Nearly 350 years ago, French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Tuby sat in his studio casting and sculpting. Called Le Romain by his peers as a nod to his Italian heritage and training, he had moved to France sometime after 1660 to work under Charles Le Brun. In the decade that followed, Tuby had become a leading figure in Baroque sculpture, completing royal commissions for the grottoes of Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the gardens and fountains of Palais de Versailles as favored court sculptor to Louis XIV.

This day, circa 1670, the sculptor began a new commission — a pair of two bronze horses full of life and dynamism. Originally envisioned as part of a decorative fountain, the figures represented the mythical hippocampus, or seahorse, as evidenced by their hooves, mane and torso entangled with flowing seaweed. The subject was not new to Tuby; in fact, the work relates closely to an...

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One of the most intimate forms of art, the miniature represents a compelling chapter in the history of art. While large-scale portraits served as a testament to one’s power and importance, the miniature had a far different purpose. Given as personal gifts to loved ones and bestowed as rewards for loyal supporters, they were meant to be kept close and private as a reminder of one’s love, faith or fealty. Today, they offer us a glimpse into a world that no longer exists — of courtiers and kings, of generals and revolutionaries — each rendered down to the most minute detail. Yet, the emotional impulses behind their creation remain familiar, and it is this dichotomy that makes them so captivating to contemporary viewers and collectors. 

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Swiss Ideal Music Box and Cabinet by Mermod Frères. Circa 1886. M.S. Rau New Orleans

Favre, unfortunately, never enjoyed success from his discovery; poor health forced his retirement, and he died a poor man. However, by the early 19th century, other Swiss craftsmen and horologists were applying the cylinder comb technology to their own creations, giving rise to the cylinder music box industry. Switzerland remained the center of music box production throughout the invention’s prime, and they were an important Swiss export during the second half of the 19th century. In total, an estimated 10,000 artisans were employed in the Swiss music box industry. Makers such as Nicole Frères, B.A. Bremond, Mermod Frères and Charles Paillard came on the scene, creating some of the most beautiful cylinder boxes ever devised. Many of the most prized examples incorporated automatons that danced along to a tune or even other instruments like drums, bells, mandolins and castanets.

One of the most intimate forms of art, the miniature represents a compelling chapter in the history of art. While large-scale portraits served as a testament to one’s power and importance, the miniature had a far different purpose. Given as personal gifts to loved ones and bestowed as rewards for loyal supporters, they were meant to be kept close and private as a reminder of one’s love, faith or fealty. Today, they offer us a glimpse into a world that no longer exists — of courtiers and kings, of generals and revolutionaries — each rendered down to the most minute detail. Yet, the emotional impulses behind their creation remain familiar, and it is this dichotomy that makes them so captivating to contemporary viewers and collectors. 

Swiss Fusée Singing Bird Box by Frères Rochat. Circa 1830. M.S. Rau, New Orleans (Sold)

The history of musical machines is inextricably linked to the history of clocks. The same highly complex clockwork mechanisms that powered the great timepieces of the 16th and 17th centuries informed the creation of later automata, singing bird boxes and music boxes. In fact, the link between the clock and the automaton is seen as early as 3000 B.C.E., when Egyptian water clocks were equipped with human figurines possessing the ability to strike a bell on the hour.

The Strasbourg astronomical clock located in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame of Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is exemplary of the close ties between the development of the clock and the automaton. First built in 1352-54, it was later reconstructed in 1571-74 and featured several mechanical figures, as well as a calendar, orrery and other astronomical complexities. The addition of the moving figures made the religious message of the timepiece and its setting more vivid. In one particularly poignant group of figures, the twelve apostles parade before Jesus, who is depicted blessing each in turn. Although the clock in place today dates to the 19th century, fragments of earlier clocks are kept in the Strasbourg Museum for Decorative Arts, including the 14th-century gilded rooster, which is considered the oldest preserved automaton in the world.

