Chung Ling Soo (William Ellsworth Robinson) | William Robinson on a chinoiserie service

Chung Ling Soo (William Ellsworth Robinson)

Chung Ling Soo The Marvellous Chinese Conjuror. Ashton-under-Lyne: Horrocks & Co., ca. 1908

Color lithograph poster (30 x 19 3/4 in.; 763 x 502 mm). A bit of inconspicuous overprinting in the shaded portion of the magician's face in central plate, otherwise flawless. Laid down on linen.

Robinson is depicted in a bust portrait in his guise as Chung Ling Soo on a large, central chinoiserie willow pattern plate, surrounded by eighteen smaller plates of various sizes from the same service, all against a background of bamboo rattan. A very fine example.

"William Ellsworth Robinson was the living embodiment of deception. An American, he pretended to be Chinese and performed as Chung Ling Soo" (Magic). The magician's true identity was widely known within the professional magic community, but it was not revealed to the the general public until he was killed onstage doing his famous bullet catch illusion, "Condemned to Death by the Boxers," in London in 1918.

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 40