Picture Perfect

 

Art does not have to be large and grand
to be appreciated for its beauty of design.
Sometimes a simple illustration
is equally charming.

 

 

 This is especially true in portrait sketches.
A skilled artist draws our attention to a face
with subtle strokes of a pen or brush.
Instantly we recognize a personality or character
that we know from our own life experience.

Today I present examples of this kind of pure natural art
created by an Austrian artist, Hermann Torggler. 

A native of Graz, Austria, Hermann Torggler, (1878-1939) first studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and in 1908 moved to Vienna where he established a studio specializing in portraiture of Austrian nobility, military officers, and the upper classes of Vienna. These postcards date from his earlier career, perhaps even his student years in Munich and were published by Fr. A. Ackermann, Kunstverlag, München.

 

 

 

The first picture is a young woman in a garden setting playing a harp. The caption title is Andante, the Italian musical term for a modest strolling tempo. The postmark dates from 20 February 1900.

 

 

 

 

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The next postcard is entitled Studienkopf VI and shows a head study of a dark haired woman turned in part profile. She wears a large flower(?) in her hair and a hoop pendant hanging from her left ear, a classical style pose. Several people have signed the bottom of the card in pencil. The postmark is unclear but I think it is from around 1901, and certainly dates from the pre-war era of Kaiser Franz Joseph.

  

 

 

 

 

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The next portrait is a young musician, a woman with a violin, and given a title of In Harmonie! She is dressed in a gauzy Grecian-like gown with a flower band in her hair. Long time readers may remember her from my story Ein schönes Mädchen published in November 2019. This is a duplicate card that was sent through the Bavarian postal service in June 1899.

 

 

 

 

 

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The publisher Ackermann, Kunstverlag, was based in München, so their postcards were distributed widely over Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. This next portrait is another dark haired beauty who may be holding a lute-like instrument or a serving tray. It's partly hidden but I think her fingers are plucking at a string instrument like a mandolin or lute. Torggler liked to feature female musicians in his postcards and did a series of musical portraits which I featured in November 2020, Hermann Torggler's Great Composers - part 1 and part 2.

 

This card has a cryptic message on the front that looks like a kind of short hand scribble and is in sharp contrast to the elegant penmanship of the address. The postmark is also from Bayern/Bavaria with a date of 11 July 1902.

 

 

 

 

 

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This weekend, (18-20 November 2022), western New York was hit with a fierce snowstorm that is predicted to dump 6+ feet of snow on the region. Being Austrian, Torggler knew something about the magical and spine-chilling qualities of snow. It's fun to watch it and sometimes play in it, but generally it's just a big icy mess that hangs around until spring. 

 

 

This last card shows two children, a boy and a girl, at play outdoors in the snow. An overly jolly snowman seems to reach out for the little girl. The title reads:

Der verliebte Schneemann
~
The snowman in love

This card was sent to Wien on 10 January 1900.

 

 

When Torggler's postcards were first offered to the public in the late 1890s, the medium of the picture postcard was still a new novelty. Instead of just sending a short message, people were discovering that they could now include an artistic gift of a picture of a pretty girl playing the harp or just gazing pensively into the distance. It was a way of conveying friendship, affection, even love. I especially like how his young women are depicted in a natural way without commercial affectations like a fashion model in an advertisement. Obviously there is some romantic sentimentality in the images, but Torggler was merely following a cultural trend that was popular in this era. 

Since his simple artwork did not require color printing they were cheap to produce. I expect Torggler probably sold entire sketch books to Ackermann's company which then chose the best ones and produced them in series. Now 120 years later we get to admire his charming artwork and share the joy they once provided. That's what great art is supposed to do, no mater how small.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone is checking out the leftovers this weekend.

The Golden Harp

The shimmering sound of the harp
accompanied ballads of fabled bards,
odes to legendary chieftains,
and even the canticles of angels.

Of all musical instruments
the harp has the most ancient of pedigrees.

