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Lot Essay
L'invitation au voyage is an exquisite gouache created by René Magritte in 1961 for his great Chicago-based patron, Barnet Hodes, and featured in an extensive 1964 retrospective of Magritte's works held at the Arkansas Art Center. Already a friend of several of the Surrealists, Hodes was a unique collector who desired to own a work by each of the artists represented in the first Surrealist exhibition, as well as a gouache representing each of Magritte's major themes. As he explained to Magritte, 'I would like to have a representative collection of your wonderful pictures in the small form that I enjoy so much' (Hodes, quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., rené Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III, Antwerp, 1993, p. 67). When he met Magritte in 1956, introduced to him while he was in Europe through the California-based art dealer and artist William Copley and Berthold Urvater, Hodes was already in search of a gouache showing L'empire des lumières.
Within a short space of time, his collection had expanded to include a number of gouaches. Rather than create direct copies, Magritte appears to have reveled in reincarnating his former subjects in a new medium, on a new scale, and often in new variations, explaining that they needed to 'be rethought by me, so that I don't produce a mere mechanical copy' (Magritte, quoted in ibid., p. 67). In the case of L'invitation au voyage, he took the motif of a picture that he had originally painted in 1944. Dating from the Second World War, that work indulged Magritte's decision at the time to create works in a faux- Impressionist style. This decision managed to shock many of the collectors of the day, including René Gaffé, who is reputed to have seen the oil of L'invitation au voyage and made disparaging remarks about it. Magritte had decided controversially to bring light, joy, sensuality and a large dose of irreverence to his works at that time. Nowhere are these more conspicuously brought to the fore than in this marriage of the sunset with the rose, two motifs that have been immortalised by artists as emblems of romantic beauty. Magritte himself, writing to Hodes about the rose that featured in another picture from his collection, La boîte de Pandore of 1956, explained, 'The brilliance of the rose corresponds to the importance of its role (element of beauty)' (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., rené Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, Antwerp, 1994, p. 192).
Already in 1944, Magritte had explained of the theme that: 'I have thought of a very simple idea, but its simplicity doesn't worry me for a moment, because it is an idea that allows me to give a more vivid and effective expression to a particular feeling, made up of a nostalgia, poetry, etc. It is a big rose which appears far out at sea' (Magritte, quoted in Sylvester, ed., op. cit., 1993, p. 336).
The title of L'invitation au voyage was suggested by Marcel Mariën; it was taken from the title of a poem by Charles Baudelaire which featured numerous references to roses, sunsets and other forms of beauty. It contained a chorus that was repeated several times and which itself had inspired other artists including Henri Matisse: 'Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beautè, Luxe, calme et voluptè' (C. Baudelaire, L'invitation au voyage, in R. Howard, ed., Les fleurs du mal, Boston, 1983, p. 235).
Within a short space of time, his collection had expanded to include a number of gouaches. Rather than create direct copies, Magritte appears to have reveled in reincarnating his former subjects in a new medium, on a new scale, and often in new variations, explaining that they needed to 'be rethought by me, so that I don't produce a mere mechanical copy' (Magritte, quoted in ibid., p. 67). In the case of L'invitation au voyage, he took the motif of a picture that he had originally painted in 1944. Dating from the Second World War, that work indulged Magritte's decision at the time to create works in a faux- Impressionist style. This decision managed to shock many of the collectors of the day, including René Gaffé, who is reputed to have seen the oil of L'invitation au voyage and made disparaging remarks about it. Magritte had decided controversially to bring light, joy, sensuality and a large dose of irreverence to his works at that time. Nowhere are these more conspicuously brought to the fore than in this marriage of the sunset with the rose, two motifs that have been immortalised by artists as emblems of romantic beauty. Magritte himself, writing to Hodes about the rose that featured in another picture from his collection, La boîte de Pandore of 1956, explained, 'The brilliance of the rose corresponds to the importance of its role (element of beauty)' (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., rené Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. IV, Antwerp, 1994, p. 192).
Already in 1944, Magritte had explained of the theme that: 'I have thought of a very simple idea, but its simplicity doesn't worry me for a moment, because it is an idea that allows me to give a more vivid and effective expression to a particular feeling, made up of a nostalgia, poetry, etc. It is a big rose which appears far out at sea' (Magritte, quoted in Sylvester, ed., op. cit., 1993, p. 336).
The title of L'invitation au voyage was suggested by Marcel Mariën; it was taken from the title of a poem by Charles Baudelaire which featured numerous references to roses, sunsets and other forms of beauty. It contained a chorus that was repeated several times and which itself had inspired other artists including Henri Matisse: 'Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beautè, Luxe, calme et voluptè' (C. Baudelaire, L'invitation au voyage, in R. Howard, ed., Les fleurs du mal, Boston, 1983, p. 235).