LAMBERTVILLE, NJ.- A recently discovered work on paper from defining Surrealist René Magritte will headline Rago/Wright’s Post War & Contemporary Art auction on May 21st. The untitled work, estimated between $100,000 and $150,000, was purchased by its present owner for approximately $1,580 on popular online auction platform eBay in January 2024.

Executed in ballpoint pen, colored pencil, and pencil on paper, the work depicts colossal chess pieces amidst a sky of fluffy clouds; it once belonged to Mora Henskens, the longtime companion of international lawyer Harry Torczyner, who championed Magritte and his work as a friend, legal adviser, writer, and collector.

The drawing combines two of Magritte’s most frequent motifs: clouds and chess pieces, specifically those that he referred to as "bilboquets" or "grelots.” Magritte revisited this particular combination, in which these architectural forms are rendered monumental against the sky, during different eras of his career—including in The Annunciation (1930) and The Art of Conversation (1950)—demonstrating the lasting power he gave to this particular imagery.

Henskens and Torczyner first met in 1962, the year after Henskens emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands. She would work at the United Nations Headquarters until retiring in 1995. Torcyzner, who passed away in 1998, practiced law in his native Belgium before fleeing the Nazis and eventually establishing his legal practice in New York in 1946. Magritte, a fellow Belgian, would become Torczyner’s client, but their friendship extended far beyond business: Torczyner wrote extensively about the artist, coordinated exhibitions, and donated multiple works to the Museum of Modern Art. Indeed, Magritte painted his friend in the 1958 portrait Harry Torczyner (Justice has been done).

When Magritte died in 1967, Torczyner and Henskens visited his widow, Georgette Berger Magritte, several times; it was during one of these trips that Henskens acquired the drawing. It would remain in her collection until 2022, when it was sold through the VanDeRee Auctions to an owner who then listed it on eBay.

“This certainly isn’t an everyday thing in the auction world,” says Joe Stanfield, Senior Specialist and Fine Art Director at Rago/Wright. “It’s always exciting to help resurface unknown, and underknown, works from legendary artists—that our consignor found this Magritte on eBay just adds to the thrill.”