Towards the end of 1940, Magritte painted three oil paintings depicting a large, bare tree against a generic landscape dominated by a vast sky. He wrote about this group of works on January 5, 1941: 'Among recent canvases there are three versions of 'The Search for the Absolute'. That is a leafless tree (in winter) but with branches that give the shape of a leaf, a leaf even! One version takes place in the evening with a setting sun, another in the morning with a white ball on the horizon and the third shows this large, idiosyncratic leaf rising against a starry sky. This is the (only) standing version. A certificate text is also printed on the lithograph and originally signed by Georgette Magritte (Marcinelle 1901 – Schaarbeek 1986).