Engraving

Author	John Burnett. From a painting by David Wilkie
Title	The Rabbit on the Wall
Place	Great Britain
Date	1856
Register	03276

A variant of shadow plays was known as ombromanie, in which instead of using figures, the artist created the forms with his or her own hands. This technique was widely used both in public performances, especially in cafés and theatres, and in the privacy of the home. This is precisely what this engraving shows, made from a painting from about 1816: in a shadow play session as a family, in the gloom, children look smilingly at the figure of a rabbit, which is projected onto the wall, as a result of the position of the hands that the father places with dexterity in front of a candle, that we sense is behind one of the children. Ombromanie became so popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that several treatises were published explaining how it was done, some of which were also disseminated in collections of trading cards or other advertising materials.

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