This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
LITTLE TICH (Harry Relph, 1867 – 1928). Little Tich. Belfast and London: David Allen & Sons Ltd., ca. 1900. Tinted bust portrait lithograph, based on a photograph by Owen Brooks, of the eccentric dancer whose music hall and vaudeville fame was made with his “big boot dance,” in which the performer clad in 28 inch-long boots, balanced, leaned, and danced about in an eccentric manner. Overprinted for an appearance at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham. 29 ½ x 20”. Minor soiling and repairs in margins; A-. Linen backed. Tich was born a polydactyl – that is, with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot – and as an adult, grew to a height of only four feet, six inches. His acrobatic, intricate, and comedic big boot dance gave the appearance of defying gravity, as he balanced on the tips of his giant wooden shoes and used them for every conceivable comic effect. His music hall career flourished for decades, and he combined juggling, balancing, and musical turns with comedic dances and burlesques of famous female performers. Tich’s boot dance is said to have inspired Charlie Chaplin, and it was Jacques Tati that said Little Tich was “A foundation for everything that has been realised in comedy on the screen.”