René Magritte

Marianne Tagnon (acquired from the artist circa 1966)
Sale: Françis Briest, Paris, 24th November 1987, lot 12
Galerie De Vos, St. Martens-Latem
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1987

Executed circa 1966, Le Prêtre marié is a witty and captivating example of one of the central themes of Magritte's art, that of unexpectedly juxtaposed objects. With an extraordinary economy of means and clarity of execution that characterised his later work, Magritte created an image of mystery and ambiguity, enveloping everyday objects in an enigmatic atmosphere. By combining apples - inanimate objects - with an allusion to human beings, Magritte challenges the viewer's expectations of a work of art, and at the same time invites new interpretations of everyday objects and occurrences. Furthermore, the theme of hidden or ambiguous identity, represented by the masks, is one of the central ideas in Surrealist art.

The subject of the apple appears throughout Magritte's work in various contexts: sometimes grotesquely enlarged to fill an entire room, as in La Chambre d'écoute, sometimes petrified, 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 Le Prêtre marié, two large apples are seen on what could be a table top or an empty nocturnal landscape. By replacing what otherwise would have been two human heads, the apples serve as protagonists of Magritte's favourite theme, that of hiding or obscuring human beings, and rendering them as faceless figures whose individuality remains a mystery to the viewer. Magritte plays visually upon the erotic associations of the apple as a symbol of carnal knowledge, and the tantalising appeal of a disguised object of desire, giving the apples a seductively human aspect.

The image of the masked apple first appeared in Magritte's design for the cover of the Surrealist magazine View of December 1946 (D. Sylvester, op. cit., no. 1196). In the following years he executed several oil and gouache versions of the image containing two apples, the first of which was an oil of 1950 (D. Sylvester, op. cit., no. 726; fig. 3). This group of works can be divided into those set against a day-time sky, usually titled La Valse hésitation, and those with the night sky titled Le Prêtre marié. This subject also appears in Magritte's mural for the Knokke-le-Zoute Casino Communal, La Domaine enchantée, of 1953 (ibid., no. 792; fig. 4). The monochrome purple background and the wooden surface on which the apples are resting, are simplified to the point of resembling a stage set rather than a landscape, thus adding to the theatrical atmosphere of the scene already suggested by the masks.

The title itself further emphasises the paradoxical character of the work. Magritte probably took the title from Barbey d'Aureville's book Le Prêtre marié, to which he referred in a letter of 1944. The contradiction expressed in the title certainly would have appealed to the artist's own inclination towards unusual or paradoxical couplings. Magritte often refused to establish a direct link between his images and their titles, which came from a variety of sources or were suggested by his friends. In the present work an ironic, witty association is established between the idea of carnal knowledge implied by a couple of apples and the priest referred to in the title.