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Lot Essay
“The creation of new objects, the transformation of known objects,” Magritte declared, “...such in general were the means devised to force objects out of the ordinary, to become sensational, and so to establish a profound link between consciousness and the external world” (“La ligne de vie,” lecture, 1938, trans. D. Sylvester, cat. rais., op. cit., vol. V, 1997, p. 20). Having resolved to cultivate such metamorphoses in the imagery of his paintings, Magritte also shared the surrealists’ fascination in creating independent, personalized objects from found things. He contributed to the Exposition surréaliste d’objets at the Galerie Charles Ratton, Paris, in 1936 a small trompe l’oeil painting of a wedge of cheese, framed and placed under a borrowed countertop glass dome (Sylvester, no. 682). He also painted commercially produced plaster casts of the Vénus de Milo, and the death masks of Napoleon and Pascal (nos. 673-678, 687 and 701).
While painting the plaster casts, Magritte conceived the idea of employing a far more ubiquitous, mass-produced ready-made, the glass wine bottle. The present object is a claret bottle (used for Bordeaux wines, which the artist appears to have favored) on which Magritte rendered in oil colors the image of a part-length standing nude woman, enveloped on her sides and back in cascading tresses of hair, a subject which aptly became known as a Femme-bouteille. Painted circa 1941, the present work is among the earliest of these objects, which Magritte continued to create during the remainder of this career, the last in 1964 (Sylvester, nos. 1084 and 1085). Having documented twenty-seven painted bottles, and surmised circumstantially the existence of several more, David Sylvester suspected there were numerous others, unknown and probably lost to breakage.
Some of these bottles bear images of the sky, fire, or other motifs that Magritte adapted from his paintings on canvas; there are also three bottles that incorporate pastiches Magritte created in homage–tongue-in-cheek or otherwise–after synthetic cubist paintings of Picasso (Sylvester, nos. 699, 700 and 1070). Female nudes adorn a third of these objects; according to the artist’s wife Georgette, the first bottle Magritte painted depicts this subject, a work which the artist kept and she continued to retain after his death (Sylvester, no. 690). Countering suggestions in earlier literature that Magritte had been already painting bottles during the 1930s, Sylvester dated the artist’s initial effort to the autumn of 1940, noting that Magritte had recently mentioned the idea in a letter written at that time to the British collector Edward James, then residing in New York. Sylvester also noted that the blond, Lady Godiva-like hair seen in the first bottle shows up in the painting La connaissance naturelle, known to have been completed in early 1941 (Sylvester, no. 488).
“The painted bottles idea you mentioned in your letter of last autumn is an extremely good one,” James wrote back to Magritte on 23 May 1941. The artist was then living in war-time Brussels under the German occupation; there were only limited opportunities to sell his art, but America had not yet entered the war and was still open to trade from Europe. “You will sell a lot at good prices,” James advised. “This is exactly New York taste and Hollywood’s as well. People in New York were, at least before the war, more sophisticated than in London. I don’t know why, but for the last 15 years there has been more taste for this sort of fantasy in New York” (quoted in cat. rais., op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 86). In an undated letter to Magritte’s friend Louis Scutenaire, presumably sent in early November 1941, the artist mentioned jokingly, “The news is that I have a commission from Paris for 50 bottles, but the work causes me positively superhuman exhaustion” (quoted in ibid.). There was, of course, no such order, and any dream that Magritte may have entertained of shipping painted bottles to New York came to naught when Pearl Harbor was bombed on 7 December 1941, and the United States declared war on the Axis powers.
Scutenaire and his partner Irène Hamoir received in March 1942 the bottle they had requested (Sylvester, no. 694); the early trade in these works most often took place between the artist and his friends. Such was the case for the present Femme-bouteille, which Magritte either gave or sold to his compatriot Paul Delvaux. “We do not know when,” Sylvester has written, “but we do know that relations between the two artists were at their best during the war years” (ibid., p. 438). Delvaux subsequently gave this Femme-bouteille to Hardy Amies, famed as a fashion designer and dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II, in gratitude for his service during the war as a covert British agent working with the resistance in Brussels. Amies sold this bottle at London auction in 1972, when it was acquired by the present owner.
The most charming of the painted bottles are les femmes, which proved to be the subject most often in demand. The raised neck and wide shoulders characteristic of a wine or spirit bottle well suit this object for use in simulation of the human figure. Magritte overcame the impediment of the bottle’s straight “masculine” sides by painting the woman’s long hair from top to bottom along her sides, and pinching the contours along each flank in frontal view, thus giving the semblance of feminine curvature to her figure. The addition of painted shadows completed the illusion.
The affinity that Magritte revealed in this appearance of shared form–woman as bottle, or vice-versa–is essential to the viewer’s immediate recognition of the Femme-bouteille idea and the pleasure that one takes in pondering this visual simile. Magritte, as usual, held still more metaphorical tricks up his sleeve to deepen this connection of one idea with the other, as he suggested in the first picture in which he introduced a Femme-bouteille as an object painted into the composition. In the gouache L’inspiration, 1942 (Sylvester, no. 1174), a reconsideration of Le portrait, 1935 (no. 379), Magritte has placed a Femme-bouteille on a dining table, as the presumed accompaniment to a meal about to be served.
