39. Sarony, Major & Knapp
after Leon Job Vernert (fl. 1850-70)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk

(click on image to print)
after Vernet, Gottschalk

Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Lithograph, ca. 1858(?), 548 x 442 mm. Gottschalk (1829-1869) was a New Orleans-born composer and piano virtuoso, who enjoyed huge success in Europe (including praise from Chopin, Berlioz and Thalberg), and gave his American debut in New York in 1853. Once an all-but-forgotten figure, his “American-flavored” music is now as familiar as the rags of Scott Joplin, another once-forgotten composer. He sits here, an elegant man of the world, beside his Chickering piano, on which rests a volume of his compositions. Fine impression in brown in an inscribed oval on heavy wove paper; a few stains and damages outside the oval.