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Read other press release:
Christie's Offers One of the Best Impressionist and Modern Picture Sales for Over a Decade
Contact:
Patricia Clark 44 (0)207 389 2117
RARE FAMILY COLLECTION OF EIGHT WORKS BY RENÉ MAGRITTE TO BE OFFERED AT CHRISTIE'S
Impressionist and Modern Art (Evening Sale)
Monday, 25 June 2001
London - Seven works by René Magritte (1898-1967) from the collection of Arlette Magritte, the artist's niece, will be included in the evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on 25 June 2001 with one painting included in the day sale on 26 June 2001. These rare and important paintings are expected to realize in excess of £1.5 million.
Each of the three Magritte brothers was gifted: René has become the most famous Belgian artist of the 20th century. His youngest brother Paul was a musician. Being similar in character to René, the two collaborated on several occasions. Less well known to art historians, is their middle brother Raymond, an extremely successful businessman. Arlette Magritte is Raymond's daughter and for the most part the paintings in her remarkable collection were those collected by Raymond and later bequeathed to her. Raymond was interested and closely involved in his brother René's work at every stage of his career. Not only did Raymond use his business contacts to obtain commercial art commissions for René, but his collection shows a great enthusiasm and understanding of his elder brother's work. Significantly, he did not merely rely on fraternal gifts, but in many cases actively purchased his brother's paintings from friends and galleries.
Arlette's paintings span René's career and include diverse examples of his work. La nourriture de l'ennemi (estimate: £50,000-70,000), a haunting image, bears a rare testimony to the very beginnings of Magritte's Surrealist journey. In 1925, he had painted his first Surrealist work, La fenêtre. Executed the following year in 1926, La nourriture de l'ennemi dates from Magritte's formative period and is heavily imbued with the influence of the Parisian strand of Surrealism. It was only later in the early 1930s, after a rift developed between René Magritte and André Breton, that Belgian Surrealism grew to become a distinctly separate entity from its French counterpart.
Image à la fenêtre (estimate: £300,000-500,000), 1944, was inspired by a dream that Magritte discussed with his friend Marcel Mariën. The picture grew in his mind and the various documented stages in the formation of Image à la fenêtre provide an invaluable insight into Magritte's creative process. The process also emphasises the importance of his friends, who sometimes actively provided ideas or simply a forum for Magritte to discuss his own.
Les grands rendez-vous (estimate: £500,000-700,000), painted in 1947, is a highly evocative example of René Magritte's mastery of mystery. The 'pearl woman' stares at the viewer from outside an ominous cavern in which the silhouettes of four iconic Magrittian objects float.
La belle captive (estimate: £200,000 - 300,000), circa 1950, reflects Magritte's prolonged fascination with the nature of panting as a record of reality. The accuracy of his highly finished technique bolsters the conundrum of a painting really representing the world. Within the universe of La belle captive, a painting has been made which perfectly achieves that result, perennially capturing the writhing sea behind it. In the same way, Magritte's art was intended to be a timeless portal to the reality of the world depicting, as within La belle captive, not a mere instance, but a lasting truth. This painting is a manifesto, a pictorial explanation, of the nature of art.
Later works in the collection include Les valeurs personelles (estimate: £50,000-70,000), 1962, and Portrait d'Arlette Magritte (estimate: £150,000-200,000), circa 1950. In Les valeurs personelles, an outsized plate and glass dwarf the table and fruit bowl in a sunny, plain room. The plate in fact takes up most of the rear wall. This is one of the rare occasions in Magritte's oeuvre where the title can be interpreted as describing the content of the picture, many consider the various proportions of the objects on display to reflect the personal values and importance attached to each.
Portrait d'Arlette Magritte is a thoughtful image of the artist's niece staring out at the viewer from her own corner of her uncle's surreal universe. The composition of this painting conspires with the presence of some of the most universally recognised of the artist's motifs to provide a striking and original rendering of his relative. The intensity of Arlette's gaze approaches blatant confrontation of the viewer so that the portrait is not merely a record of the sitter's looks, but manages also to capture her forthright youthful character.
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