The Empire of Light (French: L'Empire des lumières) is a series of paintings René Magritte covered more than a dozen times from 1947 to 1965.[1] They depict the paradoxical image of a nighttime street, lit only by a single street light, beneath a daytime sky.[2] In this case the artist was inspired by the works of John Atkinson Grimshaw, an English painter from the Victorian era, who had delighted in his time to paint urban views at sunset.[3]