Staircase Group (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale I)

1795

Oil on canvas, 89 1/2 × 39 1/2 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art

Two of the painter's sons, one on the stairs with a palette and one gesturing from the top: trompe-l'oeil made to show off what painting could do.

Look at

The tall, narrow canvas sits inside a door frame in the museum's installation, so the stairs read as a real opening in the wall.
A real wooden step is fixed at the base, joining the painted stairs to the floor.
A strong light from the left throws a hard shadow of the climbing son onto the wall.

Peale made it to advertise his skill and the parts his sons played at his museum; Washington, the story goes, was taken in by it.
Sold with the museum's collection in 1854; acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945.

Trompe-l'oeil: French for 'deceives the eye': painting meant to be mistaken for the real thing.