"Troldmandens Selsomme Forestiling" 1787

"Troldmandens Selsomme Forestiling" (The Magician's Strange Imagination), an etching by Danish artist H.L.S Winding (1750-1831), depicts a magician performing a trick. The artist uses simple line work to illustrate a whimsical scene. The magician is clad in a long robe and hat, his focus on a circular aperture, where an image of three men on horseback emerges, creating a fantastical spectacle of illusion. This 1787 artwork, housed in the SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst, exemplifies Winding’s mastery of the etching technique and his penchant for capturing the humorous and the uncanny.