It’s not just Millennials and Gen Z that are obsessed with filters – the craze goes way back, the National Gallery in London, England, has revealed.
Calling it a “craze”, Joanna from the National Gallery revealed in an Instagram video that in the 1800s there was something called a ‘Claude Glass’, inspired by the landscape painter Claude Lorrain, “who was famed for his use of tone and soft warm light in his Arcadian landscapes.”
According to Joanna, wealthy tourists would flock to areas of natural beauty to do a “curious thing” – stand with their backs to the view and hold up with Claude glass and observe the reflection in the black piece of glass.
“The reflection in the black glass would simplify the tonal range and frame it within the reflection. This meant that any mishmash of rocks, foliage, would be instantly transformed into the picturesque,” explains Joanna.
“It was like carrying Claude's vision in your pocket. The Claude Glass craze soon faded and it's really hard to buy Claude Glasses today. However, we all have a phone and you can use the black glass of your phone screen to try the effect yourself.”
The ’glass’ consists of a slightly convex blackened mirror rather than a silvered mirror, because it produced a stronger reflection and lowered the key colors. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a larger version of this device was occasionally attached to windows of horsedrawn carriages to reflect passing scenery.
Despite the popularity of the mirrors, the people who used them were also subject to ridicule, not unlike many social media trends now. The novelist Hugh Sykes Davies commented at the time that “It is very typical of their attitude to nature that such a position should be desirable."
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