René Magritte

Alexander Iolas
Max Ernst (acquired from the above)
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels (Sale: Sotheby's, London, 31st March 1987, lot 64)
Purchased at the above sale by the family of the present owner

Milan, Galleria Schwarz, Magritte, 1962, illustrated in the catalogue
Rome, L'Attico, Magritte, 1963
Geneva, Galerie Alexander Iolas, Magritte, 1963, no. 4
London, Hanover Gallery, René Magritte, 1964, no. 2, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Alexander Iolas and (possibly) New York, Iolas Gallery, Magritte: le sens propre, 1964, no. 15
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Rétrospective Magritte, 1979, no. 168, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Isy Brachot, Le Surréalisme en Belgique I, 1986, no. 17, illustrated in colour on the catalogue cover
New York, Arnold Herstand, René Magritte: Paintings, 1986
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Rétrospective Magritte dans les collections privées, 1988, no. 247,  illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Letter from Magritte to André Bosmans, 21st April 1962
Letter from Magritte to Alexander Iolas, 26th September 1962
Letter from Magritte to André Bosmans, 1st November 1962
Patrick Waldberg, René Magritte, Brussels, 1965, illustrated p. 258
Alex Stock, 'Der unmögliche Altar: René Magritte, Le Rossignol', in Katechetische Blätter, Munich, January 1984, pp. 30-34
Jacques Meuris, René Magritte, London, 1988, no. 240, illustrated in colour p. 163
David Sylvester (ed.), Sarah Whitfiled and Michael Raeburn, René Magritte,  Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes 1949-1967, 1993, vol. III, no. 953, illustrated p. 366

Painted in 1962, Le Rossignol is a monumental oil version of the theme Magritte first executed in a gouache of the same title in 1956 (fig. 1), which two years later he sold to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Using the trompe-l’œil technique, he creates a picture within a picture depicting a train passing through a desolate landscape, dominated by a large cloud from which emerges the seated figure of God the Father. The image of the train is one that appears in only a small number of Magritte’s works, most famously in La Durée poignardée of 1938 (fig. 2), in which by juxtaposing two familiar images, the locomotive and the fireplace, Magritte sought to expose their mysterious meaning, which remains hidden when the objects are seen in their everyday context. Whilst in La Durée poignardée Magritte combined a smoking locomotive, usually associated with an outdoor setting, with an interior, in Le Rossignol a different juxtaposition is taking place: the train, a symbol of modern technology, is placed within a religious context, evocative of an earlier age.

Magritte was evidently satisfied with the gouache version of Le Rossignol, as in 1962 he suggested to Harry Torczyner that the Carnegie Institute should lend it for the exhibition of his work, held in Minneapolis later that year, and soon embarked on executing this subject in oil on a much larger scale. Enthusiastic about this image, he wrote about it on several occasions to his friends. In the spring of 1962 he started working on the present painting, and in a letter to André Bosmans of 21^st April of that year, he wrote about its origin:

‘During a visit to the Eglise Saint-Sulpice in Paris to look at a picture by Delacroix which happens to be there, I saw a picture [fig. 3] representing ‘Jehovah’ on a cloud and apostles, on the ground, engaged in some religious ceremony. As I was coming back by train to Brussels, it occurred to me, as we passed a marshalling-yard, that this ‘given’ landscape could include Jehovah on his cloud in the sky above it. For the sketch illustrating this thought, Scutenaire found an excellent title: ‘The nightingale’. Later, I enquired about the name of the painter of the picture I had noticed in Paris. He is called SIGNOL! And, to paint the sketch of my picture with ‘Jehovah’ above a marshalling yard, I did a sketch of a station near to the Bd Lambermont: the station called Josaphat (Rossignol – ‘antiquated stock’, the bird with the beautiful song, Jehovah – Josaphat are coincidences that strike me as very remarkable)’ (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., pp. 366-67).

A copy of the magazine Chemins de Fer for 1961 was found among Magritte’s belongings. One of the photographs of a train was annotated by the artist with the word fumée (smoke), while another was meticulously squared up. Magritte certainly based his painting on photographs of contemporary trains, his careful attention to detail resulting in the photo-realistic manner of the work. It is by combining this realism with which he depicts a banal scene from modern life, with the image of the timeless and the unknowable, that Magritte questions our perception of reality and unveils the mystery hidden in everyday life.

 

Fig. 1, René Magritte, Le Rossignol, 1956, gouache on paper, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Fig. 2, René Magritte, La Durée poignardée, 1938, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
Fig. 3, Emile Signol, Ascension of Christ, 1872-76, Saint-Sulpice, Paris
Fig. 4, Paul Delvaux, Train du soir, 1957, oil on panel, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels