Louis reproduces something that was itself a system: the panelled wall of the eighteenth-century French interior, where boiserie divided a room into a rhythm of tall fielded panels, each moulded and beaded and set within a rail. It was joinery designed to give proportion to a room, and it did work that neither furniture nor pictures could.
The print is a trompe-l'oeil, and the deception depends entirely on the shadow. Mouldings are drawn with the light falling consistently from one side, so the beads appear to stand proud and the fields to sit back, and from a few paces the wall convinces. Closer to, the drawing gives itself away, which is as it should be; a trompe-l'oeil that never resolves is merely a lie.
At a 76 cm straight repeat on a 0.52 m roll it needs setting out with some care. The vertical rails want planning against the real architecture of the room, so that they fall sensibly either side of a chimney breast or a door, and the horizontal line should be checked against skirting and cornice. Handled that way, it gives a plain room the structure it was never built with. It is most convincing where a proper cornice and skirting already exist, giving the printed joinery something real to meet.
