Impressionist and Modern Art, Evening Sale

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Lot 57
  • 57

René Magritte

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Description

  • René Magritte
  • LES JEUNES AMOURS
  • signed Magritte (upper right); signed Magritte and titled on the reverse
  • oil on canvas
  • 33 by 41cm.
  • 13 by 16 1/8 in.

Provenance

Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels (acquired by 1968)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1979

Exhibited

Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Dix maîtres contemporains, 1968, no. 44
Knokke, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte, 1971, no. 7
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Delvaux, Gnoli, Magritte, 1974, no. 48
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte 1898-1967, 1979, no. 50
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Rétrospective Magritte dans les collections privées, 1988, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Madrid, Fundación Juan March, René Magritte, 1989, no. 57, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Literature

Letter from Magritte to Bosmans, 5th August 1963, in: Francine Perceval (ed.), Lettres à André Bosmans 1958-1967, Paris, 1990, p. 309
The Burlington Magazine, London, June 1968, illustrated in the advertisement supplement
David Sylvester (ed.), Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné. Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes 1949-1967, London, 1993, vol. III, p. 376, no. 967, illustrated

Catalogue Note

The image of an apple appears throughout Magritte’s work in various contexts: sometimes grotesquely enlarged to fill an entire room, sometimes fossilised into stone, or appearing in a portrait, replacing the face of a sitter. This simple everyday object, often associated with the traditional genre of still-life, is thus transformed into something inexplicable and unknown. In Les Jeunes amours, three large apples act as part of a landscape: two of them standing firmly on the ground, and the third one suspended in the air, they fill an otherwise empty scenery. Colouring them in attractive primary tones, Magritte plays visually upon the erotic associations of the apple as an object of desire and a symbol of carnal knowledge, a notion further accentuated by the title of the work.

The subject of one or more monumental apples in a landscape preoccupied Magritte in 1962-63. Apart from the present work, and an identical composition executed in gouache, he painted several versions of an enlarged apple made of stone, occupying a bare environment. In a letter to André Bosmans of 5th August 1963, Magritte wrote: "I have painted a few gouaches for ‘my dealer’. I have repainted some old pictures with pleasure as ‘gouaches’, particularly the one with the three apples" (quoted in D. Sylvester (ed.), op. cit., p. 376).