Lot Essay
The motif of the bowler-hatted man first appeared in Magritte's work in the 1926 Les Reveries du Promeneur solitaire (Sylvester 124). This image was to become one of the most celebrated and recurrent themes in his work and appeared often in his oeuvre between 1950 and 1965.
David Sylvester wrote in the 1969 Magritte catalogue: "Magritte's bowler-hatten men came to be equated with himself, an equation he would seem to have endorsed, if not inspired, through photographs he posed for, from the 1930s onwards. For himself, the bowler would have been the key item in his disguise as small shopkeeper or clerk in his Sunday best. Mesens has told me how Magritte made a point of never buying himself a stylish bowler, one that would suit has face, but always a standardised, indifferent, product, allowing no intervention of preference, of taste.
"At that time especially [the 1920s], the bowler was a badge of comedy as much as of conformity. Stan Laurel said: 'the bowler-hat to me has always seemed to be a part of a comic make-up as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them'. There are or were some early drawings and collages with specifically Chaplinesque figures. And it does seem possible that the landscape - prototype of several later images - could have been suggested by Chaplin's usual signing-off shot". (Magritte, London, 1969, p. 14.)
In these pictures, the face and sometimes the whole body of the bowler-hatted man, is simply a frame in which to depict another subject, an object or a landscape. The face is never depicted. Magritte explained in an interview with Jean Neyens in 1965: "Each thing we see hides another, we always want to see what is being hidden by what we see. There is an interest in what is hidden and what the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a fairly intense feeling, a kind of contest I could say between the hidden visible and the apparent visible".
This gouache will be included as no. 1579 in volume IV of the forthcoming René Magritte catalogue raisonné being prepared by Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn, edited by David Sylvester. We are grateful to Sarah Whitfield for providing exhibition details.
David Sylvester wrote in the 1969 Magritte catalogue: "Magritte's bowler-hatten men came to be equated with himself, an equation he would seem to have endorsed, if not inspired, through photographs he posed for, from the 1930s onwards. For himself, the bowler would have been the key item in his disguise as small shopkeeper or clerk in his Sunday best. Mesens has told me how Magritte made a point of never buying himself a stylish bowler, one that would suit has face, but always a standardised, indifferent, product, allowing no intervention of preference, of taste.
"At that time especially [the 1920s], the bowler was a badge of comedy as much as of conformity. Stan Laurel said: 'the bowler-hat to me has always seemed to be a part of a comic make-up as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them'. There are or were some early drawings and collages with specifically Chaplinesque figures. And it does seem possible that the landscape - prototype of several later images - could have been suggested by Chaplin's usual signing-off shot". (Magritte, London, 1969, p. 14.)
In these pictures, the face and sometimes the whole body of the bowler-hatted man, is simply a frame in which to depict another subject, an object or a landscape. The face is never depicted. Magritte explained in an interview with Jean Neyens in 1965: "Each thing we see hides another, we always want to see what is being hidden by what we see. There is an interest in what is hidden and what the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a fairly intense feeling, a kind of contest I could say between the hidden visible and the apparent visible".
This gouache will be included as no. 1579 in volume IV of the forthcoming René Magritte catalogue raisonné being prepared by Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn, edited by David Sylvester. We are grateful to Sarah Whitfield for providing exhibition details.