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Sepia photograph of prima ballerina Anna Pavlova in costume for the Marius Petipa piece The Seasons (Les Saisons) in the role of Bacchante, for the Imperial ballet, taken by Herman Mishkin in 1910. 20 x 15 cm. Very small chips to corners, small stain and abrasions. Imprinted at bottom right is a copyright symbol followed by "Mishkin Studio N.Y." Penciled on verso: "755-4500 EXT 34 Mrs. [Popper?]" and a five-line Release Statement printed in purple ink. Mrs. Popper, formerly Miss Corinne Bloomingdale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lyman G. Bloomingdale lived on east 66th st. around 1904. She married Arthur Popper. Lyman Bloomingdale was one of the founders of Bloomingdale's Department Stores. Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (in Cyrillic: ???? ???????? ???????, born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova (Russian: ???? ????????? ???????)(12 February [O.S. 31 January 1881 - 23 January 1931), was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was born in the Preobrazhensky Regiment hospital, Saint Petersburg where her father, Matvey Pavlovich Pavlov, served. Some sources say that her parents married just before her birth, others, years later. Her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna Pavlova, came from peasants and worked as a laundress at the house of a Russian-Jewish banker, Lazar Polyakov. When Anna rose to fame, Polyakov's son Vladimir claimed that she was an illegitimate daughter of his father; others claimed that Matvey Pavlov himself came from Crimean Karaites. There is even a monument dedicated to Pavlova in Yevpatoria's kenesas, the Karaite synagogue in Crimea. Herman Mishkin (March 1870 Minsk, Russia - February 6, 1948) was a Russian-American photographer in Manhattan, New York City. He specialized in photographing opera singers. Mishkin migrated to the United States in 1885. He bought a camera and started taking photographs in the 1880s. He married and had a son, Leo Mishkin. 1890-1932. Miskin's studio was at 42nd & Fifth Avenue, New York City. While working as a store clerk in the lower east side of the New York City, he was caught up in the amateur photography boom of the 1880s. He bought a camera and began taking pictures of whomever he could find to sit still. Aime Dupont, the Belgian sculptor turned photographer, and his wife, photographer Etta Greer, moved to New York at this time, having established a reputation as a portraitist of opera singers in Paris. His images were a sensation and Dupont quickly became the favorite of singers performing in New York City. Mishkin studied Dupont's images for form, particularly after talking himself into a position with Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company as a photographer-publicist. In 1900 Aime Dupont died and his wife, Etta, took over the portrait business. When the Metropolitan Opera consolidated in 1906, it hired actor-photographer Frank C. Bangs as its first official photographer. Mishkin replaced Bangs in 1908 and served as the Met's official portraitist until 1932. In the 1910s the status of a portrait photographer depended upon the painted flats used as backgrounds, with Society photographers possessing the most and most elaborate. The greatest photographic background painter of the Gilded Age, Lafayette W. Seavey, had died shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Mishkin made arrangements with operatic set painters to supply his studio flats. From 1910 to 1920 only Ira L. Hill had backdrop paintings in New York that rivaled Mishkin's. While Mishkin's studio operated as a general purpose portrait establishment, his contractual arrangement with the Met had him produce the lobby portraits and publicity shots for Met productions for a quarter of a century. His work as an operatic photographer is memorialized in Robert Tuggle's 1983 volume, The Golden Age of Opera. David S. Shields/ALS. Mishkin was the foremost portrayer of Golden Era opera singers. Seller Inventory # 015717
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