Have you seen…the house in a box?

Hoogstraten's Peepshow Box, National Gallery

In a quiet corner of the National Gallery stands a box, well, a box on a stand to be more accurate.  It looks relatively ordinary, wooden and brown. It is just a bit surprising to find a box in an art gallery.  What is it doing there, apart from standing?  The answer to that question lies within, because although it is simply standing in a room full of art, it is actually concealing a room full of art.

I feel rather like Alice in Wonderland as I peep through the tiny eye holes at either end of this box of delights.  I discover a perfectly proportioned room with a mirror hanging on the wall, a chair, and a black and white dog sitting up and looking at me.  There are coats and a sword hanging on pegs and a crumpled piece of paper with writing on it lying carelessly on a table top.

From the other peephole I can see doorways leading to other rooms, one to a bedroom with a curtained bed and another through a corridor to where a lady sits.  A shadowy man can be glimpsed through the windows at the front of the house, a visitor perhaps, eagerly awaited by the lady or unwelcome and about to shatter the peace of the house.  Paintings line the walls, hanging slightly at an angle, leaning into the room.  I crane my neck to see around corners and doorways; maybe I can catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  Suddenly, I am aware of being watched.  There is an eye looking at me through the other peephole.  The spell is broken.  I am standing, not in a house full of rooms, but next to a box in a room full of art.

Hoogstraten’s seventeenth century Peephole Box showing a Dutch interior is a masterpiece of perspective.  One side of the box is glass enabling the viewer to see how the incredible three dimensional effect was achieved.  For example, parts of the dog are painted on the wall and parts are painted at a different angle on the floor.  These parts are anamorphic projections which look distorted when seen like this, but when viewed through the peepholes the dog looks realistically three dimensional.  The rooms leading off the main room are painted on the three interior walls using normal perspective and giving the impression that a whole house is contained within the box.  The illusion is so complete whilst looking through the peepholes, that when I stand up it really feels as if, like Alice, I have eaten the cake labelled ‘Eat Me’ and am shooting upwards, giant-like once more.

Visit the National Gallery, room 25 and be amazed by Hoogstraten’s Box.

Alison Barker

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