The Eidophusikon

MOVING PICTURES proclaimed this 1786 broadside and what an extraordinary entertainment the Eidophusikon must have been. It predated the most famous moving pictures, the movies, by more than 100 years.  Everything about the show was intended to challenge how a picture was viewed. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, the creator of the Eidophusikon, was an accomplished French painter who at the age of thirty-one moved to London in 1771. Soon after his arrival he took a job working as a scene designer for David Garrick at the Drury Lane theatre. He made quite a name for himself for the life-like scenes he created and would master many techniques in the art of stage design and lighting that he would employ when he opened the doors for the Eidophusikon (Greek for images of nature) on February 26,1781 at his home on Lisle Street.

An evening’s entertainment consisted of as many as five tableaux, each cleverly combining a familiar scene or place with a dramatic moment. His first shows included a London View with an aurora effect, a view of Naples with a sunset and concluded with a storm at sea. The entertainment was held in one of the lushly decorated parlour rooms that could accommodate 130 people.  There is only one known image of this space, a watercolor by Edward Burney showing the interior of the room before the show. There is a bench with a couple of patrons sitting and others standing around.

At the front of the room there was what can best be described as either a very large picture, or a miniature stage. The framed picture was ten feet wide and six feet high. Unlike other pictures however the opening had a depth of eight feet “setting the stage” for a very different sort of picture. The audience sat facing the picture, then the lights would be dimmed, the show would begin and the scene would appear to come to life. With the artful use of lighting nightfall would appear as the sun slowly faded, or the brilliance of an aurora would light up the painted sky and possibly most powerfully an ominous sky would darken, foretelling an oncoming storm, soon to be joined by the appearance of lightning, accompanied by the sound of thunder, and a three dimensional mechanically controlled ship built to scale would glide across the picture sailing into a distance created by painting on several different panels. 

It all must have been quite magical. There had been other attempts to change how pictures were viewed in the eighteenth century.  The peepshow employed many of them. Martin Engelbrecht executed large numbers of views-scenes created on multiple layers of paper- to be viewed in parlour peepshows which attempted to make a scene more life-like by creating depth. Viewers of large public square peepshows often saw pin-pricked pictures, which in candlelight gave the appearance of a day scene transforming to night. There were even hand-painted scenes on multiple layers of glass created to entertain viewers and create a multi-dimensional painting. Yet none had movement and all were limited to the constraints of the size of the peepshow box.

 Loutherbourg employed the wide array of skills he had successfully used in the theatre as painter, set designer, lighting expert, creator of mechanical moving figures in creating his Eidophusikon. He opened the peepshow box, created room behind and on the side of the picture opening, so that he could manipulate what was seen and bring a mixture of lighting, movement, sound and painting together to create a very new and different form of entertainment. Part of Loutherbourg’s genius was to create a shared space where a larger group could seemingly enter a picture and experience the scene.  His choice of how large to make his “screen” was an interesting one. He clearly didn’t want to replicate a theatre, an experience the public already knew. He chose instead two dimensional pictures to see if he could create a new experience when viewing a picture.

This remarkable show closed at Lisle Street after less than two years. It did, however, reappear numerous times in different places. The next appearance was in 1786 at rooms on Exeter Exchange with increased seating for 200 people. Three years later another form of moving pictures, the Panorama, would take London by a storm.

Two Additions

Part of the fun of collecting are the stories that accompany both things found, and, the agonizing stories of things that got away. I’ve heard countless tales about a wonderful item missed, often by a matter of a few minutes or even seconds at a flea market, an antique show and, these days, on ebay. Most collector have regrets about passing on something because the price was too high or can recall something missed because a dealer who said he would hold an item did not.  Then there are stories about things a collector would love to have in his or her collection but never had an opportunity to buy. I have heard all these stories and have plenty of my own. It is a great pleasure that two striking images, one a print, the other a poster that I have long wanted and which have somehow avoided me, have recently come into my collection.

