René Magritte

signed Magritte (lower left)

72.5 by 60.0 cm. 28½ by 23⅝ in.

Executed circa late 1930s.

Copley Galleries, Beverly Hills (by September 1948)

Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles

Amalia de Schulthess, Santa Monica

Private Collection (acquired by descent from the above)

Bonham's, New York, 7 December 2021, lot 6 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Beverly Hills, Copley Galleries, Magritte, 1948, no. 30

Hong Kong, Sotheby's, Corpus: Three Millennia of the Human Body, 2025

Torse nu dans les nuages was executed in the late 1930s, at the height of Surrealism. Containing some of René Magritte's most celebrated motifs and ideas, the present work is simultaneously calming yet provocative, embodying a tantalizing cocktail of the Surrealists' most celebrated ideas. Having been in the collection of Amalia de Schulthess, the present work boasts exemplary provenance as well as being an example of one of the celebrated periods in the history of Surrealism.

In Torse nu dans les nuages, Magritte takes ordinary, familiar ideas and items such as the seascape, the clouds and the female form while placing them in unexpected settings and juxtapositions. Despite the eye being unsurprised at the realistic rendering of the objects, the unsettling inconceivability of the scene is perturbing to the brain. This defiance of logic in Torse nu dans les nuages raises a multitude of questions: is the seascape covering the torso real? Where have the clouds come from? Is the setting of the scene in the interior or exterior? By placing these ordinarily understood ideas and objects in impossible scenarios, Magritte creates a metaphysical paradox which forces the viewer to confront the reality and logic of the scene they are beholding.

Rather than placing the seascape in the background as one might expect, it is instead painted across the contours of the body of the torso. In an impressive trick of the painter's brush that Magritte so playfully accomplishes, at once, the depth of perspective of a landscape is simultaneously three-dimensional and flat, with the horizontal brushstrokes curving round the contours of the body. With similar perplexity, the clouds are no longer contained within the body and landscape, extending beyond this and surrounding the torso, distorting ideas of scale and logical placement that makes the viewer question the line between reality and fantasy.

In true surrealist fashion, the work also questions the nature of ideas of internal and external, both physically and psychologically. The confinement of the seascape to the body while the clouds extend beyond this corporeal boundary interrogate where the body and mind begin and end. Indeed, exploring these binary divisions between internal and external, real and imagined, Magritte remarked that "We see [the world] as being outside ourselves even though it is only a mental representation of it that we experience inside ourselves." (quoted in Susan Gablik, Magritte, Greenwich, 1970, p. 184).

The rich metaphorical associations of the seascape further interrogate these concepts of the internal and external, as well as the hidden and the human experience. Beneath the illusion of the composed and calm surface of the waves, the viewer is reminded that there lie unexplored, concealed depths. The fragile, glimmering horizon so delicately bisects the sea and sky and acts as a liminal space, further provoking ideas of the fragile partition between perception and reality. Vast and uncontrolled, the sea is infinite, reflecting the complicated and incomprehensible nature of human existence.

Like the sea, the perfectly-formed cottony clouds are also a key characteristic motif in Magritte's œuvre, which the artist returned to on multiple occasions. Clouds also speak to the Surrealist ideas of intangibility and bodiless, on the border between reality and the infinite. Magritte explored clouds and the seascape time and time again. From a calm and tranquil scene to a tempestuous storm, vast expanses of water and the boundless sky would act as a backdrop or central feature to some of his most celebrated canvases. The artist had a postcard of La Vague by Wartan Mahokian on the walls of his studio, where the subliminal horizon and textured clouds likely served as inspiration for the present work.

The concept of illusion is also alluded to through the theatrical feeling in Torse nu dans les nuages, where the work's dramatic lighting and shadows with a dark background pay homage to a theatre set. Magritte designed costumes and sets for theatre groups in the 1920s and 1930s, so it is unsurprising that these ideas from his other work at the time have infused into his painting. Motifs of the theatre can be observed in Magritte's other works, with stage curtains, masks and theatrical props being returned to on a regular basis. The evocation of the theatre further add to the surrealist feeling that all may not be as it may seem upon first glance, as if the work is acting out a performance, concealing the truth of what hides behind the façade.

Torse nu dans les nuages was executed at the end of the 1930s, when Surrealism was at the peak of its momentum following major exhibitions in London and New York in 1936 and the 1938 Exposition International du Surréalisme at the Beaux-arts Gallery in Paris. Magritte was also gaining an international reputation at the time, having had his first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1936 and an exhibition at the London Gallery in 1938.

The present work was included in the inaugural show at Copley Galleries in 1948. Despite its short existence, Copley Galleries was very important in the history of Surrealism, introducing the European movement to an American postwar audience. The present work was featured in the exhibition at number 30, hung within an alcove which framed the work and gave it prominent placement in the exhibition.

The work was then acquired by the collector Amalia de Schultess. De Schultess was originally Swiss, but moved to the US in the 1940s. Amalia had grown up in a family of collectors, and knew many artists well, such as Alberto Giacometti, Piet Mondrian and Marino Marini.

With such exemplary provenance and exploring some of the most celebrated ideas of the surrealist genre, the present work is an iconic masterpiece by one of the twentieth century's most revered artists. The work is provocative and interrogatory, inviting both contemporary and modern-day viewers alike, to consider the impossible yet palapable scenario before them.