Partial design for a decorated ceiling painted with clouds

Art Historical Context

This delicate preparatory drawing captures a partial design for an illusionistic ceiling, where soft clouds drift across an imagined sky. Created by the French collaborators Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise and Eugène-Pierre Gourdet between 1830 and 1897, the sheet reflects the 19th-century taste for grand, light-filled interiors. Such ceiling schemes were popular in public buildings and aristocratic homes, where painted skies could visually lift the architecture and suggest openness above heavy moldings. Executed in graphite, pen and ink, and translucent watercolor on wove paper, the work demonstrates the careful layering of techniques used by professional decorators. Fine ink lines define architectural frames while delicate washes of blue and gray build atmospheric depth, allowing the artists to test how light and color would interact when viewed from below. At roughly 10 by 15 inches, the modest scale belies the expansive effect the finished ceiling would have produced. Now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of drawings and prints, this sheet offers visitors a rare glimpse into the collaborative planning process behind 19th-century decorative schemes. It reminds us that even the most ethereal ceiling paintings began with precise, thoughtful studies on paper.

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...