.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In this exquisite gouache Magritte uses the subtlety of the medium to depict a calm mountainous sunset which is used as an atmospheric backdrop to the extraordinary metamorphosis of leaves into birds.
Magritte often used the concept of metamorphosis as it is found in nature - the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly for example - as the basis for his own peculiar visual transformations. After having once awoken from a dream in which he saw an egg in a birdcage, and having immediately realised the connection between the egg and the bird which the cage was supposed to house, Magritte often consciously sought out to engender similar surprising relationships between ordinary objects. His 'leaf-birds', as depicted in the shadowy evening foreground of La Paix du Soir, are one of the finest examples of this approach to his imagery. For, in the same way that Magritte allows a leaf to speak for a whole tree in paintings such as La Recherche de l'Absolu of 1940, in works such as La Saveur des Larmes of 1948 and the present work, Magritte lets the leaf sprout wings and become a bird. In La Paix du Soir the pale purple tones of Magritte's tiny brushstrokes brilliantly convey the subtle change in texture from the skin of the leaves to feathers. In the quiet of an evening sunset, the vegetable becomes animal.
Magritte often used the concept of metamorphosis as it is found in nature - the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly for example - as the basis for his own peculiar visual transformations. After having once awoken from a dream in which he saw an egg in a birdcage, and having immediately realised the connection between the egg and the bird which the cage was supposed to house, Magritte often consciously sought out to engender similar surprising relationships between ordinary objects. His 'leaf-birds', as depicted in the shadowy evening foreground of La Paix du Soir, are one of the finest examples of this approach to his imagery. For, in the same way that Magritte allows a leaf to speak for a whole tree in paintings such as La Recherche de l'Absolu of 1940, in works such as La Saveur des Larmes of 1948 and the present work, Magritte lets the leaf sprout wings and become a bird. In La Paix du Soir the pale purple tones of Magritte's tiny brushstrokes brilliantly convey the subtle change in texture from the skin of the leaves to feathers. In the quiet of an evening sunset, the vegetable becomes animal.