Described as one of the most "definitive images of Surrealist art," René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières captured an artist record price of £59.4 million ($79.8 million) at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. The Belgian Surrealist's previous record was $26.8 million, landed by Le Principe du Plaisir (1937) at Sotheby’s in 2018.

L’empire des lumières depicts a mysterious streetscape, seemingly both in day and night, and is one of the largest of 17 such works begun in 1948. The painting far exceeded its expected price of $60 million in Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London.

"I have always felt the greatest interest in night and day, without however having any preference for one or the other," noted Magritte. "This great personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration..." 

Created in 1961 specifically for Baroness Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, the daughter of Magritte’s patron Pierre Crowet, the painting remained in the family ever since. Sotheby's notes that Anne-Marie embodied Magritte’s aesthetic ideal, even before he actually met her. Uncannily, her likeness is found in a number of works executed before their first meeting, when he famously said to her: “Tu vois, je te peignais déjà avant de te connaître”. She became a lifelong friend of Magritte and his wife Georgette, appearing in many of the artist’s most significant paintings.