(MUSIC) MINSTRELSY La Rues Minstrels The Model Troupe of the

Sale 2204 - Lot 328

Price Realized: $ 1,440

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(MUSIC.) MINSTRELSY La Rue's Minstrels. The Model Troupe of the World Poster, 30x11 inches; large woodcut vignette and 10 smaller woodcuts; printed in over 35 distinctly different fonts; cheap, post-Civil War paper toned, with signs of old tape repairs; a few small missing pieces in the lower right corner, obscuring part of one of the smaller woodcuts. Portsmouth, (1869)

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A rare minstrelsy poster and an outstanding example of the printer's art, utilizing just about every font in the typesetter's box. Minstrelsy is one of the earliest indigenous forms of American entertainment. Beginning in the 1840s, the form peaked during Reconstruction and remained popular into the early 1900s. The minstrel show itself was a hybrid that evolved from two popular forms of entertainment in America before 1830: the performances of black musicians who sang and danced, with banjo or "bones" accompaniment, and the impersonation of blacks by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses.