Page of The Laterna Magica by SANDBY, Paul in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

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The Laterna Magica

c. 1760
Watercolour and body colour over pen and ink, 37 x 53,6 cm
British Museum, London

British painters took an ironic and self-critical attitude to modern technology as Paul Sandby did in Laterna Magica. The contemporary passion for optical instruments, of which Britain was a leading producer, is referred to here, but the painter is also poking fun at the scientific achievements of the Enlightenment. So the pile of books before the canvas includes the name of Newton, which we shall encounter frequently in paintings of the period. It is no coincidence that the painter shows the projection on the screen in a drawing-room; this is, so to speak, an anticipation of the fact that photography would ultimately come to compete with painting.