A René Magritte painting, featuring a hauntingly illuminated streetscape, sold for over $121 million at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday, exceeding its $95 million estimate and setting a new auction record for the Surrealist artist.
This 1954 work, one of the largest in Magritte’s series of 27 paintings titled L’empire des lumières (“The Empire of Light”), is highly regarded by art experts for its size, excellent condition, and intricate details. Christie’s described the painting as the “crown jewel” of the collection belonging to the late American interior designer Mica Ertegun, parts of which were up for auction on Tuesday. Other notable works by artists like Ed Ruscha and Max Ernst were also included in the sale.
The painting features a house with a solitary streetlamp. The light from the lamp illuminates the entire scene, including the nearly black trees in the foreground, while the reflection shimmers on a pool of water. Above, a soft blue sky with fluffy white clouds stretches across the top of the canvas.
The painting has been widely praised for its distinctive blend of a nighttime scene and daylight, a surrealist theme that Magritte explored in his landscape works for nearly 20 years. Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th to 21st Century Art, remarked in an email prior to the sale that the motif is one of the few truly iconic images in 20th-century art. He noted that the painting, especially the sky and the flickering light in the foreground, has an “extraordinary glow in person.”
The sale price, which far exceeded expectations, stands out as a positive highlight in a global art market experiencing a slowdown and economic uncertainty. Max Carter explained, “When iconic works come to market, they create their own dynamic.”
Two other paintings by Magritte were also sold in the auction: La cour d’amour for $10.53 million and La Mémoire for $3.68 million. Additionally, a still life by the 87-year-old British artist David Hockney sold for over $19 million.
According to the 2024 Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, public auction sales at Christie’s reached $2.1 billion in the first half of this year, a 22% drop from the same period last year, marking the second consecutive year of declining sales in the first half. Despite this, Christie’s saw some positive results in 2024, including growth in Asian art sales and a 3% year-on-year increase in its global share of online sales. A recent art auction in Hong Kong, which featured works by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, saw some pieces sell for prices close to or below estimates, indicating that buyers remain cautious.
Although René Magritte is perhaps most famous for his surrealist images of men wearing bowler hats, he spent 15 years exploring the transition from day to night in landscape painting. During this period, he created 17 oil paintings and 10 gouaches, all titled L’empire des lumières (“The Empire of Light”), with slight variations between each version.
These paradoxical paintings gained popularity, especially after a large 1954 piece was featured in the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and later sold to renowned collector Peggy Guggenheim. To satisfy other collectors, Magritte created three more similarly large paintings, including the one that sold at auction on Tuesday, all in the same year.
Sandra Zalman, an art history professor at the University of Houston, noted that the lamppost in the L’empire des Lumières works can be seen as an early version of Magritte’s iconic bowler-hatted man. She explained that the shadow of the lamppost suggests the presence of this figure, subtly haunting what would otherwise be a calm, eerie landscape.
Zalman also pointed out that the timing of the sale is particularly significant. Not only does it coincide with the centennial of the surrealist movement, but it also takes place during a “surreal moment in history.” She argued that the surrealists’ era was also marked by anxiety, with many parallels between then and now.