Five Big Scary Clowns (1856)
Heroic in scale (8.5 x 11 feet), its life-sized figures towered above the viewer
“Five Celebrated Clowns Attached to Sands, Nathans & Company’s Circus” was submitted as a copyright deposit in 1856. At the time, there was little interest in the billboard-size poster—so little, in fact, that it remained sealed in the package in which it came for an entire century.
When staff from the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division decided to examine the poster in 1956, they found that it had become brittle. To unfold the poster, staff called on Library colleagues with expertise in treating old paper. Today, the color advertisement is the earliest surviving poster in the Prints and Photographs Division.
Some have speculated that its long neglect had saved its life: if it had been given routine attention as an object submitted for copyright, it would most likely have been thrown out when the copyright expired and before the importance we see in it now had become apparent. By 1963, the poster’s historical and sociological significance had become clear, as had its esthetic importance as a woodcut of enormous size—it is more than 11 feet wide.
It was designed by Joseph W. Morse, who devised a system for printing theatrical posters from large blocks of wood. He was a cousin of Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. The firm of Morse, M’Kenney & Co. registered the poster on June 10, 1856, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The Sands, Nathans & Company’s Circus operated from about 1855 to 1863, according to A History of the Circus in America by George L. Chindahl. It was noted for its two performing elephants, Victoria and Albert, and its calliope, a “robust music maker belching steam and smoke. ~ Hidden from Sight, a Giant Circus Poster Is Saved ~ Wendi A. Maloney
Title: Five celebrated clowns attached to Sands, Nathans Co's Circus
Created / Published: Morse, M'Kenney & Company, 1856.
Medium: 1 print (poster) : woodcut, color.
Library of Congress Control Number: 96507697
Cool poster of the Freedom Caucus!