En L'An 2000: Aerial Hunting with Personal Wings, French Futurist Postcard c.1900
Breezy optimism and playful adventure animate this charming French retro-futurist vision of sporting life in the year 2000, where fashionably dressed hunters strap on mechanical glider wings and take to the skies with rifles in hand. Three airborne figures equipped with ornithopter-style wings soar over an autumnal countryside, one taking aim at birds while companions in period costume look on from below. The vibrant chromolithograph palette and whimsical confidence perfectly capture Belle Époque technological utopianism.
The most delightful absurdity is the foreground hunter firing a rifle mid-air while suspended entirely by a backpack-mounted ornithopter wing, wearing what appears to be a full Victorian hunting skirt. Practical concerns are magnificently ignored.
“EN L'AN 2000 Hunting by Air”
