Details
Ren Magritte (1898-1967)
Magritte, R.
Le calligraphe
signed 'Magritte' (upper left); titled '"LE CALLIGRAPHE"' (on the reverse)
gouache on paper
7 x 9.7/8 in. (19 x 25 cm.)
Painted in 1962
Provenance
Barnet and Eleanor Cramer Hodes, Chicago (acquired from the artist, 1962).
By descent from the above to the present owner.
Literature
Letter from Magritte to Barnet Hodes, 19 October 1962.
Letters from Barnet Hodes to Magritte 17 and 26 December 1962.
D. Sylvester, S. Whitfield and M. Raeburn, Ren Magritte, Catalogue Raisonn, London, 1993-1994, vol. III, p. 117; vol. IV, p. 250, no. 1522 (illustrated).
Exhibited
Chicago, The Art Institute, Magritte, March-May 1993, no. 150.

Lot Essay

On 19 October 1962, Magritte wrote to Barnet Hodes that he would begin painting some gouaches for him in a few days' time, and asked that the collector send some sheets of paper cut to the measurements he specified. Ten works, including Les belles ralits (see lot 450) and Le calligraphe were subsequently sent off by the artist, and acknowledged by Hodes in letters of 17 and 26 December.

The present gouache is a version of a similarly titled oil painting from 1958 (Sylvester, no. 891; private collection). In this enigmatic picture, a stone of indeterminate size rests alone in the landscape. Its solitude lends it a poetic gravity and importance, as the only "being" in this vast country. Indeed, for Magritte the stone represented physical laws, which possesed their own poetic language. Magritte told his friend Andr Bosmans that poet Louis Scutenaire "found" the title for the work.

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