It also has the most recognized musical design
as the classical architecture of its carved pillar
flows down its sensuous curved neck
into a pear-shaped soundboard.

Artists of all kinds and every age
have depicted the harp
as a representation of musical beauty
and photographers could do no less.

And though not uncommon
it is rare to find three vintage photos
of the same harp and harpist.

The first image comes

from a large boudoir size cabinet card photograph
and shows a young woman dressed
in a Grecian-style white gown
and standing next to a ornately carved concert harp.

The photography studio was
Fox & Symons
of Salt Lake City, Utah.

On the back is a name written in ink

Bell Bishop-Tuttle.

The cabinet card style is late 1890s or early 1900s, but the harpist's pose is timeless. Many years later it was recreated by an unnamed photographer for two 8" x 10" portraits of the same woman, this time dressed in a elegant sleeveless gown made of dark satin.

Conveniently she signed her full name
on the back of both photos.

Laura Bell Tuttle (née Bishop.)

Laura Bell Bishop was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1868. In 1895 she married Walter G. Tuttle, also of Michigan, and in 1900 they were recorded in the US Census as living in Salt Lake City. Walter, age 34, was employed as a Real Estate Agent. In the 1910 census, Walter and Laura, now ages 44 and 41 respectively, lived in a nice residential neighborhood in central Salt Lake City and employed a Danish woman as a servant. In 1900 the population of Salt Lake City was 53,531, by 1910 this number grew over 73% to 92,777 citizens. It was a good time to be in real estate and Walter and his brother set up the Tuttle Bros. Company for property sales, rentals, and loans. Laura was listed as treasurer and her sister-in-law as vice-president.

In this era most women were recognized formally by their husband's name, and Mrs. W. G. Tuttle was frequently mentioned on Salt Lake City's society pages. Occasionally she would host a luncheon of friends at her home and also provide entertainment on the harp.

Salt Lake City Telegram
14 October 1904

In 1910 Salt Lake City was the next biggest western city after Denver on the rail lines connecting Chicago to San Francisco and Seattle, and had become an important cultural center for theater and music. The Salt Lake Symphony Orchestra, a predecessor to the Utah Symphony, at least once in 1907 engaged Laura Bell, Mrs. Walter G. Tuttle, as a harp soloist. In 1909 the Salt Lake City Herald Republican ran a different photo of her with her harp when she performed a recital in the city.

Salt Lake City Herald Republican
14 November 1909

A harp is special instrument of a symphony orchestra and is usually not required for most of the orchestral repertoire. And playing the harp in an orchestra requires as much patience as great skill, causing harpists to take up knitting as they await their turn to play their brief part in a suite or symphony. A concert harp, or pedal harp, typically has a range of six and a half octaves, with 46 or 47 strings. The pitch of these strings are controlled by a complicated mechanism of over 1400 parts that link small levers to cables attached to seven foot pedals. A harp can weigh about 36 kg or 80 lbs. and is played seated with the instrument tilted onto the right shoulder. That is the pose Laura Bell chose for her second photo.

Most harps in America are made by the Lyon & Healy Company of Chicago which has been in business since the 1860s, and I believe it very likely that Laura Bell's instrument was made by this renowned harpmaker. I found very little about Laura Tuttle's background and how she became a musician. A concert harp is a very unusual and very expensive instrument to learn, but as she was from Grand Rapids, MI, she may have studied the harp in Chicago which is relatively close to Grand Rapids. In any case she had a talent and training to become a music teacher herself and taught at a music academy in Salt Lake City. In November 1911, one of her students, Miss Edith Corolinn Gunnell, appeared in recital and her picture with harp was featured in a Salt Lake City newspaper.

