last February in London, which constituted the most extraordinary and extensive selection of works by the artist to come to the market since the landmark Harry Torczyner sale in 1998 at Christie’s New York.
Max Ernst
Max Ernst’s Les invités du dimanche (The Sunday Guests) (1924, estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000) is one of a small number of Dada paintings in which the artist first attempted to move beyond the inspiration of the metaphysical paintings of Carrà and de Chirico and his own experimental work with collage .
In this work, Ernst made use of a series of printed images of women’s hairstyles as the prompt for the creation of a sequence of bizarre and haunting figurative personages. He was also inspired at this time by the kind of eroto-mechanics of Duchamp and Picabia’s machine pictures and deeply interested in alchemy and in alchemical illust ration.
This work also appears to be highly auto - biographical, perhaps alluding to the ménage à trois that existed between Ernst, Paul and Gala Éluard in that period.
Christie's 2017
The group of seven works by Max Ernst, offered from a number of prestigious collections, includes Les deux oiseaux, (estimate: £100,000-150,000)one of a major series of object-paintings on the theme of imprisoned birds that Ernst made in 1925. The delicacy of the birds’ forms is presented in sharp contrast to the heavy texture of the sandpaper ground, imprisoning bars and the strong cork boundary of the artist’s picture-frame.
Savage Moon (1926, estimate: £250,000-350,000) is one of a series of moonlit landscape paintings that Ernst made the following year, in 1926. Depicting a mystic moon casting its ethereal light over the surface of the sea, it is one of the very first paintings that he ever made using the new technique of grattage, a method of scraping random patterns in oil paint.
Max Ernst Portrait érotique voilé (1933 and circa 1950, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500-000): Centred upon the depiction of an imperious bird-headed female figure sporting a revolutionary bonnet de la Liberté and seated on a crimson throne, this final version was unseen in public until the major retrospective of Ernst’s work held at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf in 1991.
Out of the apparent geometric simplicity of the forms a matrix of abstract pattern and colour has been created. Portrait érotique voilé is offered by the artist’s family, it was first created in 1933 and later reworked by the artist into a new, more regal and grandiose version around 1950.
Christie's 2016
A museum quality work and the cover lot of the sale, The Stolen Mirror by Max Ernst (1891-1976) is a surrealist technical tour-de-force, highly autobiographical and one of the artist's finest works (estimate: £7-10 million). This dream-like landscape was painted in 1941 at the pinnacle of Ernst’s oeuvre, when he was using the decalcomania technique of manipulating paint which he picked up from Oscar Dominguez. Many Surrealists tried the technique though Ernst was the only one to adapt decalcomania in a sustained manner to painting in oils on canvas. Rarely employing it as an end in itself, but rather as a means to create the unexpected, he became a master of the technique and achieved a remarkable degree of control over a fundamentally unpredictable process. The current record for a work by the artist, realising £10,283,175/ $16,322,500 at Christie’s in 2011, this painting once belonged to Edward James, one of the foremost early collectors of Surrealist art; it was later re-acquired by Ernst’s son Jimmy Ernst and descended through the family to the estate of Edith Dallas Ernst, from which it was last sold. Previous sale: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/max-ernst-the-stolen-mirror-5493627-details.aspx
Christie's 2015
Max Ernst’s Les invités du dimanche (The Sunday Guests) (1924, estimate: £2,000,000 - 3,000,000) is one of a small number of Dada paintings in which the artist first attempted to move beyond the inspiration of the metaphysical paintings of Carrà and de Chirico and his own experimental work with collage .
In this work, Ernst made use of a series of printed images of women’s hairstyles as the prompt for the creation of a sequence of bizarre and haunting figurative personages. He was also inspired at this time by the kind of eroto-mechanics of Duchamp and Picabia’s machine pictures and deeply interested in alchemy and in alchemical illust ration.
This work also appears to be highly auto - biographical, perhaps alluding to the ménage à trois that existed between Ernst, Paul and Gala Éluard in that period.
Christie's 2017
The group of seven works by Max Ernst, offered from a number of prestigious collections, includes Les deux oiseaux, (estimate: £100,000-150,000)one of a major series of object-paintings on the theme of imprisoned birds that Ernst made in 1925. The delicacy of the birds’ forms is presented in sharp contrast to the heavy texture of the sandpaper ground, imprisoning bars and the strong cork boundary of the artist’s picture-frame.
Savage Moon (1926, estimate: £250,000-350,000) is one of a series of moonlit landscape paintings that Ernst made the following year, in 1926. Depicting a mystic moon casting its ethereal light over the surface of the sea, it is one of the very first paintings that he ever made using the new technique of grattage, a method of scraping random patterns in oil paint.
Max Ernst Portrait érotique voilé (1933 and circa 1950, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500-000): Centred upon the depiction of an imperious bird-headed female figure sporting a revolutionary bonnet de la Liberté and seated on a crimson throne, this final version was unseen in public until the major retrospective of Ernst’s work held at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf in 1991.
Out of the apparent geometric simplicity of the forms a matrix of abstract pattern and colour has been created. Portrait érotique voilé is offered by the artist’s family, it was first created in 1933 and later reworked by the artist into a new, more regal and grandiose version around 1950.
Christie's 2016
A museum quality work and the cover lot of the sale, The Stolen Mirror by Max Ernst (1891-1976) is a surrealist technical tour-de-force, highly autobiographical and one of the artist's finest works (estimate: £7-10 million). This dream-like landscape was painted in 1941 at the pinnacle of Ernst’s oeuvre, when he was using the decalcomania technique of manipulating paint which he picked up from Oscar Dominguez. Many Surrealists tried the technique though Ernst was the only one to adapt decalcomania in a sustained manner to painting in oils on canvas. Rarely employing it as an end in itself, but rather as a means to create the unexpected, he became a master of the technique and achieved a remarkable degree of control over a fundamentally unpredictable process. The current record for a work by the artist, realising £10,283,175/ $16,322,500 at Christie’s in 2011, this painting once belonged to Edward James, one of the foremost early collectors of Surrealist art; it was later re-acquired by Ernst’s son Jimmy Ernst and descended through the family to the estate of Edith Dallas Ernst, from which it was last sold. Previous sale: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/max-ernst-the-stolen-mirror-5493627-details.aspx
Christie's 2015
Max Ernst (1891-1976)
Le Couple (L'Accolade)
Price realised USD 9,125,000EstimateUSD 6,000,000 - USD 8,000,00Max Ernst
EstimateUSD 6,000,000 - USD 8,000,00Max Ernst
