Trompe l’Oeil in Grasse

Trompe l’Oeil (‘tricking the eye') on walls is an art perhaps most closely associated with Liguria in Italy, where it is almost ubiquitous, but there is quite a lot of it on our side of border. By definition, though, it’s easy to miss.

I know of seven 'trompe l’oeil' in Grasse.

9, bd Fragonard

In pride of place must be the ‘Capital du Parfum’ image from 2013, which you see on bd Fragonard (no. 13) as it climbs towards Place Honoré Cresp: it has the big benefit of taking the eye off the appalling sixties Post Office building next to it.

9, bd Fragonard

It’s well worth a closer look, because the characters at the ‘windows’ are all identified in the small ‘plaque’ at the bottom left.

In the top left hand window, we can see Gérard Philipe (1922-1959), who was a ‘heart-throb’ theatre and movie actor in the 1950s, appearing in, among many other films, Max Ophüls’ La Ronde, considered a masterpiece of French cinema. His connection with Grasse is that his father, Marcel Philip (Gérard added an ‘e’), developed and owned the Parc-Palace hotel on av Victoria (now the Palais-Provençal), Grasse’s grandest establishment in the 1930s. Gérard spent part of his early life there. Marcel was sentenced to death for collaboration, fled to Franco’s Spain and was eventually pardoned by de Gaulle in 1962 after Gérard’s early death from cancer in 1959.

The figure in the middle window is Antoine Léon Chiris (known as Léon), the most distinguished of the multi-generation Chiris perfume family. You can read more about him in my blog ‘Politics and Perfume’ here. The medallion behind him shows the founder of the dynasty, Antoine Chiris.

In the window to the right, the figure is Anne-Marie Isnard. She appears here because she owned the building, the Villa Couderc, on which the trompe l’oeil is painted. She was the great-great-grand-daughter of the brother of Maximin Isnard, whom I have posted about here. In the background behind her is Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘Jeune fille délivrant un oiseau de sa cage' (‘Girl freeing a bird from a cage’), which is in the Costa Collection at the Musée Fragonard on rue Ossola – see my blog here.

53, bd Victor Hugo

An image of similar size, made in 2019, serves as a welcome to the town. As you enter central Grasse, opposite the Molinard perfumery on the Route Napoleon (aka Victor Hugo), it’s on the side of an apartment block facing directly down the road at 53 Victor Hugo.

53, bd Victor Hugo

Unfortunately, it’s a little faded now and it’s a pity that two large bushes (which in the photo look as if they're part of the image itself!) have been allowed to hide part of it.

Rue Marguerite-Raineri/Avenue Pierre Sémard (opposite the station)

Next to an unlovely supermarket is the unpromising location of Grasse’s most extensive trompe l’oeil, which disguises a series of concrete retaining walls. It’s easy to miss, but well worth noticing if you are driving around or leaving the station.

Seen from av Pierre Sémard

The images are a riot of rose bushes, laurels, yews, olive trees, acacias, set against a series of apparent arches along the walls, in an attempt to beautify the raw concrete.

The work was done in 2019 but unfortunately the colours have now deteriorated a little. Perhaps they are too vulnerable to water flowing from above.

2 route Napoleon and 6 place de la Buanderie

Grasse has two other trompe l’oeil images covering the sides of a complete building, one at each end of bd Jeu du Ballon. You can see them in the photos below:

(Left) 2 route Napoleon (Right) 6 place de la Buanderie

The one on the left is on the side of the Bar Celtic, opposite place Honoré-Cresp, decorating what would otherwise be a blank wall. It was created by an all female team in 2022 and the colours remain vivid.

The image on the right rises above a large fountain known as La Buanderie ('the laundry') which was close to one of the town's historic lavoirs. The fountain dates from 1816 and it was refurbished in 2018.

The trompe l’oeil is called the ‘La Symphonie du Jasmin, L’Or Blanc de Grasse’ (“symphony of jasmine, the white gold of Grasse”) and it shows, very appropriately for Grasse, a giant cascade of jasmine.

Two smaller images

Below Cours Honoré Cresp, next to the old top station of the funicular which is today the 'La Rotonde', there are some 'stairs to nowhere', which no doubt had a function related to the old station.

Bd Fragonard, below Cours Honoré Cresp

Rather than remove them, someone decided to disguise their abrupt end with a small trompe l’oeil, which works quite well, I think.

Finally, at 10 bd Etienne Caremil, are four even smaller images, if the test of trompe l’oeil is that you don’t notice it, it's the best! Bd Caremil is on the one way system going west, and the building was once the Honoré Payan perfumery. You can see an old postcard showing the way it looked in its heyday in my post 'Five Hidden Perfumeries' here.

There’s a row of real windows, followed by some which aren’t, out of one of which a child looks out at you.

10 bd Etienne Caremil

We owe most of these images (certainly the larger ones) to 7e Sens (“seventh sense”) and Vincent Ducaroy, although not all are signed. You can see some details about 7e Sens here in English, while Vincent Ducaroy also has his own website here.

There's also a big national database of images on a website called, logically enough, Trompe l’Oeil, here, which you might find interesting.

November 2024 addendum

2 av Général de Gaulle

A new image, also down to Vincent Ducaroy, has just been completed, and you really have to look twice to recognise this one, because the windows and shutters look exactly like those round the corner.

The address is 2 av Général de Gaulle and it's right opposite the one on the side of Bar Celtic.

Great to see new additions to Grasse's wall art!