In response to Magritte's dismissal, Torczyner challenged him to paint, "a white rose, in a white room with a window looking on to a landscape covered with snow" (Whitfield, 1992). The work you see before you is what Magritte produced, with as minimal white as possible. So why did Magritte choose to alter the challenge? Well painting the rose a 'revolutionary' red instead of white was his idea of recognizing Torczyner's trip to the Soviet Union, and the Red October that allowed for the Bolsheviks to govern Russia, and were then, in the 1960's, altering course after the death of Stalin. Thereby making this work a rather telling portrait of Magritte's sentiments at the time.