From the Girls and Children series (N58) promoting Our Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1887

This small chromolithograph was created in the United States, most likely in the late nineteenth century, as a promotional item for Allen & Ginter cigarettes. It comes from a series called 'From the Girls and Children', but it is a boy who is pictured here. The child is dressed in a costume vaguely evocative of the early modern era; perhaps he is meant to represent a young soldier. What are we to make of this image today? The commercial image was one of the main forms of visual culture in the late nineteenth century and one of the main ways that artists and designers sought to make a living. Art schools taught the techniques that would lend themselves to these kinds of images. The image draws on traditions of portraiture but also anticipates the use of children in advertising, with all of the attendant ethical issues that this raises. Looking at this image, historians might want to investigate archives of advertising imagery and also resources documenting debates about child labor in the nineteenth century. What we learn from art is often contingent on the social conditions and historical context in which it was made and received.