Elephant Long Mount Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
c 1940. Gelatin silver print mounted on board, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (190 x 241 mm) from the Roland Butler Collection, Press Agent, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (1930s-1960s) Roland Butler Collection hand stamp on verso.
When Barnum and Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” rolled into American towns . . . daily life abruptly stopped. Months before the show arrived, an advance team saturated the surrounding region with brilliantly colored lithographs of the extraordinary: elephants, bearded ladies, clowns, tigers, acrobats and trick riders.
On “Circus Day,” huge crowds gathered to observe the predawn arrival of “herds and droves” of camels, zebras, and other exotic animals—the spoils of European colonialism. Families witnessed the raising of a tented city across nine acres, and a morning parade that made its way down Main Street, advertising the circus as a wondrous array of captivating performers and beasts from around the world.
For isolated American audiences, the sprawling circus collapsed the entire globe into a pungent, thrilling, educational sensorium of sound, smell and color, right outside their doorsteps." Janet M. Davis, "America’s Big Circus Spectacular Has a Long and Cherished History" March 22, 2017 Smithsonian Magazine
In the Milner Library at Illinois State University a print of this photograph is captioned: Column of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey performing elephants in hind leg stands on the hippodrome track in Madison Square Garden, New York.
Condition: Very good +.
Item number: 230
Price: $300.00
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