Salt Lake City Herald Republican
26 November 1911

The solo and chamber music repertoire for harp is much larger than the orchestral. The Salt Lake City Symphony folded in 1911 and it seems likely that Laura Bell performed mostly in recitals and for society events like weddings. In February 1916 she appeared at the Ladies Literary Breakfast in Salt Lake City, and a paper printed a photo of her at her harp surrounded by several small children dressed as nymphs. Though the archived image is very grainy, I think there is enough definition to Laura's face to date her two formal portraits to about this time, 1915-1920 when she was between 47-50 years old. If so, then the first photo is more likely from 1897-1898.

Salt Lake City Telegram
17 February 1916

Salt Lake City Telegram
28 March 1941

In the all the census records, 1900 to 1940, Laura Bell never listed any occupation, nor did she have a listing in the city directory under "music teacher". Yet clearly she was an accomplished musician and teacher as I think is revealed in her photographs.

Walter G. Tuttle passed away in 1939 and his wife, Laura Bell Bishop Tuttle died in March 1941 at age 73. They had no children and a few  months later the newspaper reported on the settlement of her estate valued to the penny at $67,117.78 and divided between friends, her brother-in-law and 20 nieces and nephews.

Curiously on the state medical certificate of her death, the cause was listed as unknown but natural, and due to Christian Scientist.

_ _  _

It seems fitting to finish
this woman's story
with the sound of the harp.
So here is Harpo Marx playing
Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
from the Marx Brother's 1935 film "A Night at the Opera."
I feel sure Laura Bell smiled
to see her instrument featured so beautifully
in such a funny comedy. 

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* * * *

 This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where you might find other people playing a Pontiac.

Music in the Parlor

A plucky young lass from Carlisle
strummed the harp with an angelic style.

In the band was her brother,

her sister,








 

and others, 








 

and her cousin who played the Base Vile.

His name was Valmah.

It was hard not to notice him.
String bass players, especially the vile ones,
always stand out in an orchestra.

* * *

This postcard is likely American,
and though Carlisle refers to a place in Pennsylvania,
these eight musicians could be from anywhere.
They may be a family group as there are
some similar facial features,
but my guess is that they are a church orchestra
gathered for a rehearsal or performance
in the front parlor of the pianist and the harpist,
who I imagine are sisters.

In the lower corner of the postcard is a penciled date of 5-17-07
which may indicate the year of the photo as 1907,
or it may be when the dealer first listed it for $0.50 in 2007.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where old photos are always plucking at the harp strings.

Music by the Seaside

Why did a symphony orchestra have four harp players?
It's simple —
one harpist to keep the other harps out of tune;
one harpist to miscount the measures rests;
one harpist to distract the conductor with flirtatious smiles;
and one harpist to actually play the notes at the right time.

With all due respect to harp players, most symphony orchestras get by just fine with a single harpist. Sometimes a composer might feel a need to have two harps provide an angelic interlude within an orchestral piece. But four harps? At one time? In the front rank of the orchestra? Unheard of.

Unless you were listening to the Orchestra of the Kursall in Ostende, Belgium. Because with 120 musicians packed on top of each other in 6 narrow tiers, and with 12 double bassists stretched along the back, and with a massive pipe organ hanging on the wall behind, four harps were the least excessive section of this symphony orchestra.  

The year was 1907, and Ostend, Belgium (or Oostend in Dutch, or Ostende in French and German) was the holiday seaside destination for the fashionable people of Northern Europe. The Kursaal was an extravagant casino and concert hall built on a sandy beach of the North Sea. 

Originally a small fishing village in the Flemish province of West Flanders, Ostend took its name from its first location on the East End of an island that in the Middle Ages was reattached with dikes to the mainland. In the 19th century it became an important port when it was linked by a rail line to Brussels. The ease of travel consequently made this coastal resort popular with British tourists as well as Belgians, French, Dutch, and Germans looking for a seaside holiday.  

