Two early original Sarony of New York cabinet photographs of the pianist and pedagogue as a boy, seated at a piano, dated 1887 copyright in the lower margin. Very fine. 4.25 x 6.5 inches; 10.8 x 16.5 cm each.

Hofmann was a famed piano virtuoso, born in Poland but raised in Berlin to encourage his musical career. He toured across Europe and culminated his childhood concert tour in America in 1887–88 with a 10-week, 52-concert tour of the United States, facilitated by Henry Abbey, bringing the child prodigy to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Baltimore. He withdrew from the concert platform in 1888, returning as a more mature artist in 1894, and after frequent international touring settled permanently in the US. He became the first head of the piano department of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and its director from 1927 to 1938.

Sarony's gallery was the most famous of the 300 photographic studios in New York City in the 1870s. His cabinet card portraits became immensely popular, the nineteenth-century equivalent to baseball cards or fan magazines. He was one of the photographers who helped create the modern concept of celebrity, marketing the faces of famous people so that others could see them in such detail that they felt they knew them personally.