A few years after I began collecting, more than thirty years ago, I was visiting Clignancourt, the huge Paris flea market, with my friend and fellow collector, Jean-Philippe Salier and I remember first seeing Jules Chéret’s terrific poster of the Musée Grevin (the wax museum), where Emile Reynaud in 1888 first showed his Pantomimes Lumineuses -animated sequences.  Animated sequences is hardly an adequate term to describe these wonderful shows during which his hand-painted images would flicker and move on a screen for up to fifteen minutes.  This was seven years before the Lumière brothers would show their first movies. Reynaud employed something he called the Théâtre Optique to create the projection. Hidden from the audience behind the screen, this bulky equipment employed among other things both a very large praxinoscope and a magic lantern and served Reynaud well as he created his magic.

I thought the poster was quite beautiful but priced at $1,500, it was well beyond my budget. Over the next ten years I visited Clignancourt many times on “hunting trips” with Jean-Phillipe and occasionally we saw a copy of the Chéret poster. I kept repeating that if I ever saw it for $1,000 I would buy it, but that never happened and when I was prepared to pay a little more the price had gone up further. A few years ago a French dealer offered me a copy for the incredible price of 6,000 euros. I offered 3,000 and he laughed. I figured I probably would never own a copy and yet a few months ago I was amazed to have finally bought a copy at auction for $1,000. Sadly Jean-Philippe is no longer alive yet he remains the first person with whom I wanted to share the story of finally landing the elusive poster.

It is a wonderful piece. Jules Chéret, was one of France’s master poster designers and a mentor to Toulouse-Lautrec and others. He produced a series of stunning posters. I have no idea why the price for this particular poster was so much more reasonable. It could be because right on the woman’s dress there is a stamp. It is a tax stamp and in Paris at the time such posters were made, a stamp tax had to be paid before the poster could be put up.  Some buyers might have found the stamp’s placement aesthetically unattractive. It didn’t bother me. In fact, I liked it because it showed this was a poster that was actually used. 

If the Chéret poster was an object I didn’t own because I thought I couldn’t afford it, then the print of The Bartholomew Fair Fan was a print I had long wanted but had never had seen for sale and had never been offered. I long knew of it and had seen copies in many collections. I was envious that my friend, Ricky Jay, had two versions and the image graces the cover of his book Jay's Journal of Anomalies. When I was preparing my book on peepshow images I used a picture of the print from a book. I bought this print recently and wasn’t at all bothered by its overall condition-not great- or the fact that part of one of the fair’s visitor’s faces was now a small hole.

Bartholomew Fair, like Southwick Fair, was one of many London annual fairs that were particularly popular in the 18^th century.  In 1824 the London firm of J. F Setchel produced a print of a view of Bartholomew Fair in 1721. The British Museum not only has three versions of the print, both black and white and hand colored, but also the original study drawing made by an unknown source around 1730. The original design was intended to produce a fan that would be given away as a souvenir to those who the fair. 

The fan is chocker block with people, food sellers and booths. For me the fan is particularly interesting because of the large-scale peepshow depicted in the lower left had corner showing the Siege of Gibraltar.  Gibraltar was under siege several times in the 18^th century and this could represent the Spanish attack on the British garrison in 1727.  This print is also sought after by magic collectors, for whom the primary interest is the depiction of Isaac Fawkes’ booth. Fawkes was probably the most famous conjurer of the 18^th century. However Fawkes had already stopped working the Bartholomew Fair by 1721. Possibly it could be a depiction of his son, but more likely it is the elder Fawkes who was far more celebrated. Take a look. There’s a lot to see in the print.

Pepper's Ghost

 Who has not been scared and at the same time excited by a ghost story or the unexplainable appearance of a seeming apparition. Fascination with ghosts and the afterworld have griped audiences for centuries. Our appetite for such titillation seems insatiable. Ghost shows are nothing new. Writers, magicians, and lanternists have long used a popular fascination with ghosts and apparitions for their advantage. From its earliest inception the magic lantern has employed ghost figures to frighten and to entertain audiences. Some of the very earliest magic lantern images in the last part of the 17^th century were of ghosts and demons.  Calling forth such figures reached a new height in the late 1700s and early 1800s largely due to two showmen and their shows. The Fantasmagorie shows, popularized by Belgian showman Ettiene-Gaspard Robertson and the Phantasmagoria shows of magician Paul de Philipsthal, called forth apparitions on the screen. Their shows ingeniously employed rear projection. The lanternist was hidden from the audience behind the screen. The images would appear in a room darkened on the screen as from nowhere. By moving the lantern, the figure could be made smaller or larger so ghosts would appear and then menacingly approach the audience.  

