Magritte Paintings Sells for Tens of Millions

Surreal thing. “The Empire of Light,” a painting by Surrealist René Magritte (1898–1967), sold for a whopping $79.75 million (£59.4 million) in a recent Sotheby’s London auction. The work depicts a dark and moody nighttime street scene set under a bright daylight sky. The 1961 piece set the record for

1) the most expensive Magritte work ever sold;

2) the most valuable painting ever sold at auction in Great Britain; and

3) the second-most valuable painting in U.S. dollars ever auctioned in Europe (after Monet’s “Water Lily Pond,” which went for $80.3 million.) The surreal piece set off a very real bidding war, going to an anonymous collector.