Which 1929 René Magritte painting depicts a pipe with the words “This is not a pipe”?

René Magritte’s 1929 painting depicting a pipe with the words “This is not a pipe” is The Treachery of Images.

The painting shows a carefully rendered tobacco pipe above the French sentence “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” meaning “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s statement points out that the painted object is an image of a pipe, not a physical pipe that can be filled or smoked.

The work challenges the assumption that words and pictures simply reproduce reality. The image looks like an object, while the sentence denies that it is the object itself. This tension between representation and reality became one of Magritte’s defining themes.

The original French title is La Trahison des images, commonly translated as The Treachery of Images. It is often called “the pipe painting,” but that informal description is not its canonical title. Magritte later explored related problems of representation in works such as The Human Condition and Ceci n’est pas une pomme.