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Lot Essay
'Last night I had a vision (pictorial), a white owl in a landscape... It is perched on a square stone and surrounded by trees with very agitated shapes. White owl - white stone - grey soil - dark-green trees - blood-red sky - distant blueish background. Notice that for some time there has always been a pair of pointed ears in my pictures... Could there be a relationship with satanism?' (Magritte, letter to Marcel Mariën, quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Oil paintings and objects 1931-1948, London, 1993, p.340.)
The above quotation is from a letter from Magritte to his friend Marcel Mariën. Only days after he had informed Mariën of this original vision, the artist wrote again with a new sketch. The original image was rapidly transforming itself in Magritte's mind and there were plenty of permutations still to come, as a comparison between the preparatory sketch and Image à la fenêtre ('Image in the Window') reveals. There are more owls in the present picture, and they are now leaf-owls. There have also been minor alterations to the background. As Magritte wrote around his revised sketch, 'The picture of the owl has changed and become an owl-portrait' (Magritte, postcard to Mariën, 30 June 1944, reproduced in D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 340). These various documented stages in the formation of Image à la fenêtre provide an invaluable insight into Magritte's creative process, above all the importance of his friends, who sometimes actively provided ideas or simply provided a forum for Magritte to discuss his own. The title reflects this collaborative effort as it was apparently suggested by Paul Nougé, another friend and Belgian Surrealist.
One key to this painting lies in Magritte's brief description of the work: 'The bunch of owls is separated from a summer landscape only by a window' (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 340). These organic owls are on the inside, within the domestic context of the painting's viewing space. Where landscape paintings are intended to act almost as windows in a wall, here Magritte places outdoor creature-plants on the wrong side. The owls are poised in a group reminiscent of so many family portraits. The subtle human quality the artist has given them is at the heart of the disquieting nature of this picture, in which all boundaries are blurred. The summer landscape jars with the nocturnal owls, who have adopted some of that landscape in their vegetised form and are therefore rooted, unable to fly.
The above quotation is from a letter from Magritte to his friend Marcel Mariën. Only days after he had informed Mariën of this original vision, the artist wrote again with a new sketch. The original image was rapidly transforming itself in Magritte's mind and there were plenty of permutations still to come, as a comparison between the preparatory sketch and Image à la fenêtre ('Image in the Window') reveals. There are more owls in the present picture, and they are now leaf-owls. There have also been minor alterations to the background. As Magritte wrote around his revised sketch, 'The picture of the owl has changed and become an owl-portrait' (Magritte, postcard to Mariën, 30 June 1944, reproduced in D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 340). These various documented stages in the formation of Image à la fenêtre provide an invaluable insight into Magritte's creative process, above all the importance of his friends, who sometimes actively provided ideas or simply provided a forum for Magritte to discuss his own. The title reflects this collaborative effort as it was apparently suggested by Paul Nougé, another friend and Belgian Surrealist.
One key to this painting lies in Magritte's brief description of the work: 'The bunch of owls is separated from a summer landscape only by a window' (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 340). These organic owls are on the inside, within the domestic context of the painting's viewing space. Where landscape paintings are intended to act almost as windows in a wall, here Magritte places outdoor creature-plants on the wrong side. The owls are poised in a group reminiscent of so many family portraits. The subtle human quality the artist has given them is at the heart of the disquieting nature of this picture, in which all boundaries are blurred. The summer landscape jars with the nocturnal owls, who have adopted some of that landscape in their vegetised form and are therefore rooted, unable to fly.