A rare painting from René Magritte’s famous “L’empire des lumières” series is estimated to sell for more than $95 million at Christie’s New York this fall, breaking the surrealist artist’s record at auction and represents a major win for the auction house following a slump in art market sales.

Photo credit: sothebys

As CNN reports, “L’empire des lumières,” from 1954, is one of 27 paintings in which Magritte explored light by painting a sunny sky over a dark street scene.

In 2022, another work in the series nearly tripled the Belgian artist’s previous record when it sold for £59.4 million (then $79.7 million) at Sotheby’s in London.

The painting comes from the estate of the late Mica Ertegun, an interior designer who was married to Atlantic Records co-founder and art collector Ahmet Ertegun.

Other works to be included in the collection’s sales include pieces by household names such as Joan Miró, David Hockney and even a Polaroid photograph of Ertegun taken by Andy Warhol.

The sale of Ertegun’s collection will take place on November 19 in New York, with subsequent daily auctions and two online auctions.

A “significant portion” of the proceeds will go to charitable initiatives, a spokesman for the auction house said. During her lifetime, Ertegun supported causes such as the Graduate Scholarship Program in the Humanities at the University of Oxford, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the World Monuments Fund.

Christie’s reported in July that its total revenue from live and online auction sales in the first half of 2024 reached $2.1 billion worldwide, representing a 22% year-on-year decline and about $600 million less than the first half. of 2023. However, other metrics such as sell-through rates, the percentage of lots that lead to completed sales, remained flat. Last week, the auction house revealed it was acquiring collector car auctioneer Gooding & Company, 17 years after exiting the car market.