Rich, Rare and Racy

 

Cincinnati Enquirer. 18 Feb 1903.

The short article above promoted a performance featuring Agnes Atherton O'Brien (my 2nd-great-aunt) in a club show for the Itannicnics (a fraternal organization using Cincinnati spelled backwards). The show promised something "rich, rare and racy". By this time in her career, Agnes was well known as a "queen of burlesque", and highly regarded for her singing and dancing.

This poster featuring a "Queen of the Itannicnics" from their September 1902 Fall Festival ran in the Cincinnati Post in August 1902. The poster takes some inspiration from the work of Alphonse Mucha, a famous Czech artist who I featured in my obituary for Agnes in October 2023. Mucha's work is currently on exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, and the Mucha Museum is on our list of museums to visit when we're in Prague in June.

Cincinnati Post. 1902.

Library of Congress. 1903.