Marie Hall photo violin violinist "Midget Postcard"

Description

Hello!
For sale I have a period postcard photo of violinist Marie Hall.  On the reverse it is titled "Midget Post Card," measuring 3 1/2 x 2 7/8 inches.  Very rare!  The only one I've seen.  The postcard has been used and mailed in England in 1904.  The note on the back is rather funny.  Fine condition.  USPS Priority Mail insured.
I have been a professional violinist for 20 years. I currently teach violin at University of California, Berkeley, and play Concertmaster for the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera. I've been buying and selling music memorabilia on eBay since it was invented and I've been buying antique art from European and American auction houses for a decade. All pieces for sale are guaranteed authentic and come from my personal collection, which numbers in the thousands.
To learn more about me before buying, visit danflanaganviolin dot com.
Marie Pauline Hall
(8 April 1884 – 11 November 1956) was an English
violinist
.
Hall was born in
Newcastle upon Tyne
, England. She received her first lessons from her father, who was a
harpist
in the orchestra of the
Carl Rosa Opera Company
. She also studied with a local teacher, Hildegarde Werner. Hall's family moved around the country with her father and spent some years in
Guarlford
, a small village near
Malvern
. When she was nine,
Émile Sauret
heard her play, and she gained one of the recently instituted Wessely Exhibitions at the
Royal Academy of Music
, London: but owing to her father's lack of means she did not take it up.
[1]
[4]
She continued to study under several well known teachers, including a year with
Edward Elgar
in 1894 aged 10,
August Wilhelmj
in London in 1896, and
Max Mossel
[
nl
]
in Birmingham in 1898.
[5]
The story goes that a clergyman found her in a half-starved condition playing for coppers in the streets of
Bristol
, took her to London and with the assistance of some friends—including
W. Ebsworth Hill
of the renowned violin makers
W.E. Hill & Sons
—placed her in a position to receive lessons from Professor Johann Kruse
[6]
(who had studied with
Joachim
) in 1900.
[4]
In 1901, upon the advice of
Jan Kubelík
, she went to study under his former tutor
Otakar Ševčík
in
Prague
.
[4]
[7]
Hall played for the first time in Prague in November 1902,
Vienna
in January 1903, and made her London début on 16 February 1903 aged nineteen with
Henry Wood
at
St James's Hall
. The demanding programme included
Paganini's first concerto
, the
Tchaikovsky concerto
and
Henryk Wieniawski
's
Fantaisie Brillante
on themes from
Faust
.
[8]
[9]
She scored a success in all these places.
[10]
She made an international concert tour in 1904, playing in Germany, Canada, America and Australia,
[10]
including an impromptu concert in a large marquee in Fiji with a particularly badly-tuned piano.
[11]
She made a tour through South Africa in 1910, for which she received £10,000 (,000) said at the time to be the largest ever paid to a violinist.
[12]
She possessed a technique that she believed was due to Ševčík's teaching. While she appeared to be not very strong physically, Hall proved herself strong enough to go on long tours and perform exacting programs without fatigue.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
completed
The Lark Ascending
with Hall's assistance, and dedicated it to her. She gave the first public performances, that for violin and piano at a concert of the Avonmouth and Shirehampton Choral Society on 15 December 1920, and that for violin and orchestra at the
Queen's Hall
with the
British Symphony Orchestra
under
Adrian Boult
on 14 June 1921.
[13]
She owned and played one of the two
Viotti Stradivarius
violins.
In 1916, she recorded an abridged version of the
Elgar Violin Concerto
with the composer conducting.
Hall has been described as "perhaps the most successful woman violinist of any during the pre-war period, a truly international celebrity,”
[8]
and as "a very charming woman, very small and jolly and with a great sense of humour. She was also extremely generous."
[10]
She died in Cheltenham on 11 November 1956.
The 1709
Stradivarius
violin which she played for more than 50 years, now known as the "Marie Hall Stradivarius,” was sold at
Sotheby's
in April 1988 for a record £473,000 to an anonymous South American bidder.
[14]
In 1911, Hall married her business manager Edward Baring; they settled in
Cheltenham
and had one child, Pauline.
[1]
For the last years of her life she lived in Cheltenham in a large Victorian villa, "Inveresk", in Eldorado Road.