5: Trompe L'Oeil(!) With Liotard

[Click image for larger version.]

Jean-Etienne Liotard

Trompe l'Oeil, 1771
Oil on silk transferred to canvas, w32.4 cm x h23.8 cm (12.75" x 9.375")
The Frick Collection, New York City, NY USA

REFRESHER:

So trompe l'oeil¹, paintings that "trick the eye". It's all pretty simple in concept, so just a few things to note:

1. I love trompe l'oeil. Love it². For representational artists, it's both a great testament to skill and and pure stupid humor, and that's an excellent combo. 
2. Trompe l'oeil works have an extremely long history. A favorite story comes from Ancient Greece and can be viewed here (apologies for the text errors).
3. Traditional trompe l'oeil was fully meant to trick the eye, and that meant painting objects at real size, and only from a perspective/in locations that could be believed. (The painting at top is an example of this.) Paintings that are hyper-realistic, or which surprise the eye but don't fool us into thinking that we're looking at something else entirely, are not technically trompe l'oeil. But I won't care if you won't.
4. Today, you may be most likely to encounter trompe l'oeil approaches in street art. 

NOTES:

1. Commonly pronounced 'tromp loy' in American English, if you were wondering. Although that's pretty far off the French original. 

2. I've incorporated a few trompe l'oeil elements into various paintings, but below is the only pure trompe l'oeil work I think I've ever done (apologies for photo quality, this was long before I cared about that). Again, stupid humor, but a great way to spend an afternoon.