This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/28/2023
[EIDOPHUSIKON] PROF. GROVES’ SPLENDID MECHANICAL AND PICTURESQUE ROYAL EIDOPHUSIKON. Hartlepool: J. Procter, 1861. Pictorial letterpress playbill with wood-engraved image in the upper third. The presentation by Groves was of a massive mechanical and semi-automated diorama depicting the Holy Land, the Mutiny of the Sepoys, and the “late great war in India with the bombardments and fall of Delhi!” 28¾ × 10", laid down on paper.
Created by French Painter Philip de Loutherbourg (based on a suggestion by David Garrick), the Eidophusikon made its debut in London in 1781, and was a large-scale miniature theater that, through a mash-up of special effects (both visual and audible), scene and landscape painting, automata, and visual entertainment, tried to perfectly imitate living nature. Unintentionally, it was also a precursor of the pre-cinema movement of the following century.