拍品专文
Painted in 1928, Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit dates from the peak of René Magritte’s early involvement with the Surrealist group. The artist had moved from Brussels to Paris in the autumn of the previous year, drawn to the French capital’s lively art scene and in particular, the hive of artists and writers active within André Breton’s circle. It was here that Magritte’s visual language truly began to solidify, as he boldly set out to challenge and undercut established traditions of representation in painting and forge a distinctive new path within Surrealism. This was perhaps the most productive and innovative chapter of the artist’s entire career, as he created masterpiece after masterpiece, tapping into a rich seam of ideas inspired by the stimulating environment of Paris and his encounters with his fellow Surrealists. A powerful and evocative work from these seminal years, Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit captures the deep sense of mystery and intrigue that infused Magritte’s paintings during this period, and has featured in many of the most important monographs and exhibitions dedicated to the artist’s work over the past century.
Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit is marked by a distinctly disquieting atmosphere, as its two protagonists are trapped within a mysterious stretch of wall. Many of the paintings that Magritte created while living Paris in the late 1920s combined the poetic transformations of the everyday world with a certain dark intensity and sense of danger. For example, works such as Les jours gigantesque (Sylvester, no. 247), which appears to show a struggle between a nude woman and a clothed man, Les amants (Sylvester, no. 251) with its figures’ heads covered in winding sheets, or L’idée fixe (Sylvester, no. 269) which features a hunter stalking unseen prey, each contain clear undertones of suspense, anxiety or violence. Discussing this period of his career, Magritte explained: “The pictures painted […] from 1926 to 1936 were also the result of a systematic search for a disturbing poetic effect which, produced by the deployment of objects taken from reality, would give the real world from which they were borrowed a disturbing poetic meaning through a quite natural interchange” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 284).
The crepuscular light in Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit appears to hint at the departing day and the oncoming night, as a pair of armed hunters find themselves suddenly preyed upon by their surroundings, caught in a strange, monumental trap. They are held fast by the wall into which their own bodies appear to have been partially absorbed: the hunter on the left has lost his foot, while the other’s head is missing, seemingly immured. This sense of tension is accentuated by the bulk of the figures, who attempt to use their sheer physicality to free themselves, pushing and shoving against the wall to no avail. Their struggle is made even more dramatic by the vast open space to the right, where the barren landscape stretches towards a distant, glowing horizon, the promise of freedom just a few steps away.
It has been suggested that Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit owes a debt to the works of Edgar Allen Poe, whose writings Magritte devoured voraciously. Here, the scene calls to mind Poe’s short story The Pit and the Pendulum, which shares the experiences of a prisoner during the Spanish Inquisition who finds himself subjected to elaborate torture techniques within a strange, nightmarish setting (see D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1992, vol. I, p. 279). As Poe’s tale reaches its denouement, the walls of the prisoner’s cell turn burning hot and slowly begin to move inwards, shrinking the space and forcing him toward the center of the room, where a deep pit awaits him. In Magritte’s composition, the wall is transformed into a strange, alien entity, consuming anyone foolish enough to venture too close. By allowing it to partially absorb the two hunters, the artist forces the viewer to question their very understanding of the wall’s materiality—what appears at first glance to be solid and unyielding, is in fact porous and expansive, its true nature unknown. In this way the very concept of the wall—such a familiar, common-place element in our lives—becomes profoundly dangerous, trapping the two men and subsuming them within its eerie, hidden depths.
For Magritte, the image of the wall may have carried a further layer of meaning within his imagination. A letter from his close friend Paul Nougé, delivered at the very beginning of Magritte’s stay in Paris, had used the analogy of a wall to issue a great rallying cry to the artist, encouraging him to challenge the status-quo of art making. “Here we are at the door of the wall, with all the others (our public),” Nougé expounded. “There are those who are anxious to know what goes on behind the wall; there are those who are prepared to settle for the wall; there are those who do not care what happens behind the wall, if anything; there are those who don’t see the wall; there are those who deny the wall; there are those who deny or refuse even the possibility of the wall. But you, mon cher Magritte, you have constructed an infernal machine, you are a good engineer, a conscientious engineer. You have left nothing undone in order to blow up the wall” (quoted in A. Danchev and S. Whitfield, Magritte: A Life, London, 2020, p. 185).
