The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 20, 2025

Watercolor overlaid with crayon depicting an easel placed in front of a window, the canvas on it lining up with the view outside of a beach with a mountain to the right. The painting lines up exactly with this view save for the fine lines defining the edges of it, the white right edge of the canvas visible. On the canvas, a white sphere has been painted on the yellow-orange sand of the beach.

The Human Condition

1945

René Magritte

(Belgian, 1898–1967)
Belgium, 20th century
watercolor, crayon over graphite, ink and gouache
Sheet: 42.2 x 32.2 cm (16 5/8 x 12 11/16 in.)
Bequest of Lockwood Thompson 1992.274
© C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

During World War II, when this drawing was made, René Magritte focused on beauty in contrast to the chaos of the time and favored calm scenes and light colors in his work.

Description

This drawing belongs to a series in which René Magritte depicted an easel before a window. Each features a canvas that exactly replicates the landscape beyond it, inviting questions about the boundaries between art and reality. Magritte juxtaposed a highly realistic style and unexpected imagery to evoke the subconscious and question the experience of time and space. Of his Human Condition series, he wrote that he wanted to place the viewer “inside the room in the picture and, at the same time, conceptually outside in the real landscape.”
  • ?-1992
    Lockwood Thompson, Cleveland, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    1992-
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79. Mentioned: p. 73 www.jstor.org
    Ottinger, Didier. Magritte. Exh. Cat. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1996. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 146
    Ades, Dawn. The Color of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art. Exh. Cat. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2011. Mentioned: p. 325; Reproduced: p. 311
    Cassin, Barbara. "The Painter-King." In Magritte: The Treachery of Images. Didier Ottinger, ed., 114-141. Exh. Cat. Munich: Prestel, 2017. Reproduced and mentioned: p. 119.
    Salsbury, Britany. “Open Windows.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 1 (Winter 2021): 26. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 26.
  • Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (organizer) (May 28-October 2, 2011).
    Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008).
    René Magritte. Montréal Museum of Fine Arts (organizer) (June 20-October 27, 1996).
    Selected Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-April 11, 1993).
  • {{cite web|title=The Human Condition|url=false|author=René Magritte|year=1945|access-date=20 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1992.274