Spot the difference: A $185m surrealist masterpiece and its sister displayed here
By Linda Morris
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 on 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 $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, is 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 numerous times across different 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.
He painted 27 versions in his Empire of Light series, 10 of which were on paper.
The series inspired a scene in The Exorcist in which Father Merrin arrives at the MacNeil family’s house, the film’s director William Friedkin revealed in 2003.
Geoffrey Smith, chair of the auction house Smith & Singer, said the version on display in NSW was as “equally magnificent” as the painting that sold.
“What is so fascinating about this composition, and why it’s so compelling, is that it captures this seemingly impossible collision between day and night.
“We don’t think there is any difference on first look, but then you have the blue sky of daylight and in the foreground the darkened house and trees illuminated by lamp-post light. Magritte is the equivalent of Jeffrey Smart – they so elegantly disrupt the world around us.”
Smith attributed the auction result to the rarity of such works coming up for auction, much less on public display. The buyer’s identity has not been made public.
“These works of art are so iconic and so rare, so few remain in private hands, so when a work of this stature and provenance comes to market it creates such excitement,” he said. “The opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
“And here you have a work of art, an auction record for the surrealist painter, and Australians have another version, equally magnificent, on our doorstep. How well-timed is that?”
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