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It is both. The classic “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” drawing is a single set of marks that supports two stable readings: a young woman turned away and an older woman shown in profile. Nothing on the paper changes when the image “switches”; your visual system reorganizes the same shared contours.
What the picture shows
In one interpretation, you see a young woman with her head turned away. Her neck and shoulder form the dominant shape, while a small facial outline appears near the center. In the other, that same outline becomes an elderly woman’s face in profile, looking left.
The Library of Congress describes William Ely Hill’s version as a portrait of the artist’s wife and his elderly mother-in-law. Its caption reads, “They are both in this picture – find them.” The wording makes the drawing a visual joke, but the underlying effect is a serious example of ambiguous perception.
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The drawing is built from contours that serve two jobs. In the young-woman reading, the shape that acts as her chin can be read as the older woman’s nose. Her ear can become the older woman’s eye. When your attention moves to those edges, the brain groups the lines into a different object.
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This is often called a Gestalt switch: perception alternates between two coherent organizations of one unchanged stimulus. Ambiguous illusions are designed to shift from one object to another as perception changes, so viewers normally experience one complete figure at a time rather than both faces as a single merged person.
What changes—and what does not
- Changes: which contour you treat as a face, which marks you assign to hair or clothing, and the overall interpretation your brain selects.
- Does not change: the ink, pixels, geometry and physical arrangement of the drawing.
How to see both faces deliberately
- Start with the young woman. Look for the back of her head and the line of her neck. Let the small central shape read as her chin and jaw.
- Search for the profile. Shift attention to that central shape and treat it as a prominent nose pointing left. The nearby ear-like mark can now function as an eye.
- Stabilize the second reading. Imagine the older woman’s forehead, nose, lips and chin as one continuous profile. Once that grouping clicks, the rest of the marks become hair and clothing around her.
- Switch back. Return your attention to the young woman’s jawline and the back of her head. Moving focus between these anchor contours usually makes the interpretation alternate.
Some people notice the older woman first; others see the young woman immediately. The first impression is influenced by which contour attracts attention, the image’s size and contrast, and the viewer’s viewing conditions. A failure to switch is not a failure to understand the picture: the two readings compete for the same limited set of edges.
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Who drew “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law”?
The best-known version was drawn by William Ely Hill (1887–1962) and published in the American humor magazine Puck on November 6, 1915. The Library of Congress catalog records Hill as the creator and identifies the work’s medium and caption.
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Where the illusion came from
The earliest documented form cited for this design is an 1888 German postcard. That earlier appearance establishes the image’s late-nineteenth-century roots; Hill’s 1915 Puck publication made the composition especially recognizable to American audiences.
Psychologist Edwin Boring discussed the figure in a 1930 paper on ambiguous figures. His treatment helped carry it from printed humor and visual puzzles into psychology textbooks and demonstrations of how perception organizes incomplete or competing cues.
How the major versions differ
All versions depend on the same reversible relationship between facial contours, but presentation affects how quickly a viewer finds each reading.
| Version or setting | Historical role | Visual and instructional emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| 1888 German postcard | Earliest documented form cited for the design | Postcard-era presentation; the available record does not establish a standardized psychology instruction or a measured switching rate. |
| William Ely Hill, Puck, November 6, 1915 | Best-known American publication | Humorous framing through the caption “They are both in this picture – find them”; line placement invites a search for the second face. |
| Edwin Boring’s 1930 discussion | Helped establish the image as a textbook ambiguous figure | Emphasizes perceptual interpretation rather than the postcard or magazine joke. |
| Modern classroom or online demonstration | Uses the familiar figure to show perceptual alternation | May add instructions to report a first impression, switch deliberately, or compare which contour makes each reading easiest; exact shading and detail vary by reproduction. |
Because reproductions differ in contrast, cropping and line weight, one copy may make the young woman easier to find while another makes the older profile stand out. Those presentation differences change access to a reading, not the underlying two-way structure.
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Is it an optical illusion?
Yes, in the broad everyday sense, because the image produces a misleading or surprising visual experience. More precisely, it is an ambiguous figure or reversible figure. The drawing does not depict a physically changing object; it supplies visual information that permits two mutually exclusive interpretations.
That distinction matters. In a distortion illusion, the perceived size or shape differs from the stimulus. Here, the central event is categorization: the same edges are assigned to different parts of two imagined faces.
Why it remains famous
The picture is unusually effective because the two readings are both complete, recognizable people and because the crucial contours are compactly shared. Its joke caption also gives the viewer a concrete challenge—find both—while the later psychological treatment supplies a way to discuss attention, grouping and perceptual organization.
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A painter’s way to study the design
For artists, the illusion is a compact lesson in economy. Hill does not draw two fully separate portraits; he designs a contour network in which one boundary can belong to either figure. To analyze it, copy the image once while naming every line for the young woman, then copy it again while naming the same lines for the older profile. The exercise reveals how a change in grouping—not extra detail—creates the second subject.
Quick Recap
- Mark the shared chin/nose contour in a contrasting color.
- Trace the shared ear/eye relationship separately.
- Squint or reduce the image to a small thumbnail to see which large masses dominate.
- Compare a lightly shaded copy with a high-contrast copy; shading can favor one reading without adding new structure.
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