Which 1929 René Magritte painting is titled The Treachery of Images?

René Magritte’s 1929 painting The Treachery of Images is the work featuring a carefully painted pipe and the sentence “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

The French sentence means “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s point is that the painted image is not a physical pipe: it is a representation of one. The work turns a familiar object into a philosophical puzzle about language, images, and reality.

The painting is often mistakenly described as simply denying what viewers can see. Magritte instead distinguishes between an object and its depiction. A real pipe can be filled with tobacco, while the painted pipe cannot. The work became a central example of Magritte’s interest in the instability of signs. Its title, The Treachery of Images, is usually given in English, while the text inside the painting remains in French.