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During the eighteenth century "vues d'optique" or "perspective views" became extremely popular in England and Europe. Like other optical prints they capitalized on a connoisseur market eager for the latest novelty. English publishers such as John Bowles and Robert Sayer had great success with these optical views, which quickly developed into a collecting craze that swept through print shops on both sides of the Channel. "Vues d'optiques" were specifically designed to create the illusion of perspective when viewed with a zograscope or perspective glass. These viewing devices used a series of reflecting mirrors to enhance the illusion of depth in the print, creating a veritable "view" for the onlooker. Typically these prints depicted city or landscape views, and were horizontal in format. They had roughly the same dimensions and were sold with heavy opaque colouring, so as to show the tints when viewed through the lens. In their heyday, optical prints were a technical revolution; they could be seen in almost every fashionable drawing room, and were enjoyed by the poorer classes in print shops or at traveling fairs. For a small fee the citizens of Europe and England could travel the world without leaving their village. The "vue d'optique" was the first medium to bring the visible appearance of the wider world to a large European public. Ironically the artists and engravers who created these prints rarely had first hand knowledge of the scenes depicted, hence the views were often not as accurate as they were advertised to be. As a result of their constant handling optical prints such as these are rare, especially in good condition. They are not only beautiful images but a fascinating glimpse into the history of printmaking.TO explain further :-
Little has heen published (particularly in English) on the type of print known as the perspective view, intended for use in an optical diagonal machine. Nevertheless these prints were highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still appear regularly on the art market. lt therefore seems worth collecting what information is known and adding what I have heen able to discover.
The optical diagonal machine is a viewing apparatus whose main components are a large, double convex lens and a mirror fixed directly behind it at an angle. These are attached either on top of a pyramid shaped box or on top of a stand. When the spectator looks at perspective views through the lens of the viewing machine, an illusion of recession is produced. In principe, a similar illusion of distance can he achieved simply by using a single, detached convex lens which is larger than the distance between two human eyes (at least ten centimetres). When this lens is held just in front of the eyes, the spectator is looking at the perspective view through its two edges which function like two prisms. Light rays bouncing off the print are refracted in such a way that they enter the eyes in a parallel direction. The brain interprets the incoming parallel images as a single image seen from a great distance. The important function of the lens in the optical machine is not its magnification but its creation of an illusion of depth in binocular vision.
So that the greatest illusion of recession can be achieved, the perspective view should be designed according to strict principles of linear perspective, with a distant object placed in the centre of the print. For example, a view looking down a receding street works well because all horizontal lines in the buildings appear as lines converging at the same vanishing point. The interior of a large building, such as a cathedral, is also suitable for creating a successful illusion of depth (fig. 37). The least effective point of view is perpendicular to a facade, such as a row of houses, or to the front of a palace, because from that viewpoint there is no effect of perspective. In any case, the angle of vision for any perspective view should be wider than the angle of forty-six degrees which corresponds to the human eye's normal range of vision. This explains why perspective views have an appearance similar to a photograph taken with a wide-angle lens. Of course perspective views are not the only images which can be used with the optical machine: any two-dimensional image, such as a painting or a mural, would be suitable. However, the illusion of recession the latter would give to the spectator, would depend on the emphasis on linear perspective their images had.
Some views, but not all, were also executed in mirror image so that they would be seen in the right direction through the viewing apparatus (see fig- 38, for example). This of course is simple for the engraver who does not have to worry about problems of reversal when engraving the plate.
Perspective views were produced from the early eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, the greatest number of them probably between c. 1740-1790 . Firstly, they are usually etched and invariably designed to be seen through a viewing machine, with consequent reversals of text and image. The size of the image is about 23 by 40 centimetres and the entire plate, with text, about 30 by 45 centimetres: sizes vary by 5 to 10 centimetres at the most. Perspective views are always horizontal in format, since the subject-matter is usually topographical. They often show monumental buildings (palaces, churches or town halls) or characteristic parts of towns (gates, squares, streets or harbours for example). More rarely they show portraits, depict moralistic or biblical themes, or historical events such as the demolition of the Bastille or the ascent of hot-air balloons, to name two of the more popular.
The etcher would usually work after existing prints, less often after specially-prepared drawings and more rarely still after paintings; the plates were probably etched in the workshops of the publisher. lt is likely that the publisher controlled the whole operation, although there is no evidenee that the printing and hand-colouring were done in the same workshop. All these perspective views have a strong common factor in the nature of their execution. The etcher paid special attention to the straight lines in architecture, and accentuated horizontal lines in buildings to enhance the perspective. At the same time he paid little attention to surface detail or texture, or to the contrast between light and shade. lt is often impossible in these prints to determine the material of which a building has been constructed - brick, stone or stucco, for example - although to some extent this difficulty is overcome by the use of hand-colouring. The care taken in this, however, was only noticeable in views produced in London. In general one can say that the quality of colouring in perspective views is superior to that found on popular woodcuts of the time, although nowhere near the standard reached in prints designed as works of art. Perspective views served a different purpose from artistic prints. from http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/auth/perspectiveviews.htm
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