A room with canon at left pointed toward a wall divided into four segments: wood grain at top left; at top right, gray tubes with halved spheres; at bottom left, blue sky and clouds; and at bottom right, a brown building with curtained windows. A left wall, segmented in two, features a nude female torso at top and detailed trees at bottom. The right wall features a top panel of wavy yellow and orange, while bottom panel has a pink, cutout-like motif.

On the Threshold of Liberty

February–March 1937

René Magritte Belgian, 1898–1967

Belgium

One of Surrealism’s most important patrons, Edward James was a willing collaborator whose sense of play initiated commissions for his homes from such artists as René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, including the latter’s iconic lobster telephone and Mae West lips sofa. James was impressed with Magritte’s work in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London and invited the artist to paint three canvases for his London home. Magritte made On the Threshold of Liberty during his stay there in 1937, reworking the motif of a cannon aimed at a female torso from an earlier horizontal painting of the same title (now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) into a vertical format in order to meet the specifications of the work’s destined site in James’s ballroom.

Oil on canvas

Modern Art