According to another letter written by Nougé around April 1928, the core composition of Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit appears to have been altered by the artist at some point: “Thank you so much for drawing me a picture of your latest canvas. I find it absolutely remarkable,” Nougé wrote. “I admire the care you have taken to particularize the event, to endow it, by the precision of certain details, with the maximum of concrete reality, thus guaranteeing, to my mind, the intensity of its effect. I also commend the precaution you have taken to eliminate that third figure which might have produced the impression of a ‘well-made’ picture. I understand this all the better since I have often had occasion to modify in a similar way prose pieces whose perfection was becoming embarrassing, because I felt it might charm or arrest attention to the detriment of what I really wanted to achieve” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1992, vol. I, p. 279).
As Nougé noted, reducing the composition to only two figures accentuates the terror of the situation. At the same time, it introduces the theme of duality that runs like a thread through so much of Magritte’s work from the period, be it in images that contain repeated motifs—such as his portrait of Nougé (Sylvester, no. 151), or his earlier works, La pose enchantée (Sylvester, no. 163), La fin des contemplations (Sylvester, no. 165) or in pairings such as the man and woman in Les jours gigantesques or the couple in Les amants. In Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit, the two figures recall the hidden assailants in L’assassin menace (Sylvester, no. 137), who wait to pounce on the supposed murderer who awaits them in the adjoining room. In contrast, here, the two men become the targets of the ambush, with the very environment they inhabit turning on them.
Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit was sent by Magritte from Paris to the Galerie de L’Epoque in Brussels during the second half of 1928—on 22 August, he wrote E.L.T. Mesens a note thanking him for letting him know that “The Hunters is in perfect condition” (quoted in ibid., p. 279). This shows an early title that had been adopted for the work; later, it was referred to by Magritte as Les chasseurs condamnés, while Nougé suggested the title Les chasseurs compromis instead. However, by the time it was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Salle Giso in Brussels in 1931, Magritte had settled on the current title. Marking Magritte’s return to Belgium, this exhibition was an important, watershed moment in the artist’s career, and featured a selection of his most important canvases produced in Paris.
According to one contemporary reviewer, the show opened in a spectacular manner: “The first guests were surprised to find the hall plunged in darkness, and two lackeys in scarlet livery and with powdered hair standing on either side of an enormous lighted candle. A double metronome ticked away the while in the empty silence. About one o’clock in the morning, … [a] gramophone began playing barrel-organ tunes, and M. Créten-George opened the ball…” (Le rouge et le noir, 18 February 1931; quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 9). In fact, it appears that the valets had their faces painted green; the music was discordant for part of the soirée as different tunes were being played simultaneously on four gramophones, and early in the morning, the lights were raised so that the selection of pictures on the walls, including Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit, suddenly became visible.
Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit is marked by a distinctly disquieting atmosphere, as its two protagonists are trapped within a mysterious stretch of wall. Many of the paintings that Magritte created while living Paris in the late 1920s combined the poetic transformations of the everyday world with a certain dark intensity and sense of danger. For example, works such as Les jours gigantesque (Sylvester, no. 247), which appears to show a struggle between a nude woman and a clothed man, Les amants (Sylvester, no. 251) with its figures’ heads covered in winding sheets, or L’idée fixe (Sylvester, no. 269) which features a hunter stalking unseen prey, each contain clear undertones of suspense, anxiety or violence. Discussing this period of his career, Magritte explained: “The pictures painted […] from 1926 to 1936 were also the result of a systematic search for a disturbing poetic effect which, produced by the deployment of objects taken from reality, would give the real world from which they were borrowed a disturbing poetic meaning through a quite natural interchange” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 284).
The crepuscular light in Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit appears to hint at the departing day and the oncoming night, as a pair of armed hunters find themselves suddenly preyed upon by their surroundings, caught in a strange, monumental trap. They are held fast by the wall into which their own bodies appear to have been partially absorbed: the hunter on the left has lost his foot, while the other’s head is missing, seemingly immured. This sense of tension is accentuated by the bulk of the figures, who attempt to use their sheer physicality to free themselves, pushing and shoving against the wall to no avail. Their struggle is made even more dramatic by the vast open space to the right, where the barren landscape stretches towards a distant, glowing horizon, the promise of freedom just a few steps away.
