A painting of large turquoise apples wearing eye masks by the surrealist René Magritte is being sold in October at Sotheby’s in Paris.
The sale—estimated to fetch between €10 million and €15 million (US$11 million US$16.6 million)—is the second time one of Magritte’s eight “masked-apples” has been offered at a public auction, and the first time the work will be seen in public since 1979, Sotheby’s said in a news release.
La Valse hesitation (Hesitation Waltz), 1955, depicts the apples with brown masks in shadow against a bright, cloud-filled blue sky, which creates a more mysterious look than Le prêtre marié (The Married Priest), 1961, where the apples are Granny Smith-green with pink masks, placed on a sunny plain. These apples are also found under a cloud-filled blue sky, but with a crescent moon above. Unlike this later version, the leaves in the apples of La Valse hesitation don’t appear to be nibbled at by caterpillars.
Le prêtre marié sold for £5.3 million (about US$10.4 million) in February 2007 at a Christie’s auction of surrealistic art in London, which was the second highest auction price for a work by Magritte at the time. Sotheby’s has since far surpassed that level with the sale, with fees, of L’empire des lumières (The empire of light), 1961, for £59.4 million (US$79.8 million), in March 2022 in London.
The masked-apples series was conceived at the same time as the L’Empire des lumières series, Sotheby’s said, with both “seeking to capture the paradox of day meeting night.”
In La Valse hesitation, “much in the same way as the universally known L’Empire des lumières, Magritte is defining the essence of Surrealism by resolving a conceptual contradiction that cannot exist,” Thomas Bompard, head of sale at Sotheby’s France said in a news release.
Magritte often used the apple motif in his works, including The Listening Room, 1952, where another bright-green apple fills a pink room, and notably in Le fils de l’homme (The Son of Man), 1964, where an apple hangs in the air and obscures the face of a standing man dressed in a suit and bowler hat.
The apples are meant to be illusions, with shifting meanings depending on the viewer’s perspective. Masks, in addition to other disguises, are also common to the artist’s works, Christie’s said in its 2007 catalog note. “They are elements used to hide, but also to entertain,” Christie’s said.
La Valse hesitation was exhibited last at Galerie Isy Brachot in Brussels and has since been held within three private collections in Belgium, where the artist was from.
Sotheby’s has sold several high-profile works by Magritte in recent years, snagging multimillion-dollar prices. In addition to the 1961 L’empire des lumières, Sotheby’s sold another by the same name, dated 1951, that was in the collection of music executive Mo Austin for US$42.3 million in May in New York.
From the Austin collection, Sotheby’s also sold Le Domaine d’Arnheim, 1949, for nearly US$19 million; meanwhile, Le Principe du plaisir (the Pleasure Principle), 1937, fetched US$26.8 million at a November 2018 New York sale.
The presale estimate for La Valse hesitation is the highest for a single lot at Sotheby’s France. The auction house will give visitors a chance to see the rarely displayed painting in Paris, Brussels, New York, and London, before it returns to Paris for its “Modernités” sale on Oct. 19.
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