art market
“L’Empire des Lumières”: Painting by Magritte auctioned for 70 million
The painting ‘L’Empire des Lumières’ by Magritte at Sotheby’s auction house
© Picture Alliance
“The Empire of Lights” is considered one of the most exciting works by the Belgian master of surrealism, René Magritte. Now it was auctioned well above the expected value.
Belgian artist René Magritte’s surrealist painting ‘L’Empire des Lumières’ (The Empire of Lights) has sold for £59.4 million (€71.4 million) at an auction in London. As the auction house Sotheby’s announced on Wednesday, it is an auction record for a Magritte painting. The estimated value for the work of art was the equivalent of 54 million euros.
Magritte’s “L’Empire des Lumières” is considered one of the most defining motifs of Surrealism. Sotheby’s spoke of a “masterpiece of the 20th century”.
Surreal contradictions
The painting thrives on the contradiction between day and night: the trees in the foreground of the picture lie in the nocturnal shadows, while the house behind them appears as if it were at dawn or dusk. The upper half of the image shows a typical Magritte blue sky with white clouds.
The “eerie combination” is typical of “Magritte’s disturbing surrealist imagery, in which two seemingly incompatible things are brought together to form a ‘false reality’,” Sotheby’s explained. “L’Empire des Lumières” had previously been owned by the family of Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, for whom Magritte painted the picture in 1961.
The previous auction record for a Magritte painting was achieved in November 2018 at an auction in New York for the surrealist painting “Le Principe du Plaisir”. It went under the hammer for $26.8 million.