Auction of the Week: This Surrealist Masterpiece by René Magritte Sold for Over $120 Million at Christie’s

Estimated at $95 million, it was guaranteed by Christie’s as well as backed by a third-party bid. After almost 10 minutes of frenzied bidding, the sale not only set a record for the artist’s work—but also for the Surrealist movement. The price, which includes Christie’s fees, surpassed the $79.8 million that was paid for a 1961 version of the work at Sotheby’s in 2022. Experts hope the successful results could be a sign of renewal for the recently struggling art market.

Painted by the Belgian Surrealist in 1954, the beguiling, enigmatic work depicts an impossible collision of day and night in single moment. It is one of 17 versions created by the artist in oil paint, with several more created in gouache, all exploring the theme of L’empire des lumières or the Empire of Light. The best-known version of this iconic work is found in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Ertegun’s piece is larger than the others and is the first in the series to include water in the foreground.

The power of the work lies in its simple poetry. “For me it’s not a matter of painting ‘reality’ as though it were readily accessible to me and to others,” Magritte once said. “But of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery.” The artist is said to have been inspired by the opening line of André Breton’s poem L’Aigrette: “If only the sun would shine tonight”.

“It’s an extraordinary viewing experience,” said Imogen Kerr, Vice President at Christie’s. “Completely immersive, the scale of it is captivating, and there’s a transporting quality engendered by the dynamism of the day and night together. Magritte speaks of these impossibilities that are only possible within the mind, and questions the supremacy of our perception of what we call reality.”

The story behind the work’s creation is a fascinating one and certainly adds to its allure. On June 19, 1954, the Venice Biennale opened with a Surrealist tone permeating much of the works on display (the show coincided with the 30th anniversary of Surrealism at the time.) One masterwork that caused a particular stir amongst the public was Magritte’s large-scale L’empire des lumières. It was so popular that Magritte is said to have promised it to three different buyers and in the end, it was Peggy Guggenheim who acquired it directly from the Biennale. According to Christie’s, as a result, Magritte created three additional versions of L’empire des lumières to appease the collectors who had missed out. The present work that sold at Christie’s this week was created for the Belgian collector Willy van Hove.

“Each iteration in the series, which Magritte worked at for 15 years, is distinct,” explained Carter. “Some are large, some small. Some are vertical, others horizontal. In some, the house is set back, in others it fully occupies the foreground. Here, Magritte achieves everything that makes these paintings so remarkable: the quality of light and watery animation, the vertical orientation and razor-sharp contrast between night and day.”

Few movements in art history have had as lasting a legacy as Surrealism, which this year celebrates its centennial with the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto in October 1924. Penned by the famous Surrealist Andre Breton, it defined the movement as a way to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.”