René Magritte Painting Damaged by Visitor at Israel Museum Heads to Conservation Lab
A surrealist landmark at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is now in the hands of conservators after an accidental puncture left a visible wound in the canvas. René Magritte’s 1959 painting “The Castle of the Pyrenees” was damaged when a young visitor struck it with a pinecone before a guard could intervene, museum staff told The Times of Israel.
The work has been sent to the museum’s conservation lab, where Sharon Tager, head of conservation, said repairs are expected to take several weeks. Tager described a careful process that begins with stabilizing the support, since the hole caused the canvas to sag, followed by stitching and treatment of the oil paint layers.
The museum said the painting was not placed behind glass or under an alarm in order to preserve the experience of seeing the work up close. Tager said the institution does use glass for some works, including certain Impressionist paintings, but generally avoids alarms when possible. Visitors, she noted, want to examine artworks closely, and the museum tries to balance access with protection.
“The Castle of the Pyrenees” depicts a castle perched on a massive floating rock above a seashore and partly cloudy sky. The painting has been at the Israel Museum since 1985, when Harry Torczyner, Magritte’s friend and a lawyer and writer, gave it to the American Friends of the Israel Museum.
Torczyner originally commissioned the work to cover an unwelcome view from his New York office window. According to the museum, Magritte invited suggestions for the subject, and Torczyner proposed the sky and sea motif that appears in the finished painting. He later celebrated the result in a letter that praised the work as “superb” and “intact.”
The episode is a reminder of how fragile major museum holdings can be, even in settings designed to encourage close looking. For the Israel Museum, the immediate task is technical; for visitors, the incident has turned one of Magritte’s most improbable images into a very real conservation case.
