Hiver (Winter) – Beautiful French Belle Epoque Postcard

Theater Postcard from circa 1905 via

Cléo de Mérode by Reutlinger

Cléo de Mérode by Reutlinger via

Vintage Postcard featuring American Princess Clara Ward

Clara Ward, postcard via

Princess Clara Ward Postcard

Clara Ward (1873 – 1916) was a wealthy American socialite who married a prince from Belgium. Her main talents were being beautiful by the standards of the time, and being famous. She combined the two by posing on various stages, including at least the Folies Bergère and probably also the Moulin Rouge, while wearing skin-tight costumes.

Postcard of theater star Clara Ward, ca. 1900s via

Beautiful Belle Epoque Photos of Marcelle Lender

Marcelle Lender (1862 – 1926) was a French singer, dancer and entertainer made famous in paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Born Anne-Marie Marcelle Bastien, she began dancing at the age of sixteen and within a few years made a name for herself performing at the Théâtre des Variétés in Montmartre.

Marcelle Lender appears in several works by Lautrec but the most notable is the one of her dancing the Bolero during her February 1895 performance in the Hervé operetta Chilpéric. Lautrec’s portrait of her in full costume, her flame-red hair accentuated by two red poppies worn like plumes, boosted Lender’s popularity considerably after it appeared in a Paris magazine. The painting was eventually sold to a collector from the United States, and on her death in 1998 the painting’s then owner, American Betsey Cushing Whitney, donated it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Marcelle Lender, 1900s french postcard by Reutlinger via

 

Marcelle Lender via

Marcelle Lender via

Mlle Marcelle Lender. Robe de bal par Doucet via

Marcelle Lender via

A Collection of Vintage Photos featuring Maud Allan the Salomé Dancer

Canadian pianist-turned-actor, dancer and choreographer Maud Allan (1873 – 1956) was born as Beulah Maude Durrant. She spent her early years in San Francisco, California, moving to Germany in 1895 to study piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. She changed her name in part by the scandal surrounding her brother Theodore Durrant, who was hanged in 1898 for murder. Allan never recuperated from the trauma of this event. She abandoned piano-playing and developed a new means of self-expression through dance.

Shortly before she began dancing professionally Allan is said to have illustrated an encyclopedia for women titled Illustriertes Konversations-Lexikon der Frau.

In 1906 her production “Vision of Salomé” opened in Vienna. Based loosely on Oscar Wilde’s play ,Salomé, her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils became famous (and to some notorious) and she was billed as “The Salomé Dancer”. Her book My Life and Dancing was published in 1908 and that year she took England by storm in a tour in which she did 250 performances in less than one year.

Allan is remembered for her “famously impressionistic mood settings”. She was athletic, had great imagination and even designed  and sewed her own costumes. But she had little formal dance training. She was once compared to professional dancer and legend Isadora Duncan, which greatly enraged her, as she disliked Duncan.

Around 1918 Allan’s popularity began to take a turn. In a hope of earning back some of her public adoration she starred in a private performance of the ‘Vision of Salome’ and irked homophobic right-wing nationalist MP Noel Pemberton Billing. Mr Billing wanted Allan’s downfall as there was a rumor circulating that she had a lesbian affair with Margot Asquith, the wife of former prime minister Herbert Asquith. He believed that Allan and the Asquiths were all German spies; which he implied in an article. Allan sued Billing for criminal libel, but she lost the case.

Hence, from the 1920s on Allan taught dance and she lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich. She died in Los Angeles, California.

Maud Allan, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, c.1906 via

Maud Allan as Salome, ca. 1906 via

Maud Allan by Bassano, 1913 via

Maud Allan by Reutlinger, 1909 via

Glamour Portraits of Stage Actress Ellen Baxone by Reutlinger (1905)

Ellen Baxone was an actress, who was living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.

She is known for her role in the humorous short film about the world of cinema C’est pour les orphelins (1916)

In 1907 she starred alongside Alice de Tender in the play Imbroglio Princier at La Scala in Paris.

In addition to portraits by Reutlinger, she is also known for a postcard portrait designed by Gustave Brisgand.

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Belle Epoque Stage Actress, Miss Ellen Baxone, Covered in Silk. French Photo Postcard by Reutlinger, 1905 via

Vintage Circus Clown (1910s)

Circus Clown Leo Billwarek, Vintage Czech Circus Autographed RPPC, Prague, circa 1910 via

A Collection of Photos Featuring Stage Beauty Mabel Love

Mabel Love (1874 – 1953), was a British dancer and stage actress. Love made her stage debut at the age of twelve, at the Prince of Wales Theatre, playing The Rose, in the first stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. She was considered to be one of the great stage beauties of her age, and her career spanned the late Victorian era and Edwardian period.

In March 1889, under the headline “Disappearance of a Burlesque Actress”, The Star newspaper reported that, by then 14-year old, Love had disappeared. It was later reported that she had gone to the Thames Embankment, considering suicide. This publicity served merely to increase the public’s interest in her. When photographer Frank Foulsham had the idea of selling the images of actresses on postcards, Love proved to be a popular subject leading one writer to christen her “the pretty girl of the postcard”. In 1894, Winston Churchill wrote to her asking for a signed photograph.

Over the following 30 years, she starred in a series of burlesques, pantomimes and musical comedies. Among her successes were, as Francoise in La Cigale and as Pepita in Ivan Caryll’s Little Christopher Columbus. Later, she appeared at the Folies Bergère in Paris and in Man and Superman on Broadway. Love retired from the stage in 1918 and, in 1926, she opened a school of dancing in London.

 

Mabel Love in ‘A Modern Don Quixote’ by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company
albumen cabinet card, 1893

© National Portrait Gallery, London via

Mabel Love by Bassano Ltd, published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd
postcard print, 1900s

© National Portrait Gallery, London via

by Bassano Ltd, published by Davidson Brothers, postcard print, 1900s

Mabel Love by Bassano Ltd, published by Davidson Brothers
postcard print, 1900s

© National Portrait Gallery, London via

Mabel Love by Bassano Ltd, published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd
postcard print, 1900s via

© National Portrait Gallery, London via

Mabel Love by Bassano Ltd, published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd
postcard print, 1900s

© National Portrait Gallery, London via

A Collection of Photos Featuring Edwardian Beauty Lily Elsie

Lily Elsie (1886 – 1962) was a popular English actress and singer during the Edwardian era, when public entertainment flourished. The nine years during Edward´s reign were to be the height of Lily Elsie’s success on the stage.  Beginning as a child star in the 1890s, Elsie built her reputation in several successful musical comedies before her great success in The Merry Widow in 1907, which the King saw four times. Afterwards, she starred in several more successful operettas and musicals.

Admired for her beauty and charm on stage, Elsie became one of the most frequently photographed beauties of the Edwardian era.

The Chicago Examiner wrote on 1^st May 1910:

She is famous above all for two things –
for having been photographed more frequently than any actress ever on a London stage, and for having had more proposals of marriage.  It is said that she has been photographed at least once every week day in the year.  Even then the insatiable demands of the photographic firms were not satisfied.  They could not obtain enough of her photographs to supply the enormous demand.

Lily Elsie

Lily Elsie

Lily Elsie, Postcard, postmarked Birmingham, September, 1909

Lily Elsie