"False Perspective" is the title of an engraving produced by William Hogarth in 1754. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (762x959, 383 KB) Summary Satire on False Perspective by William Hogarth, 1753 Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Perspective (graphical) ... William Hogarth (November 10, 1697 – October 26, 1764) was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited as a pioneer in western sequential art. ... 1754 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ... William Hogarth (November 10, 1697 – October 26, 1764) was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited as a pioneer in western sequential art. ... 1754 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

The intent of the work is clearly given by the subtitle:

The work shows a scene that provides many deliberate examples of confused and misplaced perspective effects. The lower part of an inn-sign belonging to a building in the foreground is obscured by a line of trees in the distance, a woman leans out of a foreground window to light the pipe of a traveller on a distant hillside, a bird perched on a treetop whose size seems reasonable in the main picture would have to be several feet high if we compare it to the tree, and so on. Look up S, s in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A cube in two-point perspective. ...

Although the individual components of the scene seem self-consistent, the scene itself can be classed as an example of an impossible object. Two famous undecidable figures, the Penrose triangle and devils pitchfork. ...

List of "Errors"

The most immediately prominent errors are the first three or four:

• The man in the foreground's fishing rod's line passes behind that of the man behind him.
• The sign is moored to two buildings, one in front of the other, with beams that show no difference in depth
• The sign is overlapped by two distant trees.
• The man climbing the hill is lighting his pipe with the candle of the woman leaning out of the upper story window.
• The crow perched on the tree is massive in comparison to it.
• The church appears to front onto the river.
• The left horizon on the water declines precipitously.
• The man in the boat under the bridge fires at the swan on the other side, which is impossible as he's aiming straight at the bridge abutments!