Maud Stevens Wagner: The Mona Lisa of American Tattoo (Last of the Hand Tattoo Artists

The Mona Lisa of American Tattoo
The true story of Maud Wagner—contortionist, aerial artist, carnival performer and barker, wife, and mother—who defied Victorian-era conventions to blaze her own trail.
The true story of Maud Wagner—contortionist, aerial artist, carnival performer and barker, wife, and mother—who defied Victorian-era conventions to blaze her own trail.

Maud Stevens Wagner, the "Mona Lisa of American tattoo," was an ardent individualist who left home at a young age to pursue a career of her own making. An acrobat, she exuded an athletic strength as an aerial artist and contortionist. In the early 20th century, she was a thoroughly modern woman who asserted her independence and her own identity.

Together with her husband, Gus (known as the “most artistically marked-up man in America"), Maud balanced parenting and work, traveling around the country as the Wagner’s Traveling Museum, exhibiting themselves and making tattoos in circus and carnival sideshows, dime museums, and pop-up shops. At the height of their careers, Maud and Gus established the Wagner Amusement Company and expanded their work to become promoters of street fairs, carnivals, and expositions.  

This book is the second of three in the series Last of the Hand Tattoo Artists, detailing the lives of Gus Wagner, Maud Wagner, and their daughter, Lotteva. Author Alan Govenar brings you Maud’s story with 

• an oral history from Maud’s daughter Lotteva Wagner Davis;
• archival photos of Maud, Gus, and Maud's tattoos;
• clippings and photographs from Gus Wagner’s scrapbooks;
• the Wagners' tattoo flash from Gus Wagner's notebooks; and
• newspaper articles and obituaries detailing Maud’s life.

As the author eloquently puts it, “In one sense, Gus and Maud challenged all expectations, but in another, they embodied and celebrated the can-do spirit intrinsic to American life.”

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