One may imagine any number of scenarios. The title L’inspiration suggests that Magritte is inferring the traditional relationship between the painter and his model, with l’eternel féminin– woman transformed into object and idea–as the elemental source of desire and the impetus to creativity, not unlike imbibing drink or some other stimulant, if the artist were so inclined when going about his work. Or one may imagine the prosaic scene of a man sitting down to dine alone, taking comfort in a wine of his choosing, while wishing for the presence of a lovely woman, or better still, enjoying both at the same time. The story deepens into a multiplicity of co-existing realities, as Sylvester prompts us to consider, “Are we looking at an actual painted bottle or an imaginary one?” (cat. rais., op. cit., vol. II, 1993, p. 87). Anything in a Magritte painting, or in the shape of an object of his making such as that offered here, is more than it is or may seem to be.
While painting the plaster casts, Magritte conceived the idea of employing a far more ubiquitous, mass-produced ready-made, the glass wine bottle. The present object is a claret bottle (used for Bordeaux wines, which the artist appears to have favored) on which Magritte rendered in oil colors the image of a part-length standing nude woman, enveloped on her sides and back in cascading tresses of hair, a subject which aptly became known as a Femme-bouteille. Painted circa 1941, the present work is among the earliest of these objects, which Magritte continued to create during the remainder of this career, the last in 1964 (Sylvester, nos. 1084 and 1085). Having documented twenty-seven painted bottles, and surmised circumstantially the existence of several more, David Sylvester suspected there were numerous others, unknown and probably lost to breakage.
Some of these bottles bear images of the sky, fire, or other motifs that Magritte adapted from his paintings on canvas; there are also three bottles that incorporate pastiches Magritte created in homage–tongue-in-cheek or otherwise–after synthetic cubist paintings of Picasso (Sylvester, nos. 699, 700 and 1070). Female nudes adorn a third of these objects; according to the artist’s wife Georgette, the first bottle Magritte painted depicts this subject, a work which the artist kept and she continued to retain after his death (Sylvester, no. 690). Countering suggestions in earlier literature that Magritte had been already painting bottles during the 1930s, Sylvester dated the artist’s initial effort to the autumn of 1940, noting that Magritte had recently mentioned the idea in a letter written at that time to the British collector Edward James, then residing in New York. Sylvester also noted that the blond, Lady Godiva-like hair seen in the first bottle shows up in the painting La connaissance naturelle, known to have been completed in early 1941 (Sylvester, no. 488).
“The painted bottles idea you mentioned in your letter of last autumn is an extremely good one,” James wrote back to Magritte on 23 May 1941. The artist was then living in war-time Brussels under the German occupation; there were only limited opportunities to sell his art, but America had not yet entered the war and was still open to trade from Europe. “You will sell a lot at good prices,” James advised. “This is exactly New York taste and Hollywood’s as well. People in New York were, at least before the war, more sophisticated than in London. I don’t know why, but for the last 15 years there has been more taste for this sort of fantasy in New York” (quoted in cat. rais., op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 86). In an undated letter to Magritte’s friend Louis Scutenaire, presumably sent in early November 1941, the artist mentioned jokingly, “The news is that I have a commission from Paris for 50 bottles, but the work causes me positively superhuman exhaustion” (quoted in ibid.). There was, of course, no such order, and any dream that Magritte may have entertained of shipping painted bottles to New York came to naught when Pearl Harbor was bombed on 7 December 1941, and the United States declared war on the Axis powers.
Scutenaire and his partner Irène Hamoir received in March 1942 the bottle they had requested (Sylvester, no. 694); the early trade in these works most often took place between the artist and his friends. Such was the case for the present Femme-bouteille, which Magritte either gave or sold to his compatriot Paul Delvaux. “We do not know when,” Sylvester has written, “but we do know that relations between the two artists were at their best during the war years” (ibid., p. 438). Delvaux subsequently gave this Femme-bouteille to Hardy Amies, famed as a fashion designer and dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II, in gratitude for his service during the war as a covert British agent working with the resistance in Brussels. Amies sold this bottle at London auction in 1972, when it was acquired by the present owner.
The most charming of the painted bottles are les femmes, which proved to be the subject most often in demand. The raised neck and wide shoulders characteristic of a wine or spirit bottle well suit this object for use in simulation of the human figure. Magritte overcame the impediment of the bottle’s straight “masculine” sides by painting the woman’s long hair from top to bottom along her sides, and pinching the contours along each flank in frontal view, thus giving the semblance of feminine curvature to her figure. The addition of painted shadows completed the illusion.
The affinity that Magritte revealed in this appearance of shared form–woman as bottle, or vice-versa–is essential to the viewer’s immediate recognition of the Femme-bouteille idea and the pleasure that one takes in pondering this visual simile. Magritte, as usual, held still more metaphorical tricks up his sleeve to deepen this connection of one idea with the other, as he suggested in the first picture in which he introduced a Femme-bouteille as an object painted into the composition. In the gouache L’inspiration, 1942 (Sylvester, no. 1174), a reconsideration of Le portrait, 1935 (no. 379), Magritte has placed a Femme-bouteille on a dining table, as the presumed accompaniment to a meal about to be served.
One may imagine any number of scenarios. The title L’inspiration suggests that Magritte is inferring the traditional relationship between the painter and his model, with l’eternel féminin– woman transformed into object and idea–as the elemental source of desire and the impetus to creativity, not unlike imbibing drink or some other stimulant, if the artist were so inclined when going about his work. Or one may imagine the prosaic scene of a man sitting down to dine alone, taking comfort in a wine of his choosing, while wishing for the presence of a lovely woman, or better still, enjoying both at the same time. The story deepens into a multiplicity of co-existing realities, as Sylvester prompts us to consider, “Are we looking at an actual painted bottle or an imaginary one?” (cat. rais., op. cit., vol. II, 1993, p. 87). Anything in a Magritte painting, or in the shape of an object of his making such as that offered here, is more than it is or may seem to be.