Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,” made a sensation in New York when she performed at Castle Garden in 1850. The impresario P.T. Barnum brought Lind to the United States and drummed up so much anticipation that forty-thousand people arrived to greet her ship in New York harbor. The ensuing “Lindomania” made the opera singer a celebrity and a wealthy woman. The sale of a wide range of products was part of Barnum’s unprecedented campaign to promote Lind’s two-year tour. Memorabilia included sheet music, songbooks, decorative prints, valentines, greeting cards, paper dolls, tobacco packages, cigar labels, glass flasks, ceramic lamps, lockets, children’s plates, pitchers and washbowls, commemorative silver medals, printed cotton, and wallpaper. Although the source of the lithograph in this tinsel painting remains unidentified, it resembles a print of Lind posed in her role as Amina in Bellini’s opera La Sonnambula.

Lee Kogan, "Wreath of Flowers with Lithograph of Jenny Lind," exhibition label for FOILED: Tinsel Painting in America. Lee Kogan, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2012-2013.