Kursaal, Ostend, Belgium circa 1895
Source: Wikimedia

In the 1890s the Ostend casino was considered second only to Monte Carlo for its gambling revenue. Its gaming tables were a favorite attraction for the high end society of the various European royal courts. Ostend was also the summer retreat of King Leopold II  of Belgium (1835-1909). Known as the "Builder King", Leopold spent a fortune on commissioning many grand public buildings in Belgium and acquiring several enormous private parks. Even though Belgium was a very small country and had only recently become an independent nation in 1831, Leopold became enormously rich from his personal control of the Congo Free State in Central Africa. From 1885 to 1908, Leopold profited from the rubber, ivory, and other natural resources taken from the Congo region. This devastating exploitation caused the deaths of millions of Congolese people impressed into forced labor camps. The tragic history of Belgium's African colonial era places a dark shadow behind images of Belgian society in the 1900s.








The Kursaal orchestra was arranged in a special gallery high above the main floor of the hall. The patrons sat around small cafe tables where liveried waiters would bring them refreshments during a performance. This second postcard view of the orchestra moved the camera from the floor to a higher gallery giving a better view of the hall's fantastic chandeliers and ornate columns. The orchestra's stage has at least six main risers with possibly two more shorter ones in the upper corners. All the musicians seem to be playing in this photo. Note that the harpists are the only female musicians and that they are wearing rather large hats. I think the conductor is not the same man as in the first postcard. This card was postmarked 1916 during the war but the image dates from pre-war.

The first Kursaal was built in the 1850s and then replaced in 1877 with a larger venue with a ballroom, exhibition area, reading rooms, and a concert hall surrounded with glass windows. Unfortunately the hall never had satisfactory acoustics and it was often difficult to hear the music over the clatter of coffee spoons and conversation, which might account for the need of a very large orchestra. In the 1900s the concert space was improved and remodeling added sumptuous decorations. The resort season was from May to October, but I understand the North Sea is still very cold in the middle of the European summer. The vacationers in this 1908 postcard view of the Kursaal seem more interested in watching the sea rather than attempting to wade in it, or much less swim in it.   

An excerpt from Punch magazine of August 27, 1898

OSTEND 

There are several ways of getting through the day at Ostend, where the day is about as long as at other seaside resorts. or perhaps rather longer. The simplest plan is to sit in the morning on the terrace of the Kursaal and chatter till it is time to go to dejeuner, to do the same in the afternoon, till it is time to go to dinner, and to repeat this amusement in the evening, till it is time to go to bed. The next morning you begin again. In this way you avoid all needless exertion. 

Another plan is, in the morning to stand in the sea. If you are very brave you go in up to your waist, and if you are very strong you splash a little water on your chest, but you never wet your head for fear of hurting your hair. You may wear a straw hat as a protection from the sun, and, if you are a German, you may add a pair of spectacles. The only disadvantage of this plan is that about four thousand people want the four hundred bathing machines. If you are a woman, you flounder about on wet sand and never get a cabine at all. If you are a man, you take off your boots and socks, wade in up to your knees, and pursue the machine in the water. The chasse aux cabinet is fine exercise, but it is hardly luxurious. 

By standing in the sea you begin the day comfortably cool. In the afternoon you stand on the racecourse, the pigeon shooting ground, the pier, or the promenade, or you can sit down if you like. These pastimes make you considerably warmer. In the evening you have a choice of two places to stand in. One of them is the dancing room of the Kursaal, where the temperature is about ninety degrees. You can dance if you wish. The other is the gambling room, where the temperature is about one hundred and fifty degrees. You stand here in a dense crowd, reach over the heads of the few who have obtained chairs, and lose as many louis as you like.
 
A third system is to linger over your café-au-lait till it is nearly time for dejeuner, to prolong your dejeuner with coffee and liqueurs until about the time of the fivocklock, when you have a glass of port, or a scherry gobbler, and, beginning dinner soon after seven, to go on with this till half past ten, or later, when all the other diners have left the restaurant, and the weary waiters have piled all the other chairs upon all the other tables. But this system will ruin your system after a time.

