Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Spot the Difference!




Above is a famous slide from the Photodrama of Creation along with two postcards advertising the Photodrama production.  A set of 40 postcards was advertised in The Watch Tower in 1917 (see the reprints page 6077) – and many readers will have seen these sets. They are probably reproduced online somewhere as well. The complete sets I have seen have always been numbered 1-40.

However, the two colored cards above are numbered 44 and 47b.

Can you spot the difference?

What makes it more curious is that the  square picture at the start of this post is the actual slide as used in the Photodrama. This is different again. This original is reproduced in the scenario and would later be reproduced again in a motto postcard numbered L-9 – one of the Lardent series. The Lardent postcard is not as colourful and the circle is a bit smaller but it is the same picture.


So why did they keep on redrawing (not always very successfully) this particular picture? One can perhaps understand there being a copyright issue with the original picture as used in the Photodrama but why do two different versions for the postcard series?

It is not the most important research question in the world, but a curiosity. And while we are discussing the actual Photodrama postcard series, does anyone have details of any other Photodrama postcards higher than 40? There is 47a which has a woman on a veranda overlooking a paradise scene with animals entitled PAX, but apart from that and 47b reproduce above, I have never seen others higher than 40.


Addenda

I am grateful to Brian who (in the comment trail) pointed out that the above pictures do not include the original. The original portrayed below was painted by William Strutt (1825-1915) in 1896, entitled: “Peace, and a little child shall lead them.” This was based on Isaiah 11 and in the original the animals from left to right are in the order as described in the scripture. A lithograph from the original painting was widely marketed.



When Strutt died his gravestone carried the inscription “The Painter of Peace.” His original copyright for the picture had gone by the time of his death, but one suspects the lithograph was still under copyright, hence the various attempts at pastiche to portray the same scene.

The original painting was donated to Brecon Cathedral in South Wales in honor of a local dignitary. It can still be seen there today.




2 comments:

  1. All three of these images are different from the copyright version, which has, in the left background, a man who is clearly very sad, being comforted by an angel. In the right background, we see the smoke covered desolation of the old order, represented by buildings that are falling apart.

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  2. https://godshotspot.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/lion-lamb-child-playing/

    This page shows the image I wrote about in the last message. The "decaying buildings" I wrote about amount to only a couple of pillars and some other material with smoke rising out of it.

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