Artist: Jules Cheret French (1836-1932)
Title: Pantomimes Lumineuses
Plate: PL. 41
Original lithograph from "Les Maitres de L'Affiche" series.
Printed by Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, 1896.
Presented in 16 x 20 in. acid free, archival museum mat, with framing labels. Ready to frame. Shipped boxed flat via Fedex.
Certificate of Authenticity.
Maitre Sheet Size: 11 3/8 in x 15 3/4 in 29 cm x 40 cm
Price: $250.00
"Emille Reynaud (1844-1918), whose 'Theâtre Optique' (Optical Theatre) produced this show (titled 'Pantomimes of Light') at the Musee Grevin, was a science teacher who combined a primitive peephole viewing apparatus with a projector, and came up with animated strips of celluloid pictures in colour, coming as close to inventing movies as anyone could. He even used perforation to advance the images.
After obtaining a patent in 1889, he put on his first public show at the Musee Grevin on October 28, 1892. Between then and 1900, there were 12,800 performances attended by more than 500,000 customers. However, Mr. Reynaud brooded over the fact that by then, regular motion pictures, perfected by others, left him in virtual obscurity. One day in 1900, he took all his apparatus and slides and tossed them into the river Seine. Eighteen years later, he died in a sanatorium, entirely forgotten by the world" (Wine Spectator, 8)