grisaille
Americannoun
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grisailles
plural
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monochromatic painting in shades of gray.
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a work of art, as a painting or stained-glass window, executed in grisaille.
noun
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a technique of monochrome painting in shades of grey, as in an oil painting or a wall decoration, imitating the effect of relief
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a painting, stained glass window, etc, in this manner
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of grisaille
1840–50; < French: painted in gray monotone, equivalent to gris gray + -aille noun suffix
Vocabulary lists containing grisaille
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
MFA’s example from that summer, “Three Boys on a Beached Dory,” is a charming grisaille work depicting the children, wearing broad-brimmed hats, looking at sailboats on the horizon.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Sterne’s work is a tall, abstracted cityscape in grisaille that looks, from a distance, drawn or somehow printed but, up close, reveals itself to be tenderly brushed.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 31, 2018
For example, I did a show in Berlin two years ago that was all grisaille — almost no color or very little color except red, black and white.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2018
The visage of Nicolaas Rockox, an Antwerp mayor and important van Dyck patron, migrates from a delicate drawing to a small grisaille oil on wood panel to engraving.
From New York Times ● Mar. 10, 2016
A mellow richness, not often seen, is the chief characteristic of this low-toned grisaille, overrun with graceful coloured designs.
From Stained Glass Tours in England by Charles Hitchcock Sherrill
Observed closely, the typeface reveals itself to be not black, but instead a more Freudian grisailles.
From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2018
The after-fashion for grisailles or camaieu gris has reference probably rather to stained glass than to carving.
From Illuminated Manuscripts by John William Bradley
All we can do is to note that the grisailles were intended to have values.
From Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
A number of these are grisailles, and the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well worth study as the legendary windows.
From Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
Paintings, mosaics, marble and gilding were requisite; the dome was to be relieved of Thornhill's lifeless grisailles; and above all, stained-glass windows were pronounced indispensable.
From Old and New London Volume I by Walter Thornbury
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
