CODY, Wyo. (AP) – More than 20,000 people packed the grandstands at a London performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1887, including Queen Victoria and members of the royal family.
The story of the performance, which helped solidify William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s reputation as an international celebrity and American folk hero, is well known.
But it came as a surprise to Western historians when a large poster depicting the command performance surfaced in an auction Sept. 8 at Poster Auctions International in New York. The auctioneer reports the price at $60,000, not including a buyer’s premium.
Nothing as large or in such fine condition was known to exist, and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody jumped at the opportunity to add the historical “show bill” to the museum’s vast collection.
“We have other posters here, but most of them are considerably smaller,” said John Rumm, the center’s curator of Western American history. “We have a few that are large, but nothing as large as this one. As intact as it was, it looks like it had come off the press only yesterday.”
It’s unknown where the poster originated, and where it has been the past 123 years. Given its condition, Rumm said, it’s possible that the show bill was never used because of a slight bleeding of the ink.
“Posters of this size were intended to attract as much attention as possible,” Rumm said. “It would have been plastered on the wall of a large building, or on the fence around the arena where the Wild West Show would be performing. It would have been eye-catching.”
It was May 11, 1887, when Cody staged his Wild West Show before Queen Victoria.
The queen was so impressed by the show, Rumm said, that she requested an encore performance on June 20. The show attracted the kings of Denmark, Greece and Belgium, the crown princes of Germany and Austria, and the princes and princesses of Prussia and Wales, among others.
Over the course of that season, Rumm said, the Wild West Show dazzled European crowds. It was Cody’s first trip abroad.
“He was lionized,” Rumm said. “In terms of America, he came back to a sort of hero’s welcome. He was seen as representing the U.S. at a time when the country was still seen as a second-rate world power.”
Rumm believes the poster was printed in 1888 after the Wild West Show returned from London. It’s unknown if the artist who drew the poster worked off the sketch of another artist or a photograph taken in London.
“I haven’t seen this exact scene before, but I suspect the artist would have worked from a photograph or a rendition,” Rumm said. “It would have been done with the use of four-color printing and engraved blocks.”
To get the job done, Cody had turned to the Calhoun Printing Co. of Hartford, Conn., which enjoyed a national reputation for printing posters, show bills and other outdoor advertising materials.
But creating a four-color poster spanning 28 feet was something of an undertaking in 1887. The job required 763 printing blocks, each measuring about 29 by 12 inches. The poster itself includes 32 sheets, and would have been pieced together, not unlike decorators hanging wallpaper.
“Some of these Wild West pictures are the best samples of pine wood engraving ever seen,” the Hartford Courant reported on July 13, 1889. “Two or three of them are copies of Remington’s sketches in the Century, notably The Bucking Bronco and Saddling of Kicker. The immense portrait of Buffalo Bill is also a wonderful fine piece of work.”
Cody had signed a contract with Calhoun Printing in 1883, just as the Wild West Show was set to premiere. The firm was engaged to be the troupe’s primary supplier of advertising materials for six years, providing mostly single-sheet posters.
“Cody would have wanted to go with the best, and he did by contracting Calhoun,” Rumm said. “It was state of the art engraving, and it was pretty spectacular to have that kind of contract. They were the primary printers for P.T. Barnum as well.”
Rumm said the poster will serve as a centerpiece of a new museum display currently under construction.
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Information from: Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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