[OPTICAL PRINT.]
‘No. 5. Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens …’
London, Published by W. Morgan, [c. 1837].
Hand-coloured lithograph (168 x 230 mm) printed on both sides, window-mounted on drab card and lined with red tissue, with lithographic caption mounted below; closed tear to print, mount chipped and creased.
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‘No. 5. Morgan’s improved protean scenery: Mount Vesuvius, as represented at the Surrey Zoological Gardens …’
A remarkable metamorphic or ‘protean’ print depicting a dormant Vesuvius by day but, when held up to the light, showing a dramatic eruption in the night sky.
The scene reproduces the popular display at the Surrey Zoological Gardens at Walworth, where the eruption was re-enacted from 1837 with a profusion of fireworks and an enormous painted backdrop by George Danson (1799–1881), the lake serving both as the Bay of Naples and as a reflective surface to increase the effect of the fireworks. The show ran nightly until 1839 and was repeated in 1846, with later seasons featuring the Great Fire of London in 1844, the Siege of Gibraltar in 1847 and of Badajoz in 1849, and Napoleon’s passage over the Alps in 1850; the Gardens struggled to compete with the Great Exhibition in 1851, and were sold in 1856.
A note on the caption explains that ‘This Print is first seen by day, & upon holding it before the light it exhibits the Eruption by Night conveying to the idea the wonderful works of Nature’. In addition to the red tissue, the verso of the print is over-printed and coloured in stark blocks of black and red, to accentuate silhouettes in the night sky and add details such as the rivers of lava flowing down Mount Vesuvius.
See Altick, The Shows of London (1978), pp. 322-331.
