Mark Twain / Sarah Bernhardt / Pietro Mascagni / Gerhart Hauptmann / Ernest van Dyck etc. - Fan signed by Mark Twain and many other important artists and musicians - 1893

Superb collection of signatures (with a few others, including one partly with original smudge, the rest excellent), on a silk fan with dark wood spokes and the owner’s fine silver monogram ‘H [von] G’ under a heraldic coronet of five pearls, the fan was made in Vienna where most of the signatures were collected, a few at St Moritz, Gastein, Salzburg or Munich, they range from Sarah Bernhardt in 1893, Mark Twain in Vienna 1897 through to Felix Dahn in 1901, Gebrüder Rodeck, Vienna, circa 1893.
Mark Twain (Nov. 8 1897) and his family had settled in Vienna for the winter at the Hotel Metropole, where their apartment became a kind of ‘social clearing house’ for literary and artistic people. At a time when tensions in the Empire were growing, Austrians of progressive thought were not exactly encouraged, and the signatures reflect the welcome given in society to distinguished foreigners.
Sarah Bernhardt (1893) had made extended tours since 1891 to Australia, North and South America, and the chief capitals of Europe. In October 1893 she took over the Renaissance theatre in Paris under her reforming management – no prompter, no claque.
Pietro Mascagni (9th November 1895) was only 26 when he wrote Cavalleria Rusticana (1890). He brought a new ‘realism’ to the stage, (revolutionary in the Italian opera), as did Gerhart Hauptmann (28th December 1895) and Hermann Sudermann (12th November 1895) with their plays. The latter’s Heimat (‘Home’, 1891) had questioned unfeeling traditional morality. Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse performed it as Magda in London in 1895 in rival productions.
Ruggero Leoncavallo (7th December 1897) had shot to fame in 1892 in Milan with Pagliacci, a tribute to verismo with his own libretto. His second opera, his version of La Bohème, competing with Puccini’s but reflecting the whole story of the original novel, had premièred in Venice on 6th May 1898. Now he was trying to arrange a performance in Vienna, which took place in February 1898, rather against the wishes of Gustav Mahler, who was standing in for director Jahn.
Bronislaw Huberman (St Moritz, 23rd September (?) 1895) had outshone Patti at her farewell concert in Vienna on 22nd January 1895. He returned to Vienna in October 1895 and there, on 29th January 1896, Brahms was overcome by the 13-year old’s playing of his Violin Concerto.
Ernest van Dyck (14th November 1895), following an outstanding appearance at Bayreuth in 1888, was engaged by the Vienna Opera, where he stayed for nine years..
Vasily Vereshchagin (November 1897) was one of the first Russian artists to be widely known outside his country. Living in Germany, he painted symbolic pictures with almost photographic realism. Von Moltke, after seeing his 1882 exhibition in Berlin, forbade German soldiers to visit it, and the Austrian government reacted similarly.
Franz von Lenbach (Munich, 1896) was the accomplished ‘realist’ painter and portraitist of some of the most famous people of the time. He signs within a flourish shaped like a palette and brushes.
Felix Dahn (22nd December 1901), now rector of the university at Breslau, capital of Prussian Silesia, was a household name for his historical romances and his poems, epics of the German peoples from the mists of time. Meticulously researched, they gave an immediacy to what were previously disjointed memories.
The slightly smudged signature (Salzburg, 23rd September 1901) we think is (Gustav) Adolph von Meng-T[rimmis], (1865-1957, Swiss Artist), or a near relation.