A painting by the surrealist artist René Magritte that has been held in a private collection for more than 90 years will go on sale later this month.
La Magie Noire was bought by the family of the second world war resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak, who were Magritte’s benefactors at a time when he was struggling financially and had failed to sell a single work for two years.
Spaak was shot by the Gestapo in Paris for helping Jewish children to safety.
Sotheby’s has estimated La Magie Noire will sell for between €5m (£4.4m) and €7m but expects it to fetch considerably more.
“It is the first time I have handled a major Magritte work that has been in the same family since it was painted. It is extraordinary, as is the history of the family,” Thomas Bompard, the vice-president of Sotheby’s France, told the Guardian.
“This painting is the Taylor Swift of surrealism,” Bompard said. “If you were to ask a group of schoolchildren to do a presentation on the surrealist movement this painting alone would be enough to define it. I call it the superstar of surrealism.”
The Belgian-born Magritte worked as a designer in a wallpaper factory and created advertising posters until 1926, when he produced his first surrealist work. The following year, he had his first exhibition in Brussels but the critics were savage and a dismayed Magritte moved to Paris, where he failed to make his mark.
He returned Belgium in 1930 and formed an advertising agency with his brother Paul.
“Life for Magritte was very difficult at this time. The Great Depression that started in 1929 in the US hit France in the early 1930s. For two years, between 1930 and 1932, Magritte sold nothing and had no exhibitions,” Bompard said.
“Nobody was buying paintings by surrealists. They were considered revolutionary troublemakers.”
René Magritte with his work The Barbarian (Le Barbare) Photograph: René Magritte/Latrobe Regional Gallery
Spaak’s husband, Claude, a celebrated Belgian playwright, knew Magritte and was a benefactor, commissioning portraits of his wife and children and arranging a monthly stipend for the artist and his family.
In 1934, Suzanne Spaak’s sister Alice Lorge, known as Bunny, bought La Magie Noire to mark the birth of her first child with Emile Happe, a Belgian industrialist.
“The Spaak family was to Belgium what the Mountbattens were to the UK; like royalty and they pulled Magritte out of difficulty,” Bompard said. “It was bought to mark the birth of a child but it was a rebirth for Magritte who was struggling to get himself back on his feet.”
The model for the series was Magritte’s wife, Georgette Berger, who is portrayed in a classical manner resembling a marble statue resting her hand on a block of stone. Her upper body gradually blends into the sky behind her while her lower half retains its natural tone.
Magritte went on to paint 10 similar portraits, most of which were given different names. In this work, the first of the series, Berger is portrayed with a dove on her right shoulder. One-third of the background shows a semi wood-panelled interior wall.
Resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak Photograph: Wikipedia
Suzanne and Claude Spaak were living in Paris when war broke out in 1939. After the Nazi occupation of the French capital, she joined the resistance and was a member of the “Red Orchestra” intelligence unit. Spaak used her considerable fortune to save 163 Jewish children from deportation, hiding a number of them at her home before they could be moved to safety.
In October 1943, the Nazis arrested Spaak along with 600 members of the Red Orchestra. On 12 August 1944, days before the liberation of Paris, the Gestapo executed her in her prison cell. She was 38 and has since been honoured by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts to save Jewish people.
Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967 and is buried in Brussels.
The painting, which has been displayed in the Magritte Museum in Brussels, has been rarely seen outside Belgium in more than nine decades.
La Magie Noire will be exhibited at Sotheby’s Paris between 17 and 23 October before its sale on 24 October.
