"The Three Polar Stars" - Signed Photograph to Mary Garden

A large original photograph of the three great explorers Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton and Robert Peary, signed and inscribed by Amundsen to the soprano Mary Garden "in highest admiration" and dated San Francisco, March 26th, 1913. The three men are shown posing around a globe at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, photographed by William H. Rau on January 16, 1913. Interestingly, the globe is oriented on its side, so that the South Pole is appropriately pointed at Roald Amundsen and the North Pole at Peary. 34 x 29 cm. A few nicks to edges, toned, else in fine condition. A remarkable association. 

This inscription was made the day after Garden performed her famously scandalous Salome at the San Francisco Tivoli. The San Francisco Call wrote: "There was a great audience out in front to see Mary Garden take off her seven veils. There was a vicious plot inviting her to the task. To the credit of Mary, she left off on this side of the law, but with all her art she could not make 'Salome' a decency, nor inspire a hearer with the desire to sit through the one act play again [...] How Strauss could have come to put this indecent story to music is as hard to understand as how Mary Garden could have come to play it."

The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen navigated the Northwest Passage, fixed the position of the North Magnetic Pole, and was the first to reach the South Pole. His team of explorers reached the South Pole in December 1911, five weeks ahead of the British party led by Robert Falcon Scott. Amundsen was roundly honored for his conquest of the South Pole in 1912, and his fellow polar explorers joined him in this instance for a dinner given in their honor, as well as at other stops on the same lecture tour.  Amundsen later disappeared during a flight to rescue fellow explorer Umberto Nobile, who became lost returning from the North Pole. (14762)

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Signed Photograph

History & Historiography

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