Adam Forepaugh's America's Greatest Show: An Offering to Cupid – Vintage Poster
(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: Adam Forepaugh's America's Greatest Show: An Offering to Cupid, preserved in this vintage poster. Drawn from the Snapshots of the Past archive, it is an authentic piece of documented history.
Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. It brings character to any room and makes a memorable gift. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Adam Forepaugh's America's Greatest Show: An Offering to Cupid
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Where most circus bills promised lions, elephants and daring riders, this one frames its spectacle as an offering to Cupid, borrowing the language of classical myth to sell the show. Adam Forepaugh ran one of the largest traveling circuses in the United States and competed directly with P.T. Barnum, so bold color lithography like this was a key tool for drawing crowds to a town before the train arrived. Posters of this kind were pasted on barns, fences and storefronts, so they had to catch the eye from across a street. Today they offer a window onto how late nineteenth-century showmen sold entertainment to a mass public.
| Original scan | 1,160 × 1,459 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi |
|---|---|
| Reference | 3g05378_ |
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