Three melting watches appear in *The Persistence of Memory*.
They are spread across the foreground of Salvador Dalí’s dreamlike landscape: one hangs over a bare tree branch, another droops over the edge of a rectangular platform, and the third lies across the pale, distorted figure in the center. Their limp forms make rigid timepieces seem soft and organic.
The painting also contains a fourth watch, but it is not melting. It lies closed in the lower-left area and is covered by ants. This solid watch is the main source of counting confusion: viewers may remember four watches in total, while the question specifically asks for the melting ones.
Dalí painted the work in 1931, and the Museum of Modern Art describes the three pocket watches as flaccid or limp. Their placement turns the composition into a visual contrast between hard and soft, functioning and useless, measurable time and the uncertain experience of dreams. That distinction is why “three,” rather than “four,” is the canonical answer.