• This painting takes up the theme found in Pearl Magician.

• The illusionist, clothed in the luster of a seashell, spectacularly performs wonders of prestidigitation, making unexpected or seemingly invisible objects emerge out of nothing.

Here, the theater is given something it cannot do without: an audience! Not, as it were, sitting in lavish boxes or the plush seats of the dress circle, but remaining in their watery element in rapt attention. From a perfectly decent briefcase… a fish jumps out at them! Nothing could have been more unexpected to the spectator waves.

Observe how the magician himself, all majestic, makes a gesture as if it were the Moon that sprang out of that case of his.