René Magritte

Acquired in London by the father of the present owner

Punkaharju, Finland, Rettreti Art Centre, Surrealism in Visual Art and Film, 1987, no. 70

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount at the top two corners. There is a line of glue residue around all four edges of the reverse, possibly due to previous mounting, with some light associated paper skinning. There is a strip of self-adhesive tape running along the top edge on the verso of the sheet, and a small section of tape to the upper left edge. There are some small scattered spots of medium rubbing to the upper third of the work (visible in the catalogue illustration). Apart from some minor medium fading, this work is in very good condition. Colours: The colours are richer and more subtle in the original.
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The present work celebrates a recurring motif of Magritte's œuvre; that of the tree-leaf.' This image first appeared in the painting La Géante, of 1935 which reveals the solution Magritte found to the 'problem of the tree' (see D. Sylvester, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol.II, no.362). In a lecture he delivered in November 1938 at the Koninklijk Museum van Schooned Kunsten, Antwerp, Magritte gave the leaf-tree as an example of his method of 'elective affinities': 'The tree, as the subject of a problem, became a large leaf, the stem of which was a trunk directly planted in the ground. I called it 'the Giantess' in the memory of a poem by Baudelaire' (quoted in S. Witfield (ed.), Magritte (exhibition catalogue), London, The Hayward Gallery, 1992, no. 83). The present gouache closely relates to La recherche de l'absolu, 1941.

In the present work, Magritte illustrates his surreal vision in combining the plant which may be regarded as an individual invested with multiple feelings, with the neutral, nondescript landscape in which the ground and sky merge into one another, leaving out the faded moon. The latter creates an image of mystery and ambiguity, enveloping this wounded tree-leaf in an enigmatic atmosphere.