Oliver Reed and Aida the elephant
Pencil Portrait by Antonio Bosano.
Shopping Basket
The quality of the prints are at a much higher level compared to the image shown on the left.
Order
A3 Pencil Print-Price £20.00-Purchase
A4 Pencil Print-Price £15.00-Purchase
*Limited edition run of 250 prints only*
All Pencil Prints are printed on the finest Bockingford Somerset Velvet 255 gsm paper.
P&P is not included in the above prices.
Comments
Aida, the Elephant, lived at the Rotterdam Zoo until July 23rd, 1981, when she died at age 46. Aida arrived in Rotterdam from Thailand on Jul 9th, 1940, at the age of 5 years-old, already trained to obey some human commands in Thai. That was 2 months after the Nazi blitz bombing of Rotterdam on May 14th, 1940, which destroyed the old Rotterdam Zoo, killed over 900 people and left over 30,000 homeless. The zoo reopened in its current location in December of 1940. Aida then survived 18 Allied air force bombing runs over Rotterdam from June 1941 to December 1944 before enduring the Nazi food blockade of the Netherlands until May 1st, 1945 which claimed over 18,000 Dutch citizens the previous winter.
Until her death, Aida was a prized performing elephant at the Rotterdam Zoo often appearing before classes of children and responding to the commands of Erich Hagenbach, her trainer. She is immortalised in the film “Hannibal Brooks,” in which she co-starred with Oliver Reed.