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Lot Essay
Three graceful female figures face the sea in René Magritte’s L’Embellie, painted in 1941. This image consciously adopts the visual language of the “three Graces,” the classical theme that has resulted in some of the most-celebrated pinnacles of Western art. From Roman sculpture, to Raphael and Canova, all of these are invoked, and indeed disrupted, in Magritte’s image. For instead of apples or interactions, here the women face the sea, each of them making a different offering—a rose, an egg to a dove, and in the left-hand figure, herself. This painting exudes mystery. There is little of the overtly impossible within the composition. Instead, Magritte has used reality to suggest a brilliant form of surreality.
L’Embellie was painted in 1941, when Magritte was living in occupied Belgium. The previous year, the German military had overrun Belgium, and Magritte had fled to France, concerned that his previous works and political activities would cause him problems during the Occupation. Within a matter of months, he returned from France to Brussels and began painting again. But where his previous paintings had often featured dark overtones, perhaps best expressed in Le drapeau noir of 1937 (Sylvester, no. 451; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), now he sought to introduce a new levity.
"A man asked me again yesterday: ‘What painting is it which expresses happiness?’ In spite of my good will I was unable to make him understand that it was painting which he was happy to look at." - René Magritte
The title, L’Embellie, was apparently chosen by Magritte’s friend Paul Nougé, and can mean a break in the clouds or clearing of the weather, perfectly encapsulating this notion of a ray of light against a dark historical backdrop. Like Henri Matisse during the Second World War and Claude Monet in the First, Magritte intended to keep the lanterns of beauty, joy and hope alight—and he intended to do so through his singular twists on our visual world. Indeed, soon afterwards he adopted a faux-Impressionist manner in some of his paintings, immersing his themes in a new and parodic sensuality.
At the time that he painted L’Embellie, Magritte wrote about his new-found thirst for painting more luminous, joyous works to his friend, the French poet Paul Eluard. “My attack of exhaustion is almost over (I don’t think it will ever finish entirely) and for some time I’ve been enjoying working,” he told Eluard. “No doubt I needed to find the means of realizing what was tormenting me: pictures in which I would exploit the ‘bright side’ of life. By this I mean all the traditional paraphernalia of charming things, women, flowers, birds, trees, the atmosphere of happiness, etc. And I have succeeded in freshening the air of my painting: a quite powerful charm has now replaced the disquieting poetry I used to strive to achieve in my pictures… [L’Embellie] represents three naked women seen from behind and facing the sea. One is offering a rose to the sea, another is offering her body, and the third is offering an egg to a bird… If these things have to have an additional justification, although their charm is sufficient to make it unnecessary, I would say that the power of these pictures is to make one acutely aware of the imperfections of everyday life” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, pp. 319-20).
In L’Embellie, Magritte has used colors, with contrasting azure and flesh tones, to create a rhythmic composition that draws the eye across it. Magritte himself told Eluard that, “Colors also have a role to play in this picture” (ibid.). The naked and near-naked figures are depicted with poise and grace, warm against the cool blue backdrop.
The latter dimension relies upon the mysterious offerings being made by each of the figures. The first, as we read across the painting, “is offering her body,” as though in some ritual. Indeed, perhaps she recalls some of the hieratic, naked figures who stalked the oneiric visions of Magritte’s contemporary in Belgium, Paul Delvaux. Meanwhile, the right-hand figure offers a sacrificial rose. The central figure has a dove, a symbol purloined from Christian imagery, perched on her hand, and is offering it a small white egg.
Here, Magritte introduces a discreet and playful variation on one of the earliest and most powerful themes of his paintings, the play between bird and egg, as explored in Les affinités électives (Sylvester, no. 349; Private collection) from the early 1930s. That work had been inspired by the confused vision that Magritte had when waking in a room that had a caged bird, and thinking that he saw instead an egg. This was to be the springboard for many of the subsequent transformations and explorations of the building blocks of everyday life, in which Magritte jolted his viewers out of the complacent appreciation of the world we see, instead teasing out a hidden poetry and power.
In his works of this period, Magritte often blurred the lines between life and imitation, in particular through the medium of the female nude. In L’Embellie and related paintings, he appeared to twist the tale of Pygmalion, itself such a cornerstone of the mythology of creation in the Western canon. In L’Embellie, the three figures have flesh tones, yet there is a mysterious stillness that recalls ancient statuary. However, that stillness is punctured by the rose and in particular the dove perched on the central figure’s hand, fragile yet eloquent flashes of vitality.
In other works of the period, Magritte showed a nude echoed in the curtain (L’Aimant—Sylvester no. 493; Private collection), he gave a standing figure a marble head (Les eaux profondes—Sylvester no. 491; Private collection) and in another case, he depicted a marble bust with a bleeding wound (La Mémoire—Sylvester no. 505 and 581; the whereabouts of the 1942 original are unknown, but a 1948 reprisal is at the Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels). Using these various depictions of flesh to question the attributes of life itself had added poignancy at the time that L’Embellie was painted. When Magritte was all too aware of the precariousness of existence, L’Embellie stands as a celebration of life and artistic beauty.
