On the Threshold of Liberty

February–March 1937

René Magritte
Belgian, 1898–1967

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 396
Department: Modern Art

Artist: René Magritte
Title: On the Threshold of Liberty
Place: Belgium (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1937
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: none
Dimensions: 238.8 × 185.4 cm (94 × 73 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mary and Leigh Block
Reference Number: 1988.141.10
Copyright: © 2018 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Kroniek van hedendaagsche kunst en kultuur (Amsterdam), 4th year, no. 19–20 (August 15, 1939), p. 315 (ill.).
Richard Calvocoressi, Magritte (New York: Phaidon Press, 1984), p. 19.
David Sylvester, Magritte: The Silence of the World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 242 (ill.), 243.
David Sylvester, ed., René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, v. 2 (Houston: The Menil Foundation, 1993), no. 430, pp. 51-53, 239 (ill.), 240.
Dawn Ades, “Edward James and Surrealism,” in A Surreal Life: Edward James, 1907-1984 (Brighton & Hove: The Royal Pavilion, Libraries & Museums, 1998), p. 81 (ill.).
Renilde Hammacher, “Edward James and Rene Magritte, Magicians of the Surreal,” in Magritte, ed. Daniel Abadie (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2003), pp. 123 (ill.), 246.
Michel Draguet, Magritte (Paris: Editions Hazan, 2003), pp. 98-99 (ill.).
Patrick Roegiers, Magritte et la photographie (New York: Ludion and D.A.P, 2005), p. 109.
Michel Draguet and Virginie Devillez, Magritte: His Work, His Museum (Brussels: Musee Magritte, 2009), p. 96.
Christoph Grunenberg and Darren Pih, eds., Magritte A to Z, exh. cat. (London: Tate Publishing, 2011, pp. 30, 59, 88, 195, 204.
Stephanie D’Alessandro, “‘Mirrors that become Paintings’: Magritte’s Commissions for Edward James, London, 1937–1938” in Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, ed. Anne Umland, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2013), pp. 195–210, p. 212 (ill.), no. 117.
Guillermo Solana, La máquina Magritte/The Magritte Machine, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen¬–Bornemisza; Barcelona: Fundación La Caixa, 2021), 38, 194.

London, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Rene Magritte, no. 155; traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 9–November 22, 1992; Houston, Menil Collection, December 15, 1992–February 21, 1993; Chicago, Art Institute, March 16–May 30, 1993.
Paris, Galerie nationale de Jeu de Paume, Magritte, Feb. 11–June 9, 2003, no cat no.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, September 28, 2013-January 12, 2014, no. 117; traveled to Houston, The Menil Collection, February 14-June 1, 2014, and Chicago, Art Institute, June 24-October 13, 2014.
Tokyo, National Art Center of Tokyo, René Magritte: The Search for the Absolute, Mar. 25–June 29, 2015; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, July 11–Oct. 12, 2015.

The artist; commissioned by Edward James (1907–1984) for the ballroom of 35 Wimpole St., London, 1937, removed to his estate at West Dean, Sussex, 1939 [Sylvester 1993, p. 239, no. 430]; sold Sotheby’s London, Apr. 12, 1972, no. 49 to Modarco for £55,000. Albert Totah, London, by 1981; sold Sotheby’s, New York, May 21, 1981. Leigh Block (died 1987), Lake Forest IL and Santa Barbara, CA; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1988.

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