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Lot Essay
Le jockey perdu is among Magritte's first Surrealist works. According to the artist, this papier coll preceded the related oil (Sylvester, no. 81; private collection), also from 1926, which he described as "the first canvas I really painted with the feeling I had found my way, if one can use that term" (quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., p. 48). In his 1954 autobiographical sketch, Magritte describes it as having been "conceived with no aesthetic intention, with the sole aim of RESPONDING to a mysterious feeling, a 'causeless' anguish, a sort of 'call to order'..." (quoted in D. Sylvester et al., op. cit., vol. I, p. 169).
The present gouache, like other of Magritte's earliest Surrealist works, reveals an interest in theatrical elements. Curtains frame a stage-like setting that emphasizes the linear movement of the jockey across the picture. However, the undulating, shifting geometry of the ground plane, with the color of the lines changing from black to blue as they move upwards, gives the impression of both instability and fragmentation. Already Magritte was removing common objects from their usual contexts: "Turned wood table-legs lost the innocent existence usually ascribed to them as soon as they appeared dominating a forest" (La ligne de la vie; quoted in S. Gablik, op. cit., p. 184).
The horse and rider is a theme that was to become quite prominent in Magritte's work. According to Torczyner, "He explained to me that he was in the habit of visiting race-courses at a time when balustrades and bilboquets were already part of his painter's vocabulary" (quoted in D. Sylvester et al., op. cit., vol. IV, p. 295). Yet this jockey has lost his way from the race-track into an enchanted realm. One writer, Camille Goemans, once identified the figure of the lost jockey with "Ren Magritte hurtling recklessly into the void" ("La Jeune Peinture belge," Bulletin de la vie artistique, 1 September 1926, p. 269; quoted in S. Whitfield, op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1992, no. 130).
Le jockey perdu bears unmistakable affinities to A Hunt in the Forest (fig. 1) by the Italian Renaissance master Paolo Uccello. Uccello was not only one of Magritte's favorite painters, but also the one old master painter whom Breton lists in his Manifesto as a Surrealist "in spirit."
(fig. 1) Paolo Uccello, A Hunt in the Forest, circa 1450.
Ashmolean Musem, Oxford.
The present gouache, like other of Magritte's earliest Surrealist works, reveals an interest in theatrical elements. Curtains frame a stage-like setting that emphasizes the linear movement of the jockey across the picture. However, the undulating, shifting geometry of the ground plane, with the color of the lines changing from black to blue as they move upwards, gives the impression of both instability and fragmentation. Already Magritte was removing common objects from their usual contexts: "Turned wood table-legs lost the innocent existence usually ascribed to them as soon as they appeared dominating a forest" (La ligne de la vie; quoted in S. Gablik, op. cit., p. 184).
The horse and rider is a theme that was to become quite prominent in Magritte's work. According to Torczyner, "He explained to me that he was in the habit of visiting race-courses at a time when balustrades and bilboquets were already part of his painter's vocabulary" (quoted in D. Sylvester et al., op. cit., vol. IV, p. 295). Yet this jockey has lost his way from the race-track into an enchanted realm. One writer, Camille Goemans, once identified the figure of the lost jockey with "Ren Magritte hurtling recklessly into the void" ("La Jeune Peinture belge," Bulletin de la vie artistique, 1 September 1926, p. 269; quoted in S. Whitfield, op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1992, no. 130).
Le jockey perdu bears unmistakable affinities to A Hunt in the Forest (fig. 1) by the Italian Renaissance master Paolo Uccello. Uccello was not only one of Magritte's favorite painters, but also the one old master painter whom Breton lists in his Manifesto as a Surrealist "in spirit."
(fig. 1) Paolo Uccello, A Hunt in the Forest, circa 1450.
Ashmolean Musem, Oxford.