Kerhor - Shadow Theater - 7 Paintings

[PRE-CINEMA]. Shadow Theatre, [Paris: Mauclair Dacier, ca 1900]. Frame dimensions: 49.5x39x8 cm; Dimensions of the paintings: 48x32.5 cm. A shadow theatre with a wooden frame and a chromolithographed facade with Asian-style decoration signed Jean Kerhor (i.e. the Lorraine illustrator André Dupuis, 1876-1974), intended to be exhibited in front of a light source, and equipped with a musical mechanism driving a cardboard wheel divided into five compartments covered with transparent paper of different colors and hatched in black. In a slot located just behind the "stage curtain", one can insert seven "sensational paintings", i.e. enhanced and perforated chromolithographs: great waters at Versailles, fountain games in front of the Alexandre III bridge, with the Eiffel Tower in the background on the left (probably during the Universal Exhibition of 1900), serpentine dance in the lion's cage, circus act with a clown and costumed monkeys, carnival ball in front of the Garnier opera house, fountain games in an oriental country, Cakewalk/fashionable dance. The colorful backgrounds scrolling behind the paintings allow them to be animated by backlighting. Without the original box and its chromolithographed lid, inside which the instructions were glued. The chassis appears to be later.