 As clockmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries invented increasingly more complex clockwork mechanisms, they turned their attention to other challenges in the form of automata, bird boxes and music boxes. These mechanical wonders soon became highly coveted objects of luxury entertainment for the wealthy classes, setting the stage for major technological developments to come.

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The history of automata and mechanical music is inextricably linked to humankind’s pursuit of knowledge: knowledge of science, knowledge of engineering and knowledge of our own humanity. Combining technical skill and artistry, automata, music boxes and singing bird boxes possess an intrinsic elegance and charm that continue to enchant onlookers to this day, even in an age of modern, on-demand entertainment. Human-shaped machines that convey the illusion of being alive, delightful little birds that plump their feathers and sing a tune, automatic music players that perform on par with a concert pianist...these captivating, ingenious and mysterious machines represent a remarkable history of invention, philosophical curiosity and popular culture that remains highly relevant. The Art of Sound: Automata and Mechanical Music explores these fascinating mechanisms and their lasting impact.

Pierre-Denis Martin, General View of Chateau de Marly, seen from the watering pool, 1724

Pair of Bronze Horses Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Tuby. Circa 1670.

The Importance of Provenance

We are honored to showcase the brilliant mind of Patrick Hughes in our premier exhibit, The Witty World of Patrick Hughes. Here, you will experience the witty optical illusions that have made Hughes a leading figure in contemporary art. By applying psychology, humor and originality, Hughes’ experimentations with perspective and perception involve the viewer in a tangible way that is rarely seen in fine art. We welcome you to encounter art that not only moves you, but truly moves with you.  Click images to marvel at the artist's unique take on perspective that tricks the eye into believing that the images are moving of their own accord.

Throughout his prolific career, British artist Patrick Hughes has combined his fascination with art history, perception, psychology, philosophy, physics, neuroscience and literature to create artworks that have revolutionized fine art.

About the Artist

Born in 1936, Hughes originally studied to become a writer or an English teacher, though fate eventually steered him towards painting. It was his study of the absurdist authors and playwrights N.F. Simpson, Laurence Sterne, Eugène Ionesco, Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll that shifted his focus to the art world. As he once said, “It wasn’t my ambition to be an artist — it happened to me.” The artist brings a similar type of humor to his highly distinctive paintings, which probe the relationship between reality and representation in a way that destabilizes both.

Though he credits many of the early absurdists and Surrealists as his primary sources of inspiration, Hughes has never formally attached himself to any movement, keeping himself and his oeuvre separate from groups that emerged in England in the mid-20th century. However, according...

Florentine by Patrick Hughes

“I believe they have an experience, unlike any other, in which they see the impossible happen. And I hope that they then think a bit about why that is. If lookers and seers experience the paradoxical and reciprocal relation between parts of the world and themselves, they get a sense of the flow of life.” 

— Patrick Hughes, 2014

“When the principles of perspective are reversed, the mind is deceived into believing that a static painting can move off its own accord.” 

— Patrick Hughes

“When the principles of perspective are reversed, the mind is deceived into believing that a static painting can move off its own accord.” 

— Patrick Hughes

“I do not make the illusions, I make the coherent structures that are neat and complete; it is the see-er who creates the illusion. You are the person who makes it, with your mind and your legs."

— Patrick Hughes

How does he accomplish this visual trickery? 

The paintings are moving... or aren’t they? Hughes creates mesmerizing optical illusions to immerse his viewers into an imaginative artistic world removed from traditional laws of physics and space. The mind-boggling reverse perspective artworks, or reverspectives, beg the question: what is real and what is imagined? 



The artist transforms our perception of space by painting imagery on original multifaceted three-dimensional wooden panels that both project and recede into space. The delightfully disorienting result suggests to the eye that each painting’s vanishing point is actually behind us. To reconcile these conflicting notions, our mind tells us the paintings are in motion.



These magnificent creations, a marriage of sculpture and painting, offer an invitation to enter a strange dialogue between yourself and the artwork. Hughes’ unique storytelling pushes his visual metaphors past what is “expected” and into the realm of oxymoron and paradox.

