1914 Signed Sarah Bernhardt Photo, 11" X 15", Very Nice

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1914 Signed Sarah Bernhardt Photo, 11" X 15", Very NiceWonderful large signed photo, " To Miss Hickox, Sarah Bernhardt, 1914. "She is wearing a great outfit. My photos don't do this piece justice.In a 13 " X 17" Period Frame, wood panel backed. Sarah Bernhardt (c. 22/23 October 1844 — 26 March 1923) was a French stage and early film actress , and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". [2 ] Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas . She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the nickname "The Divine Sarah".Bernhardt was born in Paris as Rosine Bernardt ,[ 3] the daughter of Julie Bernardt (1821, Amsterdam – 1876, Paris) and an unknown father. Julie was one of six children of a widely traveling Jewish spectacle merchant, "vision specialist" and petty criminal, Moritz Baruch Bernardt, and Sara Hirsch (later known as Janetta Hartog; c. 1797–1829). [4 ] Julie's father remarried Sara Kinsbergen (1809–1878) two weeks after his first wife's death, and abandoned his family in 1835. [4 ] Julie left for Paris, where she made a living as a courtesan and was known by the name "Youle". Sara would add the letter "H" to both her first and last names. Sarah's birth records were lost in a fire in 1871, but in order to prove French citizenship, necessary for Légion d'honneur eligibility, she created false birth records, on which she was the daughter of "Judith van Hard" and "Edouard Bernardt" from Le Havre , in later stories either a law student, accountant, naval cadet or naval officer. As the presence of a baby interfered with her mother's life, Sarah was brought up in a pension , and later in a convent. A child of delicate health, she considered becoming a nun, but one of her mother's reputed lovers – the future Duc de Morny , Napoleon III 's half-brother – decided that Sarah should be an actress. When she was 13, le Duc de Morny arranged for her to enter the Conservatoire, the government sponsored school of acting. She was not considered a particularly promising student, and, although she revered some of her teachers, she regarded the Conservatoire's methods as antiquated and too deeply steeped in tradition. [6 ][ 7] Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt's life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, fils described her as a notorious liar. Sarah Bernhardt left the Conservatoire in 1862, and, thanks to the Duc de Morny‘s influence, was accepted by the national theatre company, the Comédie-Française , as a beginner on probation. During the obligatory three debuts required of probationers, her talents were scarcely noticed by critics. Her contract with Comédie-Française was canceled in 1863 after she slapped the face of a senior actress who had been rude to her younger sister. For a time she found employment at the Théâtre du Gymnase-Dramatique where she was given the part of a silly Russian princess, further compromising her already volatile reputation. She decided to leave France, and soon ended up in Belgium, where she became the mistress of Henri, Prince de Ligne, and gave birth to their son, Maurice, in 1864. After Maurice's birth, the Prince proposed marriage, but his family forbade it and convinced Bernhardt to refuse and end their relationship. [8 ] In 1866 she signed a contract with Odéon Theatre in Paris. During six years of intensive work with a congenial company there, she gradually established her reputation. Her first success was as Anna Damby in the 1868 revival of Kean (by the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas père ). Bernhardt’s greatest triumph at the Odéon, however, came in 1869 when she portrayed the minstrel Zanetto in the one-act verse play Le Passant (“The Passerby”) by the young dramatist François Coppée , a part that she played again in a command performance before Napoleon III. [9 ][ 10 ] During this time that she acquired her famous coffin, in which she often sle... read more

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