Flora Aestiva, Goddess of Summer, from the Goddesses of the Greeks and Romans series (N188) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1889

This chromolