The Menaced Assassin is one of Magritte's largest and most theatrical compositions. Magritte was an avid fan of the pre-World War I popular crime fiction series Fantômas; he borrowed the placement of the two detectives' figures flanking the door frame from the Le Mort Qui Tue (The Murderous Corpse), a film from the series first released in 1913. It was Magritte's ambition to create a similarly immersive and fantastical world on the canvas, here made manifest in the unsolvable narrative of this enduringly mysterious painting.

Gallery label from

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, September 28, 2013–January 12, 2014 .

Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

Paul Gustave Van Hecke (1887 – 1967) of Galerie L’Epoque (1927 – 1929, then stock transferred to Galerie Le Centaure), Brussels. 1927 – 1929
Galerie Le Centaure (1921-1931), then Galerie Walter Schwarzenberg (1931-32), Brussels. 1929 – [likely until February 1932]
E.L.T. (Edouard Léon Théodore) Mesens (1903 – 1971), Brussels and London (from 1938). Acquired in the early 1930s [possibly in 1932] – until 1966. (On loan to Casino de Knokke, Belgium, from 1962 to 1965.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Mesens with the Kay Sage Tanguy Fund, 1966

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Provenance Research Project
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Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 59 1/4" x 6' 4 7/8" (150.4 x 195.2 cm)
Credit Kay Sage Tanguy Fund
Object number 247.1966
Department Painting & Sculpture

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René Magritte

René Magritte

Belgian, 1898–1967 14 works online

Clouds, pipes, bowler hats, and green apples: these remain some of the most immediately recognizable icons of René Magritte, the Belgian painter and well-known Surrealist .

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All works by René Magritte →

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