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| Ramón Casas Syphilis (absolute and radical cure) 1895 collotype Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Adolf Hohenstein Calliano Belt (to prevent seasickness) 1899 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Anonymous French designer La Veldalice (instantly kills lice and nits) ca. 1925 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
– fragment of a fictional scene, lifted out of context –
Someone collides heavily with Isolde from behind. She staggers painfully and whips around. A boy has fallen back against the wing-cloth, swearing and clutching a handful of fabric to steady himself, his feet slipping on the worn chalky floorboards and his free arm sawing back and forth as he tries to regain his balance. He fumbles to keep hold of the sceptre he is holding, but it falls with a clatter and rolls away under a fold of cloth.
He peers at her sharply and frowns. 'What are you doing here?' he hisses, already ducking down to retrieve his sceptre.
'I was just watching,' Isolde says, taking a hasty step back as the boy scrabbles around in the half-dark. 'Sorry.'
'Stanley!' hisses one of the lepers on stage. 'Stanley, that's you!'
There is no time for Isolde to say more. The boy grabs his sceptre, jumps to his feet and hurries onstage, righting his crown and flipping his sceptre up in the brief half-second before he is illuminated. Isolde's last glimpse of him before he dissolves into the harsh stage light is of a face in transformation, caught between a natural expression and a caricature, changing from the inside in the way the bathwater skin begins to pucker and depress when the plug is pulled from underneath.
Isolde's heart is still thumping from the collision and she suddenly feels ashamed that she is watching without invitation. She turns and slips away, retreating down the white-nosed steps she entered by, padding softly down the narrow corridor and finally bursting out into the ginkgo-smelling bright of the day.
– Eleanor Catton, from The Rehearsal (London: Granta, 2009)
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| Anonymous French designer Would you like to be handsome, strong and healthy? ca. 1910-1920 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Anonymous American designer Grayco Shirts - Styled in Hollywood 1926-27 screenprint Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Fernand Schultz-Wettel Bandages by C. Degen & Cie, Frankfurt 1902 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Edward Penfield Ætna Dynamite 1895 lithograph Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Edward Penfield The Martian by Du Maurier 1897 lithograph Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Florence Lundborg The Lark - February 1897 woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| William L. Carqueville Lippincott's for January 1895 lithograph Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Edwin Howland Blashfield Britannia and Marianne (war allies) ca. 1914-18 lithograph Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Anonymous French designer "One does not reason with murderers, arsonists and thieves . . ." (anti-German war propaganda) 1914 letterpress Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Rockwell Kent International Exhibition of Paintings - Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 1924 process print Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec P. Sescau, Photographe, 9 Place Pigalle 1894 lithograph Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |