Félicien Trewey
Encyclopedia
Félicien Trewey, born Félicien-François Trevey (May 23, 1848 - December 2, 1920), was a French magician
, mime
, comedian, vaudevillian
, tightrope walker
, balance artist, dancer, musician, chapeaugraphist
and shadowgraphist
. The principal of Trewey's entertainment was balancing tricks, which at the time he was a grand master. He was a great card-thrower, scaling cards at great distances. He gave musical entertainment with instruments of his own invention. He had great skill in the uncommon art of writing any words selected by his audience backwards and was an exceptional lightning sketch artist. King Edward VII had witnessed Trewey on many occasions and the Emperor of Austria
, Baron Rothschild
, as well as many others, have on more than one occasion sent for him to come perform for them. He has also played in several films directed by his good friend Louis Lumière of The Lumière Brothers, including Chapeaux a Transformations (1895), The Photographe (1895), Danseuses des rues (1896), and was uncredited in the 1895 film Partie de cartes
("Card Game"; US title: The Messers. Lumière at Cards).
in France
. His father was a machinist
who worked at one of the manufactories and lived on the premises. Although his father wanted him to become an engineer at the manufactory, Trewey made up his mind what he wanted to do at seven years old. He was taken to a circus
in Marseille
and saw a conjurer
. He immediately began practicing juggling
and magic tricks. His performances were accepted and encouraged by his schoolmates. He set up a "rough proscenium
" at a back window of his dad's house where he performed the ever-so-popular Punch and Judy
by draping rags over his hands.
At the age of ten, his father tried yielding his love of conjuring by sending him to a seminary to become a priest. There he would practice his love in the gymnasium. He did very good in the school plays there and always tried being the comic man. After three years at the seminar, his parents went to Marseille for a short holiday but decided to stay. As he was kept at home, engineering boosted and he went to work in the factory daily. It was actually a delightful change and he could go see all the conjurers and jugglers at the circus. He worked around a lathe
which could make conjuring items and being surrounded by items he could balance (i.e. hammers, vices, anvils) he practiced and progressed his skills rapidly.
At fifteen years old, and after practicing since he was seven, he decided he could perform publicly and being near expert he went on to his professional career after running away with a not-much-older professional acrobat
. The two traveling boys were fairly successful while performing at cafes around the neighborhoods, but at times they found themselves tired and hungry. Sometimes they had to rely on borrowing objects from the owner of the cafe for juggling and balancing feats such as knives, bottles, forks and such. After a year on the road, his reputation grew and landed him in a Marseille music hall, making tenpence (a coin worth ten pennies) a day. He took part in comedy and pantomime
every night. The audience appreciated the performances by throwing money onto the stage, which Trewey got a good share of. He saved up enough money to buy himself two new costumes. He was able to command himself an engagement at the Alcazar
, a principal place for amusement in Marseille, where he found himself his first great success. He was now seventeen years old and his success was constantly improving, as was his skills. He soon became a favorite performer in popular towns South of France
for the next three to four years. He then went back to being a peripatetic
and became a proprietor of a traveling caravan pantomime and variety company. During their travels, Trewey would play many parts, including Pierrot
and Cassandre, the clown and pantaloon
of French pantomime. He also danced the "Clodoche", a grotesque quadrille
.
Trewey was most successful in Bordeaux
, performing new feats of balancing, a new and original style of entertainment at the time. It was a style he became identified with and "Treweyism" became a household word. His appearance of "the clown de Salon" consists of a black skin-tight costume, a chalked face, and a white powdered periwig. He was offered a performance at the Concert des Ambassadeurs in Paris
and it was there his success was complete. Since then, he was never without any gigs. He stayed in Paris for nine years, performing at all the principal places of entertainment. Afterwards, he toured in many places around Europe
(i.e. Austria
, Belgium
, Spain
, Russia
, Germany
, England
) with great success. His success was so great in Spain, matchboxes were sold bearing his portrait. His portrait (with political and social significance) appeared in well-known papers all across Europe, including Journal Illustre, Illustrationa Spana y America, Der Wostellung Zeitung, La Campana de Gracia
, La Bombe, Le Jeune Garde, La Caricature, The Entr'acte, The Looking Glass, and The Northern Review. In 1889, when Trewey was around 40 years of age, he joined Alexander Herrmann
in New York. Then in the later half of 1920, after living a long successful, eventful and strenuous life, Trewey died at an advanced age (72); the same year his book The Art of Shadowgraphy: How it is Done was published.
Magic (illusion)
Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...
, mime
Mime artist
A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...
, comedian, vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, tightrope walker
Tightrope walking
Tightrope walking is the art of walking along a thin wire or rope, usually at a great height. One or more artists performs in front of an audience or as a publicity stunt...
, balance artist, dancer, musician, chapeaugraphist
Chapeaugraphy
Chapeaugraphy, occasionally anglicised to chapography, is a panhandling trick in which a ring-shaped piece of felt is manipulated to look like various types of hats...
and shadowgraphist
Shadowgraphy (performing art)
Shadowgraphy or ombromanie is the art of performing a story or show using images made by hand shadows. It can be called "cinema in silhouette"...
. The principal of Trewey's entertainment was balancing tricks, which at the time he was a grand master. He was a great card-thrower, scaling cards at great distances. He gave musical entertainment with instruments of his own invention. He had great skill in the uncommon art of writing any words selected by his audience backwards and was an exceptional lightning sketch artist. King Edward VII had witnessed Trewey on many occasions and the Emperor of Austria
Emperor of Austria
The Emperor of Austria was a hereditary imperial title and position proclaimed in 1804 by the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and continually held by him and his heirs until the last emperor relinquished power in 1918. The emperors retained the title of...
, Baron Rothschild
Baron Rothschild
Baron Rothschild, of Tring in the County of Hertford, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1885 for Sir Nathan Rothschild, 2nd Baronet, a member of the Rothschild banking family. He was the first person of the Jewish faith to be raised to the peerage...
, as well as many others, have on more than one occasion sent for him to come perform for them. He has also played in several films directed by his good friend Louis Lumière of The Lumière Brothers, including Chapeaux a Transformations (1895), The Photographe (1895), Danseuses des rues (1896), and was uncredited in the 1895 film Partie de cartes
Partie de cartes
Partie de cartes is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent film directed and produced by Louis Lumière and starring Antoine Féraud....
("Card Game"; US title: The Messers. Lumière at Cards).
Life and career
Trewey was born in a workshop in the paper-making town of AngoulêmeAngoulême
-Main sights:In place of its ancient fortifications, Angoulême is encircled by boulevards above the old city walls, known as the Remparts, from which fine views may be obtained in all directions. Within the town the streets are often narrow. Apart from the cathedral and the hôtel de ville, the...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. His father was a machinist
Machinist
A machinist is a person who uses machine tools to make or modify parts, primarily metal parts, a process known as machining. This is accomplished by using machine tools to cut away excess material much as a woodcarver cuts away excess wood to produce his work. In addition to metal, the parts may...
who worked at one of the manufactories and lived on the premises. Although his father wanted him to become an engineer at the manufactory, Trewey made up his mind what he wanted to do at seven years old. He was taken to a circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...
in Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
and saw a conjurer
Conjuration
Conjuration is used in many video games, mainly RPGs, where it is usually referred to as summoning.* A notable example is the Final Fantasy franchise which incorporates summoning of monsters to fight alongside the characters....
. He immediately began practicing juggling
Juggling
Juggling is a skill involving moving objects for entertainment or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, in which the juggler throws objects up to catch and toss up again. This may be one object or many objects, at the same time with one or many hands. Jugglers often refer...
and magic tricks. His performances were accepted and encouraged by his schoolmates. He set up a "rough proscenium
Proscenium
A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
" at a back window of his dad's house where he performed the ever-so-popular Punch and Judy
Punch and Judy
Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular puppet show featuring the characters of Mr. Punch and his wife, Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically the anarchic Punch and one other character...
by draping rags over his hands.
At the age of ten, his father tried yielding his love of conjuring by sending him to a seminary to become a priest. There he would practice his love in the gymnasium. He did very good in the school plays there and always tried being the comic man. After three years at the seminar, his parents went to Marseille for a short holiday but decided to stay. As he was kept at home, engineering boosted and he went to work in the factory daily. It was actually a delightful change and he could go see all the conjurers and jugglers at the circus. He worked around a lathe
Lathe
A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...
which could make conjuring items and being surrounded by items he could balance (i.e. hammers, vices, anvils) he practiced and progressed his skills rapidly.
