René Magritte

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Description

René Magritte
FEMME-BOUTEILLE
signed Magritte
oil on glass bottle
height: 29cm.
11 3/8in.

Provenance

Collection Soumenkoff, Brussels
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner in 1966

Exhibited

Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte: cent cinquante œuvres; première vue mondiale de ses sculptures, 1968, no. 172 (titled Bouteille)

Literature

L'Art belge, Brussels, January 1968, p. 64, illustrated in colour
David Sylvester (ed.) and Sarah Whitfield, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931-1948, London, 1993, vol. II, p. 438, no. 692, illustrated

Catalogue Note

This work is among the first of painted bottles that Magritte executed in the first half of the 1940s (D. Sylvester (ed.), op. cit., nos. 690-694, 696-700, 705 & 706), some portraying female nudes, others a cloudy sky or a bird, motifs familiar from the artist's oil paintings and gouaches. The first of Magritte's painted bottles was probably executed in the autumn of 1940, when he wrote to Edward James telling him about this idea. Some months later James, who had moved to America and was trying to find ways of helping Magritte, reminded him of that letter and suggested that a ready market for painted bottles was to be found in the States. The war prevented Magritte from sending the bottles to America, but he executed a small number of them to sell or give away at home. Many were done in response to requests from friends and collectors.

Fig. 1, Photograph of Magritte with another Femme-bouteille, 1961