Its immediacy and power encapsulate the ‘star quality’ that places Magritte firmly among the pantheon of the market’s most sought-after artists.
Nicknamed the "quiet saboteur", René Magritte is considered one of the fathers of Surrealism for his ability to cast doubt on reality by depicting seemingly realistic subjects that are sprinkled with mysterious and incongruous details.
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His famous painting L'Empire des lumières (The Empire of Lights) (1961) will be presented at Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary Art auction in London on March 2. Other versions of the painting have been acquired by world-renowned collectors, such as Nelson Rockefeller and Peggy Guggenheim, and are held at MoMA in New York, the Menil Collection in Houston, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.
The work, which is part of a series of 17 paintings, the only series ever made by Magritte, comes from the Gillion Crowet collection and was made in 1961 for Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, the daughter of the lawyer Pierre Crowet, one of the artist's most important patrons. Magritte and the young woman met for the first time when Magritte was not yet known to the general public. Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, who was only 16, became a muse and source of inspiration for the artist, serving as a model for important works, including La Fée ignorante (1956).
Related: The Tales Behind Art History's Most Important Muses
The Empire of Lights has been defined by Helena Newman, President of Sotheby's Europe, as a "masterpiece of 20th century art". "Its immediacy and power encapsulate the ‘star quality’ that places Magritte firmly among the pantheon of the market’s most sought-after artists," said Newman in a statement.
The scene depicts a "paradoxical" image, determined by the day-night dichotomy and the contrast between the bright sky and the façade of the house immersed in darkness despite being illuminated by the lights inside and from an outdoor lamppost. The result is vaguely disturbing and perhaps for this reason it seems that the image provided inspiration for a scene from the 1973 film The Exorcist.
Related: Surrealism and the Subconscious
According to some, Magritte may have been inspired by the following lines of the poem L'Aigrette by André Breton for this masterpiece: "Si seulement il faisait du soleil cette nuit" (If only there were the sun tonight).
Should it meet expectations, the painting could set a new record for the artist. The estimate, which is around $60 million, is in fact more than double Magritte's current record of $26.8 million, set at Sotheby's New York in November 2018 with Le Principe du Plaisir (1937). Such a result would be further confirmation that the market remains very strong, with the demand for major works far exceeding supply.
