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After all, what one asks of art is something different from imitative illusion. Its essence is illusion, I think, but illusion taken in a different sense from optical illusion trompe-l'oeil. Its function is to make dreams seem real, not to recall reality.
Add to this source of illusion the success of Monet in giving a juster value to the sunlit half of his picture than had even been systematically attempted before his time, and his astonishing trompe-l'oeil is, I think, explained.
After all, a painter must get his effect, whatever it be and however it may shun the literal and the exact, by rendering things with pigments. And some of the decorative painters only escape things by obtruding pigments, just as the trompe-l'oeil or optical illusion painters get away from pigments by obtruding things.
However this may be, the fact remains that a trompe-l'oeil has been achieved, and four inches of any one of these pictures looked at separately would be mistaken by sight and touch for a piece of stonework. In another picture, in a haystack with the sun shining on it, the trompe-l'oeil has again been as cleverly achieved as by the most cunning of scene-painters.
I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not found a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter tent a flying picture seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an eye. What is wanted, in short, is a trompe-l'oeil that shall be good enough for twelve hours at an inn: is it not so?" "It is, and the objection holds.
I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not found a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter tent a flying picture seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an eye. What is wanted, in short, is a trompe-l'oeil that shall be good enough for twelve hours at an inn: is it not so? 'It is, and the objection holds.
Even an adult can amuse himself for half an hour with this: it is a perfect trompe-l'oeil in mechanical adjustment. Price, one cent. Kitsune-Tanuki. A funny flat paper mask with closed eyes. If you pull a pasteboard slip behind it, it will open its eyes and put out a tongue of surprising length. Price, one-sixth of one cent. Chin. A little white dog, with a collar round its neck.
Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressively in drawing. Trompe-l'oeil there was no other word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of the horse.
Mary was pleased; he accepted her criticism; it was a serious discussion. She put her head on one side and screwed up her eyes. "I think it's awfully fine," she said. "But of course it's a little too...too...trompe-l'oeil for my taste." She looked at Gombauld, who made no response, but continued to smoke, gazing meditatively all the time at his picture. Mary went on gaspingly.
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