It is believed by some that there are excellent concerts in Kursaal every evening from 7.30 to 9. But to hear them at an impossible time one must go without dinner altogether, which no one can do. In fact, there is reason to believe that no one ever did get to these concerts. Once when VANDERBLANK and I had rather hurried over our coffee and cigarettes in his véranda – the vérandas of Ostend are very pleasant in hot weather – we  arrived at the Kursaal just in time to see some men with violins disappearing from the orchestra. Since then I have considered myself rather an authority on the Ostend concerts, having been as near hearing one as that.

ROBINSON THE ROVER

The previous card was sent by Carlo from Ostend in August 1908 to Miss KatieWexzel of London. The profile of King Leopold II is on the stamp.

Ostend provided activities like sailing regattas, horse racing, pigeon shooting, and golf during the season. There were theaters and dancing halls, as well as fine dining, and of course a promenade along the waterfront, but the Kursaal did not develop into an amusement park of thrill rides and carnivals games. This was a holiday place for genteel society. 

Source: Musica, Paris
September 1906

The celebrated orchestra of the Kursall in Ostende was put together from the best musicians in Belgium, France, and Germany. Many were music professors at the conservatoires and held positions in prominent orchestras of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Germany.  And clearly a harp quartet was a popular feature of the orchestra. By my count there were over 120 musicians perched on the perilous stage of the Kursaal. By comparison, in 2015 the New York Philharmonic can boast of only 101 musicians (with just one harp) and the London Symphony Orchestra has a mere 87 musicians. Very few symphony orchestras carry more than 8 double basses. Only opera orchestras retain larger orchestras, and then such musical force is used only for grand musical spectacles like those of Wagner and Verdi.

This image came from Musica, a Paris music journal of 1906. It lists dozens of famous pianists, violinists, opera singers and composers who appeared in concert with the orchestra. There were two performances each day at 2:30 and 7:45. The organ was featured in two recitals each week. The music ranged from arias of light French operettas to scenes from Wagner's operas, from the tuneful waltzes of Johann Strauss II to the dramatic tone poems of Richard Strauss. Many leading composers like Camille Saint-Saëns visited Ostend to have their music performed. In 1908 Sir Edward Elgar was honored by the Kursall Orchestra with a festival of his music which he conducted.    

Leon Rinskopf (1862-1915)

The principal conductor of the Kursaal Orchestra was a Belgian musician, Leon Rinskopf (1862-1915) who became its music director in 1891. It was due to his artistic leadership that the orchestra was renown for its high quality musicians and refined programing. He introduced audiences to the latest symphonic music and was responsible for promoting many Belgian composers. He took the orchestra on tours to Berlin,  St. Petersburg, and London where they received tremendous acclaim. 

In August 1914 Ostend's music and high society life came to an abrupt halt as the army of Kaiser Wilhelm marched through Belgium on the way to Paris. The Great War would close the resort for four long years.

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The Times of London
July 25, 1919

Rinskopf and his orchestra managed to leave Ostend safely for exile in Paris. Meanwhile Ostend as a port city became an important base for German submarines and the Kursaal was converted into a military headquarters. It was the target of British bombing raids during the war. 

The Kursaal Orchestra played a benefit concert in London in February 1915 where many Belgians took  refuge during the war. All the music was by contemporary Belgian composers It proved too much for Leon Rinskopf who would never see the Kursaal again. A few months later he died in Paris in June 1915.

In July 1919, Ostend re-opened its seaside resort. People all over Europe certainly needed a holiday, but Ostend was never the same. And of course in 1939 there was a reprise of German occupation, this one more terrible than the first.

In 2015 the Kursaal Oostende continues to operate as a modern venue for touring theatrical shows and orchestra concerts. But the facility is no longer the grandiose cultural center of 1908.

And today it is probably very rare to see four lady harpists on stage with 120 men.

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This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone has gone to the coast for the summer.

Louis Vernassier – Musical Excentrique

It's a very old question. Is she a he? Or is he a she? The theater world has always had cross dressing entertainers who have exploited this provocative idea of transgender. Today I present a showcase of an unusual musical artist.

Louis Vernassier
l'homme protée
musical excentrique
dans son travesti
Dame

This French postcard shows a very elegantly dressed woman holding a violin and standing in front of an array of musical instruments. From the left is a tenor saxhorn, a small guitar, a stand of tubular chimes, an alto saxhorn, a zither, a lyre guitar, a mandolin, and a stand of tuned jingle bells. Notice the electric light bulbs above the bells and a small feathered fan inserted into one of the chimes. On the bottom edge is a short message:

Goodbye Bremour(?)

 

< >

In this second postcard the stage is rearranged. Louis Vernassier has put aside the violin and stands plucking at the bells. A waiter now stands behind the chimes delivering a tray with a carafe of coffee. On the lower edge is a one word message:  

bonjour

They are actually part of a much larger photo of a theatrical troupe with five other characters. On the left is a magician complete with dove and magic wand. Next to him are two women at a garden bench, one wearing a décolletage gown more revealing than the other woman's chaste attire. To the right of the waiter and Vernassier is another young woman dressed in a peasant's folk costume. And on the far right is what looks like a postman on a rock waving newspapers. We can now recognize that the strange foliage in the second postcard was a primitive photo technique to cover up the other women.

The first two postcards were sent at the same time, possibly 1906 but the postmarks are unclear, to Monsieur P. Fremont, 15 Rue Cachin, Honfleur, Calvados France. Honfleur is a commune located on the south bank of the mouth of the River Seine across from the great port city of le Havre. It is noted for its picturesque buildings and riverside life which attracted noted painters like Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, and Claude Monet who chose it for many landscapes and street scenes. It was also the birthplace of the composer and pianist Éric Satie (1866 – 1925). 

The address of 15 Rue Cachin is still a proper place and is visible on Google Street View where there is a shop offering language lessons. English for Success!    Sadly that ironic shop seems to have disappeared in 2016.  No.15 is the grey door.

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Monsieur Vernassier (or is it Madame? Or even Mademoiselle?) also played the harp. In this postcard she/he appears younger and has a different gown embellished  with elaborate embroidery. 

Louis Vernassier
l'homme protée
musical excentrique
dans son travesti - dame

Jouant Violon, Mandoline,
Mandole, Violoncelle, Piano,
Contrebasse, Guitare, Xylophone,
Grelots, Saxophone, Harpe,
cuivres etc. & tous
instrumenté Excentriques

 playing Violin, Mandolin, Mandola, Cello, Piano,
Bass, Guitar, Xylophone,
Bells, Saxophone, Harp,
brass etc. & all
instruments eccentrics.

The instrument is a concert harp with several pedals for changing to different musical keys. Because of its angelic symbolism, the harp was particularly associated with female musicians. Sometimes they were the only women of this era allowed to have membership in a professional orchestra.

< >

The postmark from Mortagne, France, which is a short distance south of Honfleur, is more clear with a date of 28 Juin 05 on the back. It was sent to Monsieur Emile Guibert of that small commune.

Vernassier has changed gowns again for this next postcard. She/he has no instrument and instead offers us a beguiling pose.

The archives of the internet have failed to produce any information about this performer. Even in France, his/her history remains a secret. 

* *

 

This next postcard is a variation on that same bewitching quality of cross dressing entertainers. Vernassier looks older and his/her choice of l'homme-protée musical dans son travesti
Dame as a subtitle description for his/her act is interesting. The English translation for l'homme protée is the man Proteus. Proteus was an ancient Greek god of rivers and seas. Like the sea, his shape was very changeable, which gave us the word protean meaning variable or capable of many shapes. Its theatrical meaning is more commonly interpreted as chameleon man.

