This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/23/2019
The Great Lafayette (Sigmund Neuberger). The Great Lafayette. Circa 1909. Small-format window card bears a full-length portrait of Lafayette in Louis XIV-style costume, a fan or hat in one outstretched hand. Approx. 10 x 7”, tipped-on to a contemporary album page with the performer’s name lettered below the image in an unknown hand. Considerably chipped and worn; sold as-is. A friend and contemporary of Houdini, Chung Ling Soo, and other star magicians of the Edwardian era, Lafayette was part magician, part quick-change artist. His production was truly lavish, requiring corps of trained assistants, a trained lion, and a box car full of apparatus. He died tragically in a theatre fire in Edinburgh in 1911.