Oh, that old trick
The Fortune Teller” by Jehan George Vibert
Click the image to see it all.
Stage magic being largely a matter of diverting the audience’s attention, Jehan George Vibert clearly had a field day distracting onlookers with his minutely astonishing “La Tireuse des Cartes” (”The Fortune Teller”).
A bit of a buffoon, Vibert (1840-1902) was the Norman Rockwell of his day. I’m not the first to say so – I read it on the website of the Art Renewal Centre, the ringleader of which, Fred Ross, just happens to own this painting.
Rockwell, that is, in the sense of getting a kick out of “the private comedies of human weakness”, as the website ably puts it. Churchy types were a favourite target for Vibert – bishops cheating on their diets, choirs raising an unholy row, priests conniving over a hand of poker and, as in “The Distraction”, from 1888, a good friar getting waylaid on his pilgrimage. See the rest.
