Rene Magritte is known for his realistic painterly style. On the left Tabs is a gallery of his work with some comments about his individual paintings. Magritte painted 1,100 oils and 700 gouches and collages; totaling around 1800 paintings.
Magritte posing in front of his painting, The Pilgrim, still evoking the mystery of Fantomas
Rene had five basic styles or periods of work. First is his early period from 1910 until around 1918. Magritte went to art school in Brussels in 1916. Around 1918-1920 he started developing his Cubo-Futurist/Purism style. Inspired by Giorgio de Chirico Magrittte's style was closer to Art Deco by the Blue Cinema in 1925. Around 1925 he started his collages and use of the iconic bilboquets and in 1926 produced his first surrealist works.
Magritte calls his 1926 collage, Le Jockey Perdu (The Lost Jockey), his first surreal work but clearly there were others produced earlier that year that could be considered his first surreal works. In 1926 he began experimenting with words and images in his paintings. His move to the Paris area in 1927 began a fruitful period for his words and images paintings culminating in his famous This is Not a Pipe painting. After returning from Paris to Belguim in 1930 he began his mature phase, painting in a more deliberate detailed style.
Around 1943 after suffering marital problems and the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he began his Sunlit Period based on a painting by Renoir. This style continued until his Vache Period in 1947 and 1948. After 1949 he returned to his detailed painterly style although he occasionally dabbled in impressionism.
Magritte designed advertisements for many years in his life and used his painting images in his ads and vice-versa. unfortunately I have very few images of his early works at this point.
Enjoy!