Printed and Manuscript Americana

Rochester: Steam Press of Curtis, Morey & Co., July, 1865. Printed broadside, 23 1/2 x 8 3/4 in. (597 x 222 mm). Illustrated with wood engraved vignette. Mounted to board; scattered soiling and minor dampstaining. In frame, 24 1/4 x 9 3/8 in. (616 x 238 mm).

A fine and rare broadside for circus impresario Isaac A. Van Amburgh's traveling menagerie, one of the last of his traveling circuses conducted during his lifetime. Advertising the first annual tour of his "New Collection of Living Wild Animals" and the "Largest Traveling Exhibition on the Globe!", the show made six stops throughout New York, in Geneva, Penn Yan, Prattsburgh, Bath, Hornellsville, and Andover, and featured a series of exhibits, including a "Remarkable Variety of Extremely Rare Species...Never Before Exhibited in this country". This included a giraffe, a royal Bengal tiger, sloth bears from India, a black African ostrich, a monster grizzly bear, an African zebra, as well as an Asiatic nyl-ghaus, Abyssinian ibex, a White peacock, and more. Other features of the show included, "The Australian Bird Show," "Highly Trained Ponies, Monkeys and Mules," and the "Performing Elephant, Tippoo Saib".

Isaac A. Van Amburgh (1808–1865) was a pioneering American animal trainer who developed the first trained wild animal act in modern times, and who for the first time blended elements of circus acts and a menagerie. Born in Fishkill, New York, Van Amburgh was known as "the Lion King" for his fearlessness and often domineering relationship with his animals and began his career as a cage-cleaner at the Zoological Institute of New York, a small traveling menagerie. He gained the attention of the menagerie proprietors due to his ability to deftly interact with dangerous animals, and was promoted to perform his own shows that exhibited his daring feats, such as putting his head into the mouth of a lion, often while dressed in gladiatorial or biblical garb. After a wildly successful series of shows in England, Van Amburgh returned to the United States in 1845 where he started his own traveling menagerie, which became the largest and most successful in the country at that time. His performances became legendary, and in the process made him a very wealthy man. He died of a heart attack, in Philadelphia, in November, 1865, only four months after the above series of shows.