Patrick Hughes
Invented reverspective — paintings built forward that appear to move as you walk past them.
Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham in 1939 and began as a painter of visual jokes and rainbows before arriving in 1964 at the device that has occupied him since. A reverspective is a three-dimensional construction in which the parts of the scene that are furthest away are built physically closest to the viewer; painted in correct perspective onto that reversed relief, the image appears to swing and follow as the viewer moves, an illusion that survives even once it has been explained. The subjects are galleries, doorways, bookshelves, Venetian canals and corridors of famous paintings.
These are objects rather than flat pictures, and that governs everything practical about them: they are deep, they are built from board and are structurally vulnerable at the corners, and they must be lit and hung correctly to work at all. Condition of the built structure matters as much as the painted surface. The market divides between unique reverspectives, which lead it, and editioned three-dimensional multiples produced in numbers, plus flat prints of the earlier rainbow and paradox images. Establishing whether a piece is unique or from an edition is the first task.
If you own a work by Patrick Hughes
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.