Accurate Photographic Recreations of Old Paintings That Feature Chairs

We’ve featured photographic recreations of old master paintings before, but usually they’ve focused on simple portraits rather than elaborate scenes. London-based photographer Maisie Broadhead went with the latter when doing her recent project “Taking the Chair.” Working with her mother Caroline, Broadhead selected seven fine art paintings that prominently feature a chair. The duo then tried to accurately recreate the details of the scene for photographs.

Here’s the painting that the above photograph was based on. It’s William Hogarth’s Marriage à-la-mode: 2. The Tête à Tête, which can be found at the National Gallery in London:

The description of the project on Broadhead’s website reads:

A joint project between Mother and daughter. ‘Taking the Chair’ is Caroline and Maisie Broadhead’s first major artistic collaboration. The collection includes Seven paintings by masters such as Vermeer, Velasquez and Magritte, in which a chair (usually empty) has a powerful presence. The chair is the point at which Caroline and Maisie’s work meets, showing seven of Maisie’s photographs, which feature seven of Caroline’s chairs, with image and object displayed alongside each other.

Taking the Chair by Maisie Broadhead (via Flavorwire)


Image credits: Photographs by Maisie Broadhead and used with permission

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