| AltRefNo | St Martin's Scrapbook - Leicester Square 2/2 |
| Title | St Martin's Scrapbook |
| Description | Poster for Exhibition Rooms over Exeter Change, Strand
The French-born painter Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's was a remarkably innovative creator of theatre shows and designs in the late eighteenth century. His most original and celebrated creation was the "Eidophusikon, or Representations of Nature": a theatrical spectacle which employed novel uses of reflected and coloured lighting, movement, and sound to present natural phenomena and dramatic settings.
The Eidophusikon was first presented at Loutherbourg's house in Lisle Street, off Leicester Square in February 1781. The scenes portrayed included dawn over Greenwich Park, noon at Tangier, sunset at Naples, and a storm and shipwreck at sea. After several seasons at Lisle Street, it closed in May 1782, but re-reappeared at the Exeter Change auditorium in the Strand in 1786, with new scenes added, including a portrayal of Pandemonium from Milton's Paradise Lost.
The ideas and techniques which Loutherbourg realised in the Eidophusikon were to be very influential in the development of English theatrical staging in the first half of the nineteenth century |
| Date | 26 Feb 1781 |
| Thumbnail | 
|
| Access Status | Open |
Show related Persons records.
Persons
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| DS/UK/1451 | de Loutherbourg'; Philip James (Philippe-Jacques) (1740-1812); theatre set designer | 1740-1812 |
Places
| Code | Set |
| PL1111 | Exeter Change/St Clement Danes |