Each time a new illusion is created we are freshly mesmerized and entertained. Pepper’s Ghost sits within a long tradition of showmen taking advantage of popular fascination with the afterlife. Pepper’s Ghost, named after the honorary director of London’s Royal Polytechnic, John Henry Pepper, was an elaborate theatrical illusion that gave the appearance of a ghost-like figure not only appearing but also moving on a stage. Pepper’s Ghost was first exhibited on Christmas Eve in 1862 during the staging of Charles Dickens’s The Haunted House when, to great acclaim, a ghost appeared on stage next to a man working at his desk. In a period of fifteen months 250,000 people were entertained at the Polytechnic by this show. The popularity of the illusion was so great that imitators were soon employing it elsewhere. Within a few years, the ghost shows had moved out of the polytechnic and into fairgrounds across England. The illusion is still employed today. Anyone who has taken the haunted house ride in Disneyland and found themselves, mid-ride, seated with a ghost have enjoyed Peppers Ghost.

What is Pepper’s Ghost? Here are three prints from my collection, two small woodcuts and a large lithograph visually illustrating how the illusion is created. All three show the basic idea behind the illusion: below the stage there is a lanternist with a magic lantern (to provide a powerful light), and costumed actor. The light against the actor is reflected in an enormous angled mirror that the audience cannot see in the darkened theatre. The reflection seems to appear on the stage.

 

Although there are some differences in each of the prints, all show the same basic “props”:  hidden lantern, dressed actor, angled mirror and the ghost on the stage. Interestingly, each of the three prints shows a different scene on stage, indicating that once perfected the illusion was used in a number of different performances.

And what is the history of Pepper’s Ghost? John Henry Pepper teamed up with Henry Dircks, who had a well thought out idea for projecting a ghost onto a stage to develop and stage the illusion. Soon the pair had a falling out, each claiming the “invention” of the Ghost show. History has attached the name of John Henry Pepper to the illusion.

Finally here is a broadside from my collection advertising “the real” Pepper’s Ghost Show in 1870 given by James Matthews. Matthews, who worked at the Royal Polytechnic as a magician, proclaims his ties both with the Royal Polytechnic and with Pepper. The broadside boldly announces the appearance of PROFESSOR PEPPER”S MARVELOUS GHOST for two nights.

New page of phenakistascopes

Hello everyone! 

We've added a brand new page of Phenakistascopes to the collection's flash gallery! 

Click here to visit the Phenakistascope Gallery 

Enjoy!

Prints

Recently I was interviewed by Chris Lane, co-founder of the Philadelphia Print Shop, for his blog, http://antiqueprintsblog.blogspot.com. If you’re interested in maps on antique prints you should visit the blog. I’m not sure when the interview will appear but I found the questions interesting and some weren’t easy to answer. One of the difficult questions was “what were four of my favorite things”, a very tough question for many collectors. I said it was easier for me to mention twenty things, rather than four, but the more I thought about it my longest sustained interest has been in prints, paintings & drawings in which there are magic lanterns and peepshows. I have written about peepshow images in my book, Peeepshows A Visual History. I am fascinated about the frequency in which peepshows and magic lanterns appeared in prints in the 18^th and 19^th century. It is an indication of how popular these devices must have been. Some times they appear in a straight forward representative manner, but just as often artists employed the magic lantern or peepshow as a device to make a political or social message.

I like looking at other collections to find images that I haven’t seen before. Even after more than thirty years collecting I experience the thrill of finding an image that I don’t have and frequently one I didn’t know existed. In the next few months I plan to put more images from my collection up on my site.

I thought I would start with two images that I have added to my collection in the past month. The first is a mezzotint from 1720 by the German artist, Georg Philipp Rugendas. On one level it shows a peepshow in a square. The more you look at the image the stranger it seems. At first I thought the showman must be the hatless man at the side of the peepshow engaged is some conversation with another gentleman. However the more I looked the more it seemed the boy with his left hand out standing near the straps which would have been used to carry the box from square to square is the showman, but he seems a lad himself, which would have been unusual for a showman. You can see there are two lads looking in the box and two who seemed to be fighting over whom shall take a view. Besides this it is difficult to figure out what the man who can be seen in the window is doing and the perspective behind the box is particularly flat. The first building and people across the river seem little more than an arm’s length away and yet there are two men perched on a rock with a looking glass as if they are looking far off in the distance.

The other print, much later and more modest is a colored wood engraving and is a page from a magazine, the details of which I don’t know as yet. The image, however, is one I am very familiar with. It is of a monkey giving a magic lantern show and is entitled Le Singe qui Montre La Lanterne Magique. It is one of the many fables published by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian first at the end of the 18^th century as Florian Fables. The fables were over more than 140 years printed and reprinted The print illustrates the story of the monkey giving a magic lantern show. It seems the monkey was the pet, and probably the companion of the lanternist (showmen often employed pets like monkeys to drum up business when they announced their shows). While the lanternist is away the monkey decides to entertain the other animals on the farm with a lantern show. All the animals gather and he gives a show presenting the stories just as he has heard the showman do. Usually the image shows the animals in rapt attention. The story ends with the recognition that the monkey never lights the lantern, so there are no slides being projected. There are many versions of this story, each artist interpreting the fable somewhat differently.

So if you would like to see some new materials I have just added some more peepshow prints and Florian Fable images on my site.

A Visit to Turin

The spire of Turin’s Mole Antonelliana reaches high into the sky, dwarfing all the low-rise buildings in the area. This beautiful nineteenth century building, long the highest masonry structure in Europe, is the home of Italy’s National Cinema Museum. This incredible space, with five floors of movie memorabilia, is creatively used to display a fabulous collection boasting 7,000 films, 150,000 posters, 140,000 photographic documents, and a stunning pre-cinema collection. There are some of the most beautiful 18^th century peepshows in the world on display. This tour was only the beginning of a weekend meeting of the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain hosted by the Museum. If there were not enough material to overwhelm one at The Mole, on Sunday morning we were bused out of town to the Royal Palace of Venaria, a former royal residence, for an expanded version of the magic lantern exhibition held earlier in the year at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris.

These two exhibitions would be more than enough for anyone interested in pre-cinema material. Still, for me the highlight of the weekend was a show Saturday night at the planetarium, located on a hillside on the outskirts of Turin. We were ushered into the domed viewing hall and when the lights went off Donata Presenti cast scenes from the night time sky on the domed walls of the planetarium with the assistance of a nineteenth century triunial magic lantern and astronomical slides from the Cinema Museum’s collection. We were treated to the movement of planets, the phases of the moon, comets, and constellations. The quality of the slides, the expert manipulation of the triunial and the accompanying music made it a memorable moment. It was followed by a planetarium show, the beauty and power of which caught me by surprise. Using computer graphics, a marvelous digital show filled the room. I felt transported from my seat into the sky after rotating planets hurled in our direction and before I knew it, I felt engulfed by a glorious galaxy close upon us. It was nothing short of spectacular. All these visual fireworks were followed by a lecture, but that was like trying to have a solid main course after tasting a delightful dessert.

There were also a several talks during the weekend. I presented a talk about two nineteenth century philosophical toys: thaumatropes and phenakistascopes. These toys were meant both to educate and to amuse. I used some new animations for the show and have uploaded them onto my site.

Enjoy.

PS: If you should find yourself in Turin and have more time after visiting the Mole the place to go is the Egyptian Museum. The collection, founded in 1824, is quite a treat. My favorites rooms were in the basement and contain an extraordinary collection of statues. If that doesn't tire you out, go to the top floor which houses a large collection of 15-17th. century art, and see if you can find the breathtaking Rembrandt of a lone seated figure hidden in the shadows.

Site Update!

Hello, everyone!

Today, we're premiering the latest flash gallery, this one for turning head illustrations.


Click here to view the turning heads flash gallery!


There are also many new items to see in the Magic Lanterns section:

Professional Lanterns

Figurines

Prints

Programs & Adverts

Enjoy!