The Rolls-Royce Phantom, the marque’s pinnacle nameplate, celebrates its centenary year in 2025, though the British luxury brand was founded in 1904 by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce.
More than eight generations and 100 years, this car has been owned by some of the most famous creatives in modern history.
Masters including Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Christian “Bébé” Bérard and Cecil Beaton all travelled by Rolls-Royce while Dame Laura Knight, the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, used a Rolls-Royce as a mobile studio, painting from its interior.
With the Phantom’s 100th birthday in mind, and the close links with the arts, the marque has selected the story of the eccentric Spanish artist Dalí and a Rolls-Royce car to commission two special artworks inspired by Dalí’s moments with a Phantom: the first a cauliflower-filled Phantom on a cold winter day in December 1955 and the other inspired by Andy Warhol, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and seen by many as Dalí’s natural successor.
Salvador Dalí
Having shocked the art world with his surrealist images of nightmarish landscapes, chimeric animals, suggestive food and melting clocks, Dali was asked to give a lecture at Paris-Sorbonne University. Seeing a golden opportunity to create a moment in modern art, Dalí borrowed a friend’s black and yellow Phantom and filled it with 500kg of cauliflowers.
After a wild ride through the streets of Paris, Dalí pulled up outside the university and flung open the Phantom’s doors, sending the cauliflowers cascading to the ground.
Earlier in 1934, Dalí immortalised the Phantom stranded in a bleak, icy landscape, seemingly frozen in desolation, epitomising his knack for juxtaposing opulence with the absurd.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol met Dalí in New York City in 1965 in a suite at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan.
Unlike his mentor, Warhol owned a 1937 Phantom model which had been converted into a shooting brake and bought in 1972 from an antique shop in Zurich, Switzerland.
He shipped the Phantom to New York and owned the car until 1978 when he sold it to his friend and manager Fred Hughes.
In tribute to pop art’s lasting impact, Rolls-Royce has commissioned a contemporary artist to reimagine the Phantom in the way that propelled this bold style from Studio 54 into the cultural mainstream.
Spirit of Ecstasy
The arts and Rolls-Royce go back to the early days of the brand when the Spirit of Ecstasy — the mascot that adorns the bonnet of every model — was commissioned. It’s the work of English sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes and was inspired by the Greek statue of The Winged Victory of Samothrace housed at the Louvre museum in Paris.
Sykes captured its impact, but created a more ethereal figure that better expressed his experience of travelling in a Rolls-Royce. His daughter Jo recalled he was “very impressed with the smoothness and speed of the car and imagined that even so delicate a thing as a fairy could ride on the bonnet without losing her balance”.
“As we mark Phantom’s centenary, it is the perfect time to reflect on this car’s endlessly intriguing legacy and the artistic personalities who played a role in shaping its story,” said Chris Brownridge, CEO of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
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