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Lot Essay
In a 1938 lecture, Magritte explained the imagery of Le modéle rouge as the "solution" to a "problem": "The problem of the shoes demonstrates how far the most barbaric things can, through force of habit, come to be considered quite respectable. Thanks to "Modèle rouge," people can feel that the union of a human foot with a leather shoe is, in fact, a monstrous custom" (quoted in Sylvester, op. cit., vol. II, p. 205). The image, according to Werner Spies, was suggested to Magritte by Max Ernst, who took the idea from a Touraine shoemaker's sign.
The present work is probably the second of three variations in gouache. The earliest version in oil (Sylvester, no. 380) dates from 1935; it and two subsequent versions in oil are currently located in museum collections. The first is in the collection of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the second version (Sylvester, no. 382), painted only several months later, rests in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; and the third (1937; Sylvester 428), in which Magritte added a trompe l'oeil scrap of newspaper to the ground in the lower right, was acquired by the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
The present work is probably the second of three variations in gouache. The earliest version in oil (Sylvester, no. 380) dates from 1935; it and two subsequent versions in oil are currently located in museum collections. The first is in the collection of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the second version (Sylvester, no. 382), painted only several months later, rests in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; and the third (1937; Sylvester 428), in which Magritte added a trompe l'oeil scrap of newspaper to the ground in the lower right, was acquired by the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.