RICHARD BAGGULEY
Trompe l'oeil: The Art of Illusion
The earliest account of trompe l'oeil comes from ancient Greece, where a contest took place between two prominent artists, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. The story goes that Zeuxis painted grapes with such skill that birds flew down to peck at them.
Trompe-l'œil French for '"deceive the eye"' is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture.
I have been using trompe l’oeil in my mural work for at least 15 years and enjoy it immensely. I recently had a request from the office of one of my Turkish clients to fly over to meet them to discuss potential mural projects aboard his newly acquired yacht which was being refurbished in drydock in Istanbul.
The commission for this part of the project concerned the dining room of the boat, for technical reasons one wall could not have any windows/portholes therefore not allowing any natural light or ocean views into one side of the room.
The solution we came up with was to create two painted trompe l’oeil windows/portholes (illusory windows) in which I would paint scenes looking out to sea. The first was to have a view of the self same ship sailing alongside, creating the illusion for the dinners that the ship they were eating in was sailing away, the second was to be more humorous and depict a cleric rowing a rhinoceros.
The real trick with these mini murals is to use the trompe l’oeil technique to make the portholes look very real, to trick the eye into believing what is perceived is real, for this to work a lot of attention is put into getting the details just right.
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