This
Strobridge lithograph from 1909 is a great example of a feature that most of the
public could only see in a circus menagerie. The artists who worked on this
piece did a magnificent job of showing the power and uniqueness of the animal. I
don't think youngsters from the early part of the 20th Century had much
knowledge of dinosaurs - but this Rhino definitely looks
prehistoric!
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Monday, September 21, 2015
From Chris Berry
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4 comments:
Very nice early pictorial
Thanks Chris
Would this have been a 1 sheet
Yes - this is a one sheet - about 30"x40" in 1909. There are two varieties that I am aware of. This one and another that has the cameo portraits of PT Barnum & James A. Bailey near the bottom of the lithograph. There was a three-sheet version that it very similar that is in the collection at the New York Historical Society. They keep their extraordinary collection of Strobridge Lithographs in a Brooklyn warehouse where no one will ever see them, EXCEPT when that three sheet was used in Matthew Wittman's exhibit "The Circus in the City" at Manhattan's Bard Graduate Center in late 2012 and early 2013.
With this poster being dated 1909, it should be an ad for the young male African black rhino that B&B got in 1905.
But the depiction confuses two species. The head (with two horns) would be an African black. But the rest of the body is a near perfect representation of the one-horned Indian armored rhino. B&B also had one of them from mid-1913 though 1918, He was Old Bill who then went onto RBBB and died with them in Ft Worth, TX in 1926.
This poster was recently advertised for an auction - -by Potter I think.
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