A tall man dressed as Mephistopheles leans in close to Harry Kellar, who stands with his wand lowered. Kellar was known as the Dean of American Magicians. The Strobridge Lithographing Company, founded in Cincinnati in 1847, printed a number of posters for him in the 1890s, many of them crowded with imps, devils, cauldrons and spectral figures.
Kellar retired in 1908.
On the poster
Kellar stands centre-stage in black evening dress. The Mephistopheles figure is green-suited and pointed-eared, and he gestures as he leans in. Around them a white-robed female apparition rises beside a basket of pink roses at left. A skull-footed cauldron throws orange flames at centre. A great open grimoire sits on a candlelit lectern with an owl beside it. A blindfolded young woman stands at a numbered board while a red-winged imp hovers at her shoulder, and bats and a second spectral figure cross a moonlit gothic arch at upper right.
"KELLAR" fills the upper left in bold dimensional letters, yellow-white with a cadmium red-orange outline. It is the only lettering on the sheet.
About this print
A digitally restored reproduction, printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art paper with pigment inks.