It has been suggested that Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit owes a debt to the works of Edgar Allen Poe, whose writings Magritte devoured voraciously. Here, the scene calls to mind Poe’s short story The Pit and the Pendulum, which shares the experiences of a prisoner during the Spanish Inquisition who finds himself subjected to elaborate torture techniques within a strange, nightmarish setting (see D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1992, vol. I, p. 279). As Poe’s tale reaches its denouement, the walls of the prisoner’s cell turn burning hot and slowly begin to move inwards, shrinking the space and forcing him toward the center of the room, where a deep pit awaits him. In Magritte’s composition, the wall is transformed into a strange, alien entity, consuming anyone foolish enough to venture too close. By allowing it to partially absorb the two hunters, the artist forces the viewer to question their very understanding of the wall’s materiality—what appears at first glance to be solid and unyielding, is in fact porous and expansive, its true nature unknown. In this way the very concept of the wall—such a familiar, common-place element in our lives—becomes profoundly dangerous, trapping the two men and subsuming them within its eerie, hidden depths.
For Magritte, the image of the wall may have carried a further layer of meaning within his imagination. A letter from his close friend Paul Nougé, delivered at the very beginning of Magritte’s stay in Paris, had used the analogy of a wall to issue a great rallying cry to the artist, encouraging him to challenge the status-quo of art making. “Here we are at the door of the wall, with all the others (our public),” Nougé expounded. “There are those who are anxious to know what goes on behind the wall; there are those who are prepared to settle for the wall; there are those who do not care what happens behind the wall, if anything; there are those who don’t see the wall; there are those who deny the wall; there are those who deny or refuse even the possibility of the wall. But you, mon cher Magritte, you have constructed an infernal machine, you are a good engineer, a conscientious engineer. You have left nothing undone in order to blow up the wall” (quoted in A. Danchev and S. Whitfield, Magritte: A Life, London, 2020, p. 185).
According to another letter written by Nougé around April 1928, the core composition of Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit appears to have been altered by the artist at some point: “Thank you so much for drawing me a picture of your latest canvas. I find it absolutely remarkable,” Nougé wrote. “I admire the care you have taken to particularize the event, to endow it, by the precision of certain details, with the maximum of concrete reality, thus guaranteeing, to my mind, the intensity of its effect. I also commend the precaution you have taken to eliminate that third figure which might have produced the impression of a ‘well-made’ picture. I understand this all the better since I have often had occasion to modify in a similar way prose pieces whose perfection was becoming embarrassing, because I felt it might charm or arrest attention to the detriment of what I really wanted to achieve” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1992, vol. I, p. 279).
As Nougé noted, reducing the composition to only two figures accentuates the terror of the situation. At the same time, it introduces the theme of duality that runs like a thread through so much of Magritte’s work from the period, be it in images that contain repeated motifs—such as his portrait of Nougé (Sylvester, no. 151), or his earlier works, La pose enchantée (Sylvester, no. 163), La fin des contemplations (Sylvester, no. 165) or in pairings such as the man and woman in Les jours gigantesques or the couple in Les amants. In Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit, the two figures recall the hidden assailants in L’assassin menace (Sylvester, no. 137), who wait to pounce on the supposed murderer who awaits them in the adjoining room. In contrast, here, the two men become the targets of the ambush, with the very environment they inhabit turning on them.
Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit was sent by Magritte from Paris to the Galerie de L’Epoque in Brussels during the second half of 1928—on 22 August, he wrote E.L.T. Mesens a note thanking him for letting him know that “The Hunters is in perfect condition” (quoted in ibid., p. 279). This shows an early title that had been adopted for the work; later, it was referred to by Magritte as Les chasseurs condamnés, while Nougé suggested the title Les chasseurs compromis instead. However, by the time it was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Salle Giso in Brussels in 1931, Magritte had settled on the current title. Marking Magritte’s return to Belgium, this exhibition was an important, watershed moment in the artist’s career, and featured a selection of his most important canvases produced in Paris.
According to one contemporary reviewer, the show opened in a spectacular manner: “The first guests were surprised to find the hall plunged in darkness, and two lackeys in scarlet livery and with powdered hair standing on either side of an enormous lighted candle. A double metronome ticked away the while in the empty silence. About one o’clock in the morning, … [a] gramophone began playing barrel-organ tunes, and M. Créten-George opened the ball…” (Le rouge et le noir, 18 February 1931; quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 9). In fact, it appears that the valets had their faces painted green; the music was discordant for part of the soirée as different tunes were being played simultaneously on four gramophones, and early in the morning, the lights were raised so that the selection of pictures on the walls, including Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit, suddenly became visible.