American Circus Posters

Charles Philip Fox

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780486133850
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Popular Culture in Art

The Children's Dream of Fairy-Land (1893) . . . Living Statues on Horseback (1890s) . . . Real Roman Hippodrome, Five Continent Menagerie (1890s) . . . Uno, Queen Supreme of the Serpent Kingdom (1894) . . . Dancing Girls, Mounted Guards and Truly Lavish Displays (1903) . . . "Twisting Double Somersault," A Feat Never Before Attempted by the Most Intrepid Aerialists (1904) . . . Desperado's Terrible Leap for Life, A Terrific Descent of 80 Feet Through Space Landing Upon His Chest on a Skid (1909) . . . The Imperial Chinese Circus Stars (1914) . . . An Army of Clowns (1920s) . . . Pallenberg's Wonder Bears (1920s) . . . Gargantua the Great (1938).
Originally put in store windows and posted on sheds, barns, buildings, walls and fences, these 18 extremely rare posters, most not previously reproduced, are collected together for the first time. The quality of reproduction is superb: reproduced in full color directly from the originals, these posters have been printed in an extra large format and on coated stock so that every detail is clear. They are an exciting visual history, capturing the pageantry and color that the circus was and is. They are also extremely fine examples of almost 50 years of poster art and American advertising.
There are acrobats, elephants, tigers, lions, parades, tents, trains, and many specialized acts: May Wirth, the Riding Rooneys, the Astounding Clarkonians, etc. The posters date from the 1890s to the 1940s, and include one by Norman Bel Geddes. They feature many American circuses: Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey, Sells, Sparks, Hagenbeck-Wallace. The historical introduction and captions are by Charles Philip Fox, Director of Research and Development with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Notes on the Plates

The numbers are those of the pages on which the posters are illustrated.

Front cover: May Wirth, superstar of the 1910s and 1920s, captured the hearts of all who witnessed her act. This attractive girl from Australia, who always wore a large bow in her hair, performed incredible bareback-riding feats.

Inside front cover: In the winter of 1918/1919 the Ringling Bros., who since 1907 had owned the Barnum & Bailey circus as well as their own, decided to combine the two shows into one gigantic aggregation. Always frugal, they did not scrap their inventory of posters advertising Barnum & Bailey alone, but instructed their printers, the celebrated Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati, to devise ways of using this obsolete stock. Under the Barnum & Bailey banner, the present poster had advertised the menagerie (note the copyright date of 1916). Strobridge printed and hand-pasted a sticker that referred to Ringling Bros., covering over the reference to the menagerie. Thus we have what is probably the only circus poster on which the famous title of the combined shows is reversed.

Inside back cover: In this 1912 poster, the Strobridge artists cleverly separated the six scenes by means of outlines and balanced color areas, creating a fascinating composite of the various routines one would expect to see at the circus performance.

Back cover: The Sparks Circus, which moved on 20 railroad cars, was always well received. The show was large enough to order special paper depicting certain acts. Mixed animal presentations were always popular. This poster, by the Erie Lithograph Co. of Erie, Pa., dates from the 1920s.

1: All big circuses in the first half of the twentieth century carried a large menagerie of wild animals. This was a popular and highly educational feature. The attractive montage on this Erie Lithograph poster of the 1920s indicates the vast and varied collection of animals that would be on display.

2: In the days of the big tented circuses, the hippodrome races, usually reserved for the finale, were especially exciting. The furiously thundering hooves of the galloping horses would bring the entire audience to their feet. This is a Strobridge poster of the 1890s.

3: No doubt at least three artists worked on a poster like this 1906 Strobridge example. One man might be adept at drawing horses, another very good with the human figure and a third clever with lettering or design. This combination of efforts was one of the reasons the artwork was rarely signed. 4: In 1904, as this Strobridge poster shows, the Clarkonians performed what is known as the “double double”—two somersaults and two pirouettes before being caught. The Flying Gaonas do this act today on t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on the Plates