Executed in 1932. Robert and Nicolas Descharnes have confirmed the authenticity of this work.

Executed with a finesse and precision characteristic of Dalí’s small-format work, this exquisite ink drawing combines signature themes from this period of the artist’s oeuvre. The melting clock on the right appears to be a mirror image of the most famous clock in art history—the one depicted melting over the edge of a nondescript plain surface in Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (1931). Echoing the famous oil, the background of the present work is dominated by the rocks of the artist’s native Catalonia, with a small figure of a child playing with a hoop completing this mysterious and eerie dreamscape.

Dalí presented this drawing to Contessa Anna Laetitia Pecci-Blunt, who was one of the most significant modern art patrons of her time in her native Italy. Born in Rome and raised in an aristocratic family related to the papal court, Anna Laetitia Pecci married the American businessman Cecil Blumenthal, later known as Blunt. Combining their names into Pecci-Blunt, the couple spent their time between Paris and Rome, where they surrounded themselves with artists, writers and musicians. Anna Laetitia in particular was active in the avant-garde circles in both cities; her homes were a meeting point for many leading intellectuals, she organized salons, balls and concerts of classical and modern music. In the 1930s she opened the Galleria della Cometa in Rome as well as Comet Gallery in New York, where she promoted works by Italian artists in the United States. Inherited by the Pecci-Blunts’ daughter Camilla and her husband Earl McGrath, the present drawing remained in the family of its first owners for over eight decades.