Photo: Barron’s
“L’Empire des Lumieres” by Rene Magritte will be auctioned next week and could fetch a record price for an original masterpiece. The Belgian surrealist’s work shows the paradoxical image of the nocturnal landscape beneath the sunlit sky.
The painting called a “masterpiece of 20th-century art” by Sotheby’s auction house, will have an estimated value of over 45 million pounds ($60 million).
It will be auctioned off next week at Sotheby’s spring sale together with six other paintings by impressionist Claude Monet and masterpieces by Picasso, Van Gogh, Dabid Hockney, and many more.
Magritte’s “Dominion of Light” is among the series of 17 homogenous oils and ten other works he made between the 1940s and 1960s.
The painting, placed in the auction on March 2nd, is a gift for Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, Magritte’s friend and daughter of his patron Pierre Crowet; she has been keeping it safe since then.
In this painting, you can see a dark street in Brussels with trees and homes lit by light from inside. Above the landscape is a blue sky full of white clouds.
“It’s probably one of his most famous images,” said Sotheby’s global head of impressionist and modern art, Helena Newman, in an interview.
“You’ve got this extraordinary, slightly disquieting juxtaposition of the day and night at the same time. It is quintessentially surreal. It questions nature and existence.”
She added that the estimated value of $60 million “brings it up to record price territory for Magritte.”
The image has appeared in other poses. A scene in 1973’s “The Exorcist” and its poster showed its recognition. As well as an inspiration for the cover of musician Jackson Browne’s album in 1974 “Late for the Sky.” The credit for the artwork states, “if it’s all reet with Magritte.”
Five paintings by Monet are also up for auction, and they’re estimated to be worth $50 million.