L’Embellie was painted in 1941, when Magritte was living in occupied Belgium. The previous year, the German military had overrun Belgium, and Magritte had fled to France, concerned that his previous works and political activities would cause him problems during the Occupation. Within a matter of months, he returned from France to Brussels and began painting again. But where his previous paintings had often featured dark overtones, perhaps best expressed in Le drapeau noir of 1937 (Sylvester, no. 451; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), now he sought to introduce a new levity.
"A man asked me again yesterday: ‘What painting is it which expresses happiness?’ In spite of my good will I was unable to make him understand that it was painting which he was happy to look at." - René Magritte
The title, L’Embellie, was apparently chosen by Magritte’s friend Paul Nougé, and can mean a break in the clouds or clearing of the weather, perfectly encapsulating this notion of a ray of light against a dark historical backdrop. Like Henri Matisse during the Second World War and Claude Monet in the First, Magritte intended to keep the lanterns of beauty, joy and hope alight—and he intended to do so through his singular twists on our visual world. Indeed, soon afterwards he adopted a faux-Impressionist manner in some of his paintings, immersing his themes in a new and parodic sensuality.
At the time that he painted L’Embellie, Magritte wrote about his new-found thirst for painting more luminous, joyous works to his friend, the French poet Paul Eluard. “My attack of exhaustion is almost over (I don’t think it will ever finish entirely) and for some time I’ve been enjoying working,” he told Eluard. “No doubt I needed to find the means of realizing what was tormenting me: pictures in which I would exploit the ‘bright side’ of life. By this I mean all the traditional paraphernalia of charming things, women, flowers, birds, trees, the atmosphere of happiness, etc. And I have succeeded in freshening the air of my painting: a quite powerful charm has now replaced the disquieting poetry I used to strive to achieve in my pictures… [L’Embellie] represents three naked women seen from behind and facing the sea. One is offering a rose to the sea, another is offering her body, and the third is offering an egg to a bird… If these things have to have an additional justification, although their charm is sufficient to make it unnecessary, I would say that the power of these pictures is to make one acutely aware of the imperfections of everyday life” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, pp. 319-20).
In L’Embellie, Magritte has used colors, with contrasting azure and flesh tones, to create a rhythmic composition that draws the eye across it. Magritte himself told Eluard that, “Colors also have a role to play in this picture” (ibid.). The naked and near-naked figures are depicted with poise and grace, warm against the cool blue backdrop.
The latter dimension relies upon the mysterious offerings being made by each of the figures. The first, as we read across the painting, “is offering her body,” as though in some ritual. Indeed, perhaps she recalls some of the hieratic, naked figures who stalked the oneiric visions of Magritte’s contemporary in Belgium, Paul Delvaux. Meanwhile, the right-hand figure offers a sacrificial rose. The central figure has a dove, a symbol purloined from Christian imagery, perched on her hand, and is offering it a small white egg.
Here, Magritte introduces a discreet and playful variation on one of the earliest and most powerful themes of his paintings, the play between bird and egg, as explored in Les affinités électives (Sylvester, no. 349; Private collection) from the early 1930s. That work had been inspired by the confused vision that Magritte had when waking in a room that had a caged bird, and thinking that he saw instead an egg. This was to be the springboard for many of the subsequent transformations and explorations of the building blocks of everyday life, in which Magritte jolted his viewers out of the complacent appreciation of the world we see, instead teasing out a hidden poetry and power.
In his works of this period, Magritte often blurred the lines between life and imitation, in particular through the medium of the female nude. In L’Embellie and related paintings, he appeared to twist the tale of Pygmalion, itself such a cornerstone of the mythology of creation in the Western canon. In L’Embellie, the three figures have flesh tones, yet there is a mysterious stillness that recalls ancient statuary. However, that stillness is punctured by the rose and in particular the dove perched on the central figure’s hand, fragile yet eloquent flashes of vitality.
In other works of the period, Magritte showed a nude echoed in the curtain (L’Aimant—Sylvester no. 493; Private collection), he gave a standing figure a marble head (Les eaux profondes—Sylvester no. 491; Private collection) and in another case, he depicted a marble bust with a bleeding wound (La Mémoire—Sylvester no. 505 and 581; the whereabouts of the 1942 original are unknown, but a 1948 reprisal is at the Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels). Using these various depictions of flesh to question the attributes of life itself had added poignancy at the time that L’Embellie was painted. When Magritte was all too aware of the precariousness of existence, L’Embellie stands as a celebration of life and artistic beauty.