Once again Magritte returns to the image of the apple, having utilized it previously in many different guises. He had pÿainted it floating in the sky, donned it with masks, used it in place of a human head, calcified it and now it appears in gigantic proportions completely filling a room. In this Alice-in-Wonderland type of situation, the large sensuous green apple presses against all sides of the room overpowering the domestic interior and making the space feel claustrophobic and absurdly small.

Altering the normal dimensions of things was one
of Magritte's ways of relativizing spatial concepts.
The relative proportions of objects change to such
an extent that the viewer of his works is forced
to free himself from the bonds which the conventional
presentation of things imposes and, by so doing, to
experience them anew and more deeply. (A.M. Hammacher,
Magritte, New York, 1973, p. 150)

An earlier version of the same image was painted in 1952 (Sylvester, no. 779) now in the Menil Collection, Houston. The artist returns to the same theme in 1953 by using a larger canvas and varying the details of the room (Sylvester, no. 799). Five years later, Magritte painted the last two works of the apple series. The present one and another version in which the apple sits in a brick lined room (Sylvester, no. 877).