The pioneering French film maker Georges Méliès made a silent movie in 1899 with this title, as did another Frenchman with Pathe films, Ferdinand Zecca, in 1907. Méliès movie title is translated as The Lightning Change Artist and the plot, such that there is one, has a man doing twenty complete costume changes in two minutes, combining them with dancing while in full sight of the audience.

* *

The phrase dans ses Travesti Dame translates as in his transvestite lady. In this next postcard 8 small portraits of Vernassier as a woman are arranged as the stylized leaves of a folding fan. In the corner is a portrait of Louis as a man. Her rather coquettish expressions suggest a certain camp humor, as the lower right image shows him removing his wig. 

This last postcard has Louis Vernassier shown in a double side by side portrait in both gender forms. He has even signed it Mes remerciement: Vernaissier – My thanks: Vernassier, though it is only a printed facsimile.


What kind of music did he play? Did he sing or dance? Was he a solo unaccompanied act or did he belong to a larger traveling music hall ensemble? Unfortunately I have discovered no answers.

Vernassier closely resembles another cross dressing American vaudeville entertainer from this same pre-war era, The Great Weber, who was featured on my blog back in October 2011. Weber also played multiple instruments and specialized in quick costume changes into eccentric comic characters. More recently this last year I wrote about Jose??? a German cross dressing performer who was a member of the traveling Wandertheater of the Kaiser's army in 1916.

Here is an extra bonus postcard I've recently acquired. It shows Vernassier standing with an elderly gentleman and the card's title reads:

Les Vernabene 

Could this be trick photography and both characters are the same man? Vernassier's beautiful gown is the same one she/he wears in the first postcards. 

* *

The playbills of early 20th century music halls included many entertainers exploiting the mystique of cross gender dress including several women who dressed as men. Our modern cinema has produced many similar story lines of men dressed as women. Two of my favorites are the 1959 film, Some Like It Hot, with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, and The Birdcage from 1996 with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. Both movie plots involve the confusion of sexual identity and the romance of musical revues. And of course The Birdcage was an American remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles, which was adapted from a 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret.

Our 21st century sensibility to human sexual nature is very different from those of Vernassier's era. Was he heterosexual, homosexual, or transgender? I don't think there is any way we can know. He certainly must have had talent to produce such a clever act and become a successful artist on the musical stage. It is also clear that he understood good marketing to have circulated so many different promotional images. But what is more difficult for us to imagine is the strong will necessary to endure the bigotry, misguided slurs, and violence that would have been directed against him. It was not a liberal or tolerant age. It took great courage to create an act like this. From our perspective in time we can only admire his audacity and charm that make us wish we could have heard him.
.  

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everything is not what it seems.

   UPDATE 11 JAN 2015    

The internet revealed nothing about "Louis Vernassier" but I am never satisfied until I've tried every variation. Today I wondered what "Vernassier Louis" or even "L. Vernassier" might bring up. To my surprise, there were a few citations using only his initials which connected him to the history of early French cinema. In particular the French version of the first primitive motion pictures called the Kinetoscope.  This mechanical film strip device was developed in the US in the late 1880s at Thomas Edison's labs by William Dickson.  By 1895 both Britain and France had their own competing machines that became popular attractions at fairs and carnivals. One website referred to L. Vernassier's Théâtre des Merveilles or Theater of Marvels. But it was this next image found on a French museum archive  that provides the best connection to Vernassier. It is a traveling Kinetoscope trailer parked on a French street with a crowd of people waiting to pay 5¢ and watch the amusing moving images. The date is unsure but 190? is written on the bottom.

The proprietor's name on the signboard is L. Vernassier.

Source: Musée des Civilisations de l'Europen

Now go back and image the 8 images of Vernassier on the fan shaped postcard flipping through a Kinetoscope. Do you see the big finish with the flourish of her wig?

One last reference came up for "Vernassier, Louis" in a French military record for the Great War of 1914-18. A soldier with that name was killed in action at Saint-Jean-de-Bassel on 20 August 1914.