Empire of Light c1953 By Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte Empire of Light (known in French as L'Empire des Lumières) painting forms part of a series by this famous Belgian artist. Consisting of twenty-seven images, they depict a nocturnal domestic landscape set against a bright blue sunlit sky.

When was Empire of Light painted?

The Empire of Light paintings, created between 1939 and 1967, are true Surrealist masterpieces.  The paintings are not a formal "series" and consist of seventeen oil paintings on canvas and ten gouache compositions on paper.

This specific painting hung in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels.

In a 1956 interview, Rene Magritte described the painting as “a nighttime landscape and a sky such as we see during the day”. He further elaborated on the poetic power of art and his fascination with the contrast between night and day.

What does René Magritte’s Empire of Light symbolize?

It’s unclear precisely what René Magritte’s Empire of Light symbolizes. Despite this, numerous theories exist. However, we know it depicts the simultaneous experience of night and day, light and dark. This aspect of unexpected juxtaposition was characteristic of surrealism as a philosophical and artistic movement.

Symbolism (and René Magritte's artwork) explored the unnerving and illogical sides of our conscious and unconscious minds. The movement aimed to resolve the apparent contradictions between dream and reality into a greater truth — or surreality.

Many Art Historians believe Magritte used the nocturnal artworks of John Atkinson Grimshaw (a British, Victorian painter) and William Degouve de Nuncques (a Belgian Symbolist painter) as inspiration. In addition, Magritte was famously drawn to the landscape art of Caspar David Friedrich.

The Dada artist Max Ernst (particularly his surrealist frottage paintings such as Forest and Sun) is another possible inspiration. Salvador Dalí’s "Shades of Night Descending" (1931) also forms another interesting parallel.

Created after the famous René Magritte "Son of Man" painting (1946), "Empire of Light" continued the artist's central preconceptions. Speaking of the artwork, he described the way everything we view “hides another thing.” He told the internal sense of conflict “between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present”.

Comparably, Empire of Light also foregrounds contradiction. It contrasts the dark, nocturnal street scene with the pastel blue sky and fluffy cumulus clouds—sunlight and clarity battle against their opposites: darkness, unease, and confusion.

The painting's paradoxical nature creates an unsettling atmosphere, making the still darkness at the bottom of the canvas even more troubling than usual.

Despite the bizarre subject matter, the painting demonstrates Magritte’s exact technique.

Where is the original painting?

Initially displayed at the 1954 Venice Biennale (a distinguished biannual art exhibition), Magritte’s paintings attracted substantial interest from collectors.

Magritte produced multiple versions of the Empire of Light theme to meet the increased demand for his art. He continued to explore the theme of night and day for the rest of his artistic career.

Rene Magritte's Empire of Light paintings are displayed in museums all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice), and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (located in Belgium). 

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