René Magritte

Prices for René Magritte’s works have been on an unbroken uptrend for the last thirty years. On the back of this rally, L’Empire des Lumières took the market by storm last year

René MAGRITTE arrived in Brussels in 1916, and discovered cubism, futurism and the Antwerp avant-garde. His paintings were initially marked by these influences before developing a purist quality. Magritte associated with the Belgian Dadaists and enthusiastically embraced surrealist poetry. He painted what he considered his first successful surrealist work in 1926, Le jockey perdu. Within four years, spent between Brussels and Paris, all the key elements of his work were in place: a taste for tricks of scale, the tension between academic representation and a fissured view of reality, the exploration of the distance between an object and its name. Except for his attempts at a Renoir-like approach or the “style vache” of the 1940s, his style remained unchanged throughout his life, although he moved towards a more lustrous palette.

Artworks at auctions

Pieces representing most of Magritte’s post-1930s work have found their way to auction. Following the death of Georgette Magritte, Sotheby’s London hosted the break-up of the artist’s studio on 2 July 1987 and set the first record prices at auction. The market’s current favourites are his works from 1950-1960.Magritte’s body of work is complete: around 1,110 paintings, and numerous gouaches and drawings. Collectors can also find painted bottles selling for USD150,000-200,000 or sculptures — USD85,000 for La race blanche, a 52 centimetre bronze cast like most of his sculptures in 1967, the year he died. In the last ten years at auction, paintings made up 19% of lots sold, with prints making up 39% and drawings and watercolours 35%. An oddity of the Magritte market is that the top ten sales in the last decade include no less than four versions of L’Empire des Lumières. In 1996, one went in London for USD3.5 million. In May 2002 another, from 1952, fetched USD11.5 million in New York, the highest price ever paid for a Magritte.

The market places

Magritte auctions are mainly held in either the US or the UK.The US has accounted for 67.7% of turnover since 1992. And it was Christie’s New York that hosted the sale of the Harry Torczyner collection in November 1998. At this sale more than 15 works on paper and 10 paintings went under the hammer for a combined total of nearly USD26 million. Les valeurs personnelles went for USD6.5 million — a record for Magritte that stood until May 2002. But lately, the finest pieces have been found at the London houses. The Christie’s surrealist auction scheduled for February 2003 has no less than 9 paintings.

Buy or sell

In five years, the price of Magrittes has more than doubled. EUR100 invested in Magritte in 1998 was worth EUR270 by January 2003. The price trend has been solidly up for ten years. As one of the stars of surrealism, Magritte is one of the market’s sure stocks, so widely recognised that a fall in his price is unlikely. Also, collectors tend to hold on to their pieces. True, some were moved to cash in on the Magritte frenzy triggered by the Harry Torczyner auction. But the number of works coming up since has been meagre. Since 1999, it has nearly halved. Limited supply guarantees that in the medium term prices should naturally rise. Buying a Magritte therefore carries little risk. That said, the choice on offer is more varied than it might appear. The market for his drawings is fairly up and down, probably because some pieces cannot be certified as authentic, unlike the paintings and gouaches listed in David Sylvester’s catalogue raisonné. A third of his works on paper are generally bought in and the trend in prices suffers greater volatility than for the paintings. This means the most valuable drawings tend to be those with a known history. Finally, the market for Magritte prints may offer faster growth over the short term. Magritte prints leapt in price in the wake of the successful 1998 auction, nearly tripling between 1998 and 1999. Unsurprisingly, this spike was followed by three years of substantial decline and margins now look to have shrunk considerably.

    René MagritteArtprice Indexall media categories, base January 1998 = 100, currency: EUR   René Magritte Number of lots sold   René Magritte Auction sales turnover 1992-2002 / weight by country © Artprice