At fifteen years old, and after practicing since he was seven, he decided he could perform publicly and being near expert he went on to his professional career after running away with a not-much-older professional acrobat
Acrobatics
Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, as well as many sports...
. The two traveling boys were fairly successful while performing at cafes around the neighborhoods, but at times they found themselves tired and hungry. Sometimes they had to rely on borrowing objects from the owner of the cafe for juggling and balancing feats such as knives, bottles, forks and such. After a year on the road, his reputation grew and landed him in a Marseille music hall, making tenpence (a coin worth ten pennies) a day. He took part in comedy and pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
every night. The audience appreciated the performances by throwing money onto the stage, which Trewey got a good share of. He saved up enough money to buy himself two new costumes. He was able to command himself an engagement at the Alcazar
Alcázar
An alcázar , alcácer or alcàsser is a type of castle in Spain and Portugal. The term derives from the Arabic word القصر meaning "fort, castle or palace"; and the Arabic word is derived from the Latin word, 'castrum', meaning an army camp or fort...
, a principal place for amusement in Marseille, where he found himself his first great success. He was now seventeen years old and his success was constantly improving, as was his skills. He soon became a favorite performer in popular towns South of France
Southern France
Southern France , colloquially known as le Midi is defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Gironde, Spain, the Mediterranean, and Italy...
for the next three to four years. He then went back to being a peripatetic
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
and became a proprietor of a traveling caravan pantomime and variety company. During their travels, Trewey would play many parts, including Pierrot
Pierrot
Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...
and Cassandre, the clown and pantaloon
Pantalone
Pantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte...
of French pantomime. He also danced the "Clodoche", a grotesque quadrille
Quadrille
Quadrille is a historic dance performed by four couples in a square formation, a precursor to traditional square dancing. It is also a style of music...
.
Trewey was most successful in Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, performing new feats of balancing, a new and original style of entertainment at the time. It was a style he became identified with and "Treweyism" became a household word. His appearance of "the clown de Salon" consists of a black skin-tight costume, a chalked face, and a white powdered periwig. He was offered a performance at the Concert des Ambassadeurs in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and it was there his success was complete. Since then, he was never without any gigs. He stayed in Paris for nine years, performing at all the principal places of entertainment. Afterwards, he toured in many places around Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
(i.e. Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) with great success. His success was so great in Spain, matchboxes were sold bearing his portrait. His portrait (with political and social significance) appeared in well-known papers all across Europe, including Journal Illustre, Illustrationa Spana y America, Der Wostellung Zeitung, La Campana de Gracia
La Campana de Gràcia
La Campana de Gràcia was a seminal Catalan weekly magazine of satire, written bilingually in Catalan and Spanish of the late 19th and early 20th century, staunchly supportive of republicanism and anticlericalism....
, La Bombe, Le Jeune Garde, La Caricature, The Entr'acte, The Looking Glass, and The Northern Review. In 1889, when Trewey was around 40 years of age, he joined Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann
Alexander Herrmann was a French magician, better known as Herrmann the Great. He was part of the Herrmann family name that is known as the "first-family of magic". Those who witnessed Herrmann the Great perform considered him the greatest magician they ever saw...
in New York. Then in the later half of 1920, after living a long successful, eventful and strenuous life, Trewey died at an advanced age (72); the same year his book The Art of Shadowgraphy: How it is Done was published.
See also
- ShadowgraphyShadowgraphy (performing art)Shadowgraphy or ombromanie is the art of performing a story or show using images made by hand shadows. It can be called "cinema in silhouette"...
- Shadow playShadow playShadow play or shadow puppetry Shadow puppets have a long history in China, India, Turkey and Java, and as a popular form of entertainment for both children and adults in many countries around the world. A shadow puppet is a cut-out figure held between a source of light and a translucent screen...
- List of defunct newspapers of France
- Auguste and Louis LumièreAuguste and Louis LumièreThe Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
- Honoré DaumierHonoré DaumierHonoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....