René Magritte Painting Sells for a Record-Breaking $121.2 Million
The surrealist painter joins a small group of artists whose work has sold for over $100 million
A day after Sotheby’s tested the strength of the trophy market with its $65.5 million Claude Monet, rival Christie’s did one better—by auctioning off a $121.2 million René Magritte. “Empire of Lights,” the painter’s 1954 dichotomy of night and day, was estimated to sell for $95 million.
Magritte, who lived from 1898 to 1967, is known for his dreamlike takes on everyday objects, from smoking pipes to green apples to bowler hats. With this sale, he joins an elite club of fewer than 20 artists whose works have commanded nine-figure sums, including Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci. The sale, to a telephone bidder after a nearly 10-minute bidding war, also represents the first time this year that any artist has crossed the $100 million mark at auction.
Christie’s also scored big later that night by resetting the high bar for Ed Ruscha, whose 1964 “Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half” sold for $68.3 million after a nearly six-minute battle between dogged telephone bidders. The artist’s significant, early view of a gleaming gas station in Amarillo, Texas, was sold by Texas oilman Sid Bass and was expected to sell for $50 million. The sale tops the $52.5 million paid in 2019 for 1964’s “Hurting the Word Radio #2,” in which the artist paints clamps so they appear to be squeezing a couple of letters.
The night’s biggest star was clearly Magritte, though. “Empire of Lights” was one of 17 canvases that the Belgian painter created between 1949 and 1964 that offer variations of the same surreal scene: A suburban house sitting in seeming darkness and yet backed by a day-lit blue sky. Sometimes, the house has a red door; other times, green shutters. Often, Magritte surrounds his houses with towering trees or a stream of reflective water. In whatever form, the juxtaposition of night and day is widely considered his masterpiece—and his bestselling motif. Christie’s version on Tuesday stood out in part because it was the biggest example to ever come to market, at 4 feet tall. It was also the first to include watery reflections.
Max Carter, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st century art, said the recent surge in interest in surrealists has transformed the market for the artists who first championed it a century ago including Salvador Dalí and Magritte, whose previous, $79.4 million record was only set two years ago when Sotheby’s sold a smaller, horizontal version of “Empire of Lights” from 1961.
Christie’s version came from the estate of interior designer Mica Ertegun, the wife of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun who carved out her own reputation as a leading interior decorator among the global upper crust. She died last year at age 97, leaving behind an estimated $144 million estate that included a trio of additional Magrittes as well as David Hockney’s peachy-teal “Still Life on a Glass Table” from 1971, which sold Tuesday for $19 million. It was estimated to sell for at least $15 million.