Vedute or Italian View Paintings

“As Jonathan Miller once wrote to me, ‘anyone could have done this in the last five hundred years.’ But no one did, everyone stayed in the straitjacket of perspective, or at its best in forced perspective like the Borromini arcade in Rome.” 

— Patrick Hughes

Hughes frequently alludes to Renaissance art and architecture in his artworks with both irony and reverence. As an artist that relies on linear perspective to create his reverspectives, Hughes builds on the legacy of Italian Renaissance greats like architect Filippo Brunelleschi, who developed mathematical models to build one-point perspective with a vanishing point. In Hughes’ oeuvre, these innovations are inverted and pushed into new frontiers; rather than place the vanishing point on the two-dimensional surface, Hughes brings it into the gallery space in three dimensions.

The artist’s view paintings of Venice have been called his “pièces de résistance.” The canals and landmarks are recognizable, a testament to the city’s iconic qualities and draw for artists like Canaletto and Guardi who captured the irresistible city across the centuries. Even so, Hughes transports the viewer somewhere new despite the familiar imagery of Venice. He skillfully employs geometrical cues to dissolve the picture plane, creating a visual effect that mimics the vast expanse of the sea, making the waterways seem endless and transforming identifiable buildings into something new. Hughes’ Venice is simultaneously otherworldly, uncanny and unmistakable.

“I can see now from the perspective of sixty years making art that in the first half of my career, I was interested in showing people the paradox of life, but in the second half, with my reverspective 3D paintings, I let people experience this paradox for themselves.” 

— Patrick Hughes

Iconic Interiors

Patrick Hughes frequently paints renditions of familiar modern artworks into his own compositions. Sometimes, these artworks hail from a familiar, real-world setting — world-class collections like the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other times, Hughes plays the role of curator, inventing a space and art collection all his own. Plunging the viewer into these scenes, whether real or imagined, Hughes heightens the experience by building his distinctive board constructions to emulate the contours of a room, creating an unusual dimensionality that both mirrors and diverges from reality.

This flux and flow between the unreal and the familiar is evident in The Barnes Foundation, where Hughes takes care to capture more than just perspectives of the museum interior. He meticulously paints the masterpieces on view, creating miniature representations of the very works elevated in the gallery. Hughes recreates the carefully curated “ensembles” of Dr. Alfred Barnes, and Matisse’s The Dance (1932-33), Seurat’s Models (1886-88), Picasso’s Tête de femme (1907) and others find their permanent place within the Philadelphia gallery transformed and translocated. 

Alternatively, Hughes’ Sea Views and The Fourth Dimension places artworks like Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831), Edward Wadsworth’s Souvenir of Fiumicino (1937) and several Magritte paintings in imaginary and fantastical seaside galleries. For an artist that has described modern art museums as “full of relics and saints,” these exalted artworks become symbols through which Hughes probes originality and the art historical canon in greater depth. Hughes’ simultaneous reverence for and satirical commentary on these masterpieces perfectly encapsulates the artist’s wit, reminding us that life, art and reality can overlap in wondrously unexpected ways.

“Reverspectives give you air to breathe and a dance of life to pursue. I like to think my work is universally appealing.”

— Patrick Hughes

Humor and Wit

Patrick Hughes brings more than sheer artistic talent and a creative knack to his oeuvre. Hughes often utilizes humor to challenge viewers’ expectations. A voracious reader, his reverspectives can be highly referential, pulling from the artist’s extensive background in literature, art history and philosophy, while presenting the imagery of the past in new ways. This artistic literacy should not be confused with direct influence or imitation; Hughes forges his own path, informed by the triumphs of thinkers of the past. It is this depth of knowledge, however, that makes the artist such a profound satirist and visual comedian.

A Contemporary Homage

Hughes engages with fellow contemporary artists, much as he does with artists of previous centuries. In Her Eyes on the Horizon, artworks from Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, Banksy, Niki de Saint Phalle and more coalesce in a single fantastical space. Hughes even inserts his own Palette (2019), an assertive move that cements his own place within the contemporary canon. Centrally placed are two highly recognizable artworks of the 1990s: Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and Jeff Koon’s magenta Balloon Dog (1994-2000). Rather than present them as singular artworks, unlike the others included in the composition, Hughes entangles them, placing the dog in the shark’s toothy mouth, mirroring the hierarchy of predator and prey. Multivalent and layered in its humor, Hughes appears to mock the impassioned competition among contemporary artists — and, perhaps, the art market’s willingness to buy in.

“Humour added to high art is wonderful. It's the best thing that the art of the twentieth century has done.”

— Patrick Hughes

“I enjoy borrowing recognizable imagery from artists such as Robert Indiana’s LOVE [...] and inserting it into my reverspectives. I see this as a satirical venture, that enhances audience engagement through their sighting of recognizable images and symbols in my works.”

— Patrick Hughes

Surrealist Spirit

Though Patrick Hughes does not align himself with any one artistic movement, many connect his work to Surrealism, likening his subversions of reality to the iconic works of René Magritte. According to George Melly, who wrote the introduction to the catalog of Hughes’ first solo exhibition, Hughes was among the “young British artists who seem to be directly or indirectly moved by the surrealist spirit.” While Hughes respects Magritte’s keen ability to create a unique viewer experience out of thin air, the artist has never considered himself a pure Surrealist. Deeply individual, Hughes finds pleasure in using the spirit of disruption as an agent of humor. 

Choosing a Different Path

With intention, Hughes lives his life removed from any “isms” or confinement to a vocational box. Beyond his successful art career, he is also a published author, having written texts on visual and verbal logic, including Paradoxymoron (2011) and Foolish Wisdom in Words (2011). A veritable leader beyond just the field of fine art, Hughes received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree in 2014 from the University of London for his contributions to the psychology of perception. 

Visit the Exhibition in Person!

Don't miss this opportunity to experience these extraordinary works up close at our New Orleans gallery now through May 30th. 

Manipulating Perspective

Patrick Hughes’ lifelong interests in art history, literature, humor and the philosophy of perception resulted in his invention of reverspective ("reverse perspective") paintings in 1964, a technique he has continued to develop and refine. These highly inventive artworks coax viewers into conversation with their own imaginations and perceptions of space. Hughes’ works pay homage to the many thinkers who came before him, particularly the pioneering artists of the Renaissance who used the principles of geometry to manipulate perspective.

With a multi-decade career, the artist’s work has been celebrated and collected by notable institutions including the Tate Britain, the British Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art and others. 

Catalogues by Patrick Hughes

Throughout his prolific career, British artist Patrick Hughes has combined his fascination with art history, perception, psychology, philosophy, physics, neuroscience and literature to create artworks that have revolutionized fine art.

The Fourth Dimension by Patrick Hughes

Sea Views by Patrick Hughes

Two Speakers by Patrick Hughes

Dark Light by Patrick Hughes

The Barnes Foundation by Patrick Hughes

A Study of the Studiolo by Patrick Hughes

Dice and Dollars by Patrick Hughes

Shelf Life by Patrick Hughes

Dog in a Manger by Patrick Hughes

Her Eyes on the Horizon by Patrick Hughes

Himalayan Hues by Patrick Hughes

Love, Love, Love by Patrick Hughes

Throughout his prolific career, British artist Patrick Hughes has combined his fascination with art history, perception, psychology, philosophy, physics, neuroscience and literature to create artworks that have revolutionized fine art.

There There by Patrick Hughes

Throughout his prolific career, British artist Patrick Hughes has combined his fascination with art history, perception, psychology, philosophy, physics, neuroscience and literature to create artworks that have revolutionized fine art.

Tall Books by Patrick Hughes

Tall Books by Patrick Hughes