A groundbreaking work by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, which smashed auction records in New York, has an “equally magnificent” twin in Australia.
An anonymous collector paid $185 million for the work overnight Wednesday, achieving a record price for the artist and a surrealist painter, according to Christie’s auction house. The previous record for a Magritte painting was $121 million set at Sotheby’s in March 2022.
Magritte’s Empire of Light 1954 which sold for a world record A$185 million.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
Its near-identical sister is on rare show in Australia at the Art Gallery of NSW, a highlight of its summer blockbuster.
The impressive oil is on loan from the Menil Collection in Houston, one of 117 works in the most comprehensive exhibition of the Belgian artist’s paintings ever seen in Australia.
Similar in perspective and size, the two paintings differ in the silhouette of trees and another tiny detail – on close inspection the Australian version features a darkened boulder in the foreground.
“As he often did, Magritte secreted details in the shadows that don’t show up in reproduction,” says Nicholas Chambers, curator of the Magritte retrospective.
Magritte’s The Dominion of Light, 1954, on show at the Art Gallery of NSW.Credit: Paul Hester
“In the Menil Collection work at the gallery, for example, a boulder sits in the absolute foreground, barely discernible in the darkness and standing witness to the uncanny scene.”
Like Claude Monet, who painted haystacks multiple times across times of day, seasons and weather conditions, Magritte used the same composition of a lamplit urban house to paradoxically blend night and day, shadow and light.
