Tompkins Real Wild West Poster with Plains Portrait

$2,200.00

American, printed by Donaldson Lithograph Company

United States

1914

Color lithograph on paper, framed

30 x 44 inches framed (76 x 112 cm)

Private collection, upstate New York

The poster is lettered Tompkins' Real Wild West in red and blue across the head, above a bust portrait of a Plains man set against a yellow disc. He wears a full eagle feather war bonnet with beaded browband and trailing ribbons, his face rendered in strong naturalistic color, with painted tipis to either side against a green ground. The sheet is clean and bright with strong color, presented in an archival frame.

Charles H. Tompkins was a Texas roper and rider who directed the Congress of Champion Ropers and Riders at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. From 1913 to 1917 he and his wife operated the Real Wild West and Frontier Exhibition in combination with the Cooper-Whitbys circus, mixing Wild West acts with aerial wire, acrobatic, trick bicycle and trained animal acts of the European circus tradition, and the show closed at the outbreak of American involvement in World War I. Tompkins was a friend of the performer and humorist Will Rogers, and his posters were printed by the Donaldson Lithograph Company of Newport, Kentucky, a leading printer of American show paper.

We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.

American, printed by Donaldson Lithograph Company

United States

1914

Color lithograph on paper, framed

30 x 44 inches framed (76 x 112 cm)

Private collection, upstate New York

The poster is lettered Tompkins' Real Wild West in red and blue across the head, above a bust portrait of a Plains man set against a yellow disc. He wears a full eagle feather war bonnet with beaded browband and trailing ribbons, his face rendered in strong naturalistic color, with painted tipis to either side against a green ground. The sheet is clean and bright with strong color, presented in an archival frame.

Charles H. Tompkins was a Texas roper and rider who directed the Congress of Champion Ropers and Riders at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. From 1913 to 1917 he and his wife operated the Real Wild West and Frontier Exhibition in combination with the Cooper-Whitbys circus, mixing Wild West acts with aerial wire, acrobatic, trick bicycle and trained animal acts of the European circus tradition, and the show closed at the outbreak of American involvement in World War I. Tompkins was a friend of the performer and humorist Will Rogers, and his posters were printed by the Donaldson Lithograph Company of Newport, Kentucky, a leading printer of American show paper.

We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.