Design for a ceiling with a trompe l'oeil sky filled with birds
Medium
pen and ink, watercolor, and gouache
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Dodge Fund, 1967
Accession Number
67.827.393
Tags
Art Historical Context
This captivating 19th-century design by Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise and Eugène-Pierre Gourdet presents an enchanting vision for a ceiling that appears to open directly into the heavens. Rendered in pen and ink with delicate washes of watercolor and gouache, the composition features a convincing trompe l’oeil sky teeming with birds in flight. The technique, meaning “deceive the eye,” was especially prized in decorative schemes of the period, transforming enclosed interiors into airy, light-filled spaces that connected viewers with the natural world above. Created as a preparatory drawing rat...
About the Artist
Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise|Eugène-Pierre Gourdet · 1897–1897
Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise, born Jules Lachaise on September 2, 1836, in Paris, emerged as a prominent French painter and draughtsman specializing in lavish interior decorations during the Second Empire and beyond. Little is known about his early life and formal training, though he married Berthe Gourdet in 1866, forging a close professional partnership with her brother, the decorator Eugène-Pi...