René Magritte

Galerie L’Époque, Brussels (acquired from the artist in December 1927)
Galerie Le Centaure, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1929)
Edouard-Léon-Théodore Mesens, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1932-33)
Max Servais, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1933)
Robert Giron, Brussels (acquired from the above in the 1950s)
Galerie André-François Petit, Paris
Galleria Marescalchi, Bologna
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1995

London, The Hayward Gallery; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Houston, The Menil Collection & Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Magritte, 1992-93, no. 28, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Letter from Magritte to Paul Nougé, November 1927
David Sylvester (ed.) & Sarah Whitfield, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1992, vol. I, no. 184, illustrated p. 247
David Sylvester, Magritte, London, 1992, illustrated in colour p. 128

The canvas is unlined. There are two tiny spots and a 1cm. diagonal line of retouching, visible under ultra-violet light. Apart from some light stable vertical and horizontal stretcher marks, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the colours are slightly brighter in the original.
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Painted in 1927, La passion des lumières is an exceptional example of Magritte’s sophisticated exploration of form and meaning. The superimposition of forms and the dialogue that Magritte establishes between revelation and concealment is a frequent tactic in his work and evolved from important early metamorphic pictures such as La passion des lumières. In discussing the present work Sarah Whitfield writes: ‘Magical transformations lie at the heart of myths and fairy tales, and this is one reason why the concept of metamorphosis was so valued by the Surrealists. In turning a wooden bilboquet into a human figure (or vice versa) Magritte had long since introduced the idea of metamorphosis into his painting. His concern now, however, was to evoke the gradual process of one substance merging into another’ (S. Whitfield in Magritte (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 92).

Throughout the artist’s œuvre the trompe l’œil effect achieved by depicting the grain of planed wood was exploited for its Surrealistic potential (fig. 1). With works such as La passion des lumières, Magritte’s painting finds an aesthetic affinity with that of Max Ernst’s frottage and grattage pieces such as La Forêt (fig. 2). Earlier works where perceived by the Surrealists as ‘painted collages’, whereas the metamorphic paintings moved closer to a dream-like sense of reality. Magritte moved to Paris in the year he produced the present work and became involved with the Surrealist group. He probably met Ernst through his fellow Belgian Camille Goemans who lived in the same building as the German painter along with Miró. Sarah Whitfield discusses the connection between the present work and Ernst’s works, which ‘Magritte must have been familiar with, most probably through the magnificent Histoire naturelle series, reproduced in collotype by Editions Jeanne Bucher in 1926’ (ibid., p. 92). Magritte’s wood-graining, seen in La passion des lumières and Découverte (fig. 3),  is a product of total artifice as opposed to that of Ernst’s frottage technique, and yet both successfully transform their original substances into entirely new elements.

In the catalogue raisonné entry for the present work David Sylvester writes that this work is a precise realisation of Magritte’s concept of metamorphic painting and quotes correspondence between Paul Nougé, a Surrealist poet and photographer, and the artist which discusses this development in his art: ‘I think I have made a really striking discovery in painting. Up to now I have used composite objects, or else the placing of an object was sometime enough to make it mysterious. But as a result of the experiments I’ve made here, I have found a new potential in things – their ability to become gradually something else, an object merging into an object other than itself. For instance the sky in certain places allows wood to show through. This seems to me to be something quite different from a composite object, since there is no break between two substances, and no limit. By this means I produce pictures in which the eye must ‘think’ in a completely different way from the usual one: things are tangible and yet a few planks of solid wood become imperceptibly transparent in certain places’ (letter from Magritte to Nougé, quoted in David Sylvester (ed.), op. cit., 1992, pp. 245-246).

In response to Magritte’s excited letter Nougé wrote: ‘Allow me to say a word or two at once about your latest experiments. You are right to attach a great deal of importance to them and I have no doubt of the vigour of the effects thus obtained. […] It was not simply a question of removing the shape which separates the planks from the sky; it was above all necessary to appreciate at its true value the effect of this change. How I like your way of going about things, my dear Magritte, that way of precipitating events and turning them to advantage. I can for the moment think of nothing more fruitful' (letter from Nougé to Magritte, quoted in ibid., p. 246).