05-03-200505-03-2005
Skinner Auctions
Skinner AuctionsBolton MA
2283
May 3, 2005 10:00 AMCalender
1582

"L'Habit fait l'Homme" Optical Transformation Game

Sell one like this
$24,675$21,000
Auction: Clocks, Watches & Scientific Instruments - 2283Location: BoltonDate / Time: May 03, 2005 10:00AM

Description:

"L'Habit fait l'Homme" Optical Transformation Game, Netherlands, 18th century, comprising unclothed male and female watercolor portrait cards on black grounds, the man depicted on a scroll, adorned with flowers and suspended from a banner inscribed "L'Habit fait l'Homme" and signed M.C. Volhard fecit, the woman in a roundel adorned with flowers; with fifty-one male cut-paper watercolor overlays, including a traveling projectionist with vielle and magic lantern, sultan with scimitar, vendor of green spectacles, urinating street urchin titled "De Vuf Zinnen", bagpipist with monkey perched on his hat, gallant with cane and monogram S.S.T.S, apothecary (in shop) holding an enema syringe, judge with document inscribed "Ouwerwetze Nederlandze Patriot", gardener with Delft vase and hoe, mandarin with fan and pagoda, match-seller, silk-vendor, artist painting a bawdy scene, two full-figure cards: a pierrot seated cross-legged, and an acrobat turning a somersault; soldiers, surgeons, barristers, clerics, a pirate and other occupations; sixty-three female overlays, including musician with a vielle, mother breast-feeding her baby, urinating peasant, two nuns in Gothic embrasures, lady in powdered wig formed as a three-masted ship, seated old lady with parrot, old lady with newspaper, lady in ermine, flower-seller, fish-seller, beggar with child, shepherdess, widow in cloak and colorful dress, various court and country fashions, religious dress, hats and hairstyles; in green paper-covered book-form case with patterned paper interior, leather strap, and red leather outer case, the cards approx. 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.

Note: Changements Inattendus, metamorphic (or protean) games are examples of early optical toys which demanded an act of interpretation, a way of looking that searched for hidden images in every-day items. As part of the growing 18th Century interest in recreational science, metamorphic games also have a classical precedent , with Ovid's Metamophosis the most famous and enduring of all the tales of transformation. "Understanding such ways of seeing - the modes of human perception - opened the way to the 'philosophical toy', devices that played with the vagaries of visual capacity and conjured images." (Quoted from Marina Warner in Eyes, Lies and Illusions).

There are several varieties of metamorphic games, in both portrait and landscape form; the most prevalent were the mainly 19th Century domino-type (see the previous Lot) and the earlier overlay, in which different features, hair, costumes, and sometimes gender, are superimposed upon an unadorned - usually female - portrait. The set offered here is exceptional in many respects, not least in the extensive number of overlays. In all, there are one hundred and fourteen different possible portraits, spanning professions, fashions and extraordinary hairstyles. The majority are half-length, head-and-shoulder drawings, although several - such as the pierrot - are full-figure. Amongst the group are several sets of complimentary cards; for example, both the male projectionist and the female musician play the vielle (a hurdy-gurdy) of the same design, and there are two bawdy pictures of figures urinating (male and female),two nuns, two monks, a pierrot and a harlequin, and other pairs. Another unusual feature is the representation of both male and female faces in two separate base portraits, in which both figures are shown unclothed.

"L'habit fait l'homme" may be the only example of a transformation game which is signed by the artist. One of the male overlays also provides a clue to the dating: it shows a sailor, his right arm in a sling while a naval battle rages in the background. The Dutch and English flags, and the date 5 August 1781, presumably refer to the Battle of Dogger Bank, a North Sea skirmish in the American War of Independence between British and Dutch merchant convoys. The medal worn by the sailor resembles an actual medal commemorating the battle in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. It is extremely rare to find a depiction of an actual event in a transformation game. Also unusual is the depiction of professions amongst the male overlays: the church, the law, traders, an optician, a magic lantern projectionist, surgeons and apothecaries compete with dandies and men and women of fashion.

Overlays of the period were sometimes also found on mica. Because of the fragility of both paper and mica, few transformation games from the 18th Century have survived. The collection of Maurine Popp at Skinner in April 2003 included two early mica overlays, the Dinah Vierney collection at Sotheby's in 1996 included one, and the recent exhibition in London of Werner Nekes' collection of optical toys included several slightly later paper overlays. "L'Habit fait l'Homme" is the only attributable, and certainly the most extensive and complete example, of a transformation game yet to have appeared at auction.

Literature: Laurent Mannoni et al., (2004) Eyes, Lies and Illusions, exhibition catalogue, pp. 113, 218-19. Antique Doll Collector, July 2002, p. 28.
Estimate $12,000-18,000

Keywords

The Netherlands, traveling projectionist , enema, acrobat , gardener , judge , beggar , Polaroid 88 Polacolor ER 3-1/4 x 3-3/8'' Film, 80 ASA (623959), Marina Warner, projectionist , sailor , Dogger Bank, National Maritime Museum, magic lantern projectionist , Maurine Popp, Werner Nekes, London, Laurent Mannoni