About: Lew Bloom

Lew Bloom (August 8, 1859 – December 12, 1929) was an American vaudeville performer and stage actor who popularized the comical tramp character. After retiring from the stage in the 1910s, he became a prolific art collector and dealer and also painted his own original works. Decades after his death, art conservators discovered that Bloom was the perpetrator of an art forgery involving an oil portrait that he claimed depicted First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.