Select Secrets: Rare & Important Magicana

[Alexander] Portrait of the Nartell Twins & Mlle. Valiska, Inscribed and Signed by Alexander. Bombay: Av Yaga, 1923. Full-length studio image of the twins in profile, their outstretched hands supporting a gigantic gazing ball before Mademoiselle Valiska, seated on a high throne. Trimmed to 9 ¼ x 7”. Scrapbook remnants to verso, else very good. Boldly inscribed and signed by Claude Alexander Conlin, “the man who knows,” to W.W. Durbin, president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Rare. A companion to a portrait of the Nartell Twins inscribed and signed to W.W. Durbin, offered in The Magic Collection of Jim Rawlins Part III (Feb. 29, 2020, lot 281). The name of the photo studio on this image is the same as the ersatz name of the printer on Alexander’s stone lithographs, Av Yaga, of Bombay (see next lot).