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Lot Essay
The image of L'inspiration is based on that of the oil painting Le portrait, 1935 (Sylvester, no. 379; coll. The Museum of Modern Art, New York), except here the plate is empty and the bottle of red wine is replaced by a bottle painted with a picture of a female nude. Magritte created his first painted wine bottle in 1940 (Sylvester, no. 690; private collection); over the years, he created as many as twenty-five painted bottles, of which approximately ten depict nude women (femme-bouteilles). It would become one of his most recognizable images. The first appearance of this subject in his paintings is in the present gouache.
Sylvester suggests that Magritte's first femme-bouteille may be the one depicted in L'inspiration. However it seems more likely, if only from appearances, that it was a different bottle created shortly thereafter (Sylvester, no. 691), which is illustrated in a photograph whose contents Magritte had arranged that was also published in Marcel Marin's La Terre n'est pas une valle de larmes of 1942 (op. cit.).
The idea of "Woman" holds a significant place in Magritte's work, as it did in his life. His constant passion for his wife Georgette, throughout his life, is well documented. Indeed, when replying to a "questionnaire on love" in 1929, Magritte wrote: "All I know about the hope I place in love is that it only needs a woman to give it a reality" (R. Magritte, La Revolution surraliste, no. 12, 15 December 1929, p. 2).
L'inspiration presents the viewer with an ordinary situation, that of a table set for a meal. However, the bottle of wine has been replaced with a femme-bouteille. Perhaps Magritte had in mind a secular counterpart to the ritual mystery of transubstantiation. Set against the stark, divided background, this Eve-like nude becomes the subject of this "portrait" and of the meal itself, in which the object of the artist's love becomes sustenance for both body and soul.
Sylvester suggests that Magritte's first femme-bouteille may be the one depicted in L'inspiration. However it seems more likely, if only from appearances, that it was a different bottle created shortly thereafter (Sylvester, no. 691), which is illustrated in a photograph whose contents Magritte had arranged that was also published in Marcel Marin's La Terre n'est pas une valle de larmes of 1942 (op. cit.).
The idea of "Woman" holds a significant place in Magritte's work, as it did in his life. His constant passion for his wife Georgette, throughout his life, is well documented. Indeed, when replying to a "questionnaire on love" in 1929, Magritte wrote: "All I know about the hope I place in love is that it only needs a woman to give it a reality" (R. Magritte, La Revolution surraliste, no. 12, 15 December 1929, p. 2).
L'inspiration presents the viewer with an ordinary situation, that of a table set for a meal. However, the bottle of wine has been replaced with a femme-bouteille. Perhaps Magritte had in mind a secular counterpart to the ritual mystery of transubstantiation. Set against the stark, divided background, this Eve-like nude becomes the subject of this "portrait" and of the meal itself, in which the object of the artist's love becomes sustenance for both body and soul.