FIG. 5.—TOM MINOR THE CLOWN AND HIS SKELETON.
CHAPTER VIII.
SHADOWGRAPHY.
By Henry Ridgely Evans.
Paris is the home of the fantaisiste. These rare exotics flourish in the genial atmosphere of the great French capital, and cater to the most critical, as well as the most appreciative, public in the world. No matter how trivial your profession may be, if you are an artist in your particular line, you may be sure of an admiring audience. To-day you are a performer in the cafés; to-morrow you tread the boards of some minor theater, and the journals duly chronicle your début, sometimes with as much elaborateness as they would “write up” that of a new singer at the Grand Opera. Two of the greatest entertainers in Paris to-day are Yvette Guilbert, chanteuse eccentrique, and M. Félicien Trewey—fantaisiste, mimic, shadowgraphist, and juggler. It is M. Trewey and his wonderful art I wish to introduce to the American reader. The clever Frenchman is one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in France, but his lasting fame has been made through his ombromanie, or shadowgraphy, the art of casting silhouettes with his hands, on an illuminated screen. These silhouettes are projected with marvelous dexterity of manipulation.
The idea of projecting the shadows of different objects (among others the hands) upon a plane surface is very ancient, and it would be idle to attempt to assign a date to the creation of these animals and classic figures, such as the rabbit, swan, negro, etc., that have served to amuse children in the evening since time immemorial.
Within a few years these rude figures have been improved, and the play of shadows has now become a true art instead of a simple diversion. The Italian painter Campi was one of the first who thought of adding new types to the collection of figures capable of being made with the shadow of the hands. He devised amusing forms of animals that delighted the school-children before whom he loved to exhibit them. His imitator, Frizze, imported the nascent art into Belgium, and it was in this latter country that Trewey got his knowledge of it.
Trewey was not long in discovering that ombromanie was capable of improvement, and, after patient exercise of his fingers to render them supple, he succeeded in producing new silhouettes, which are, each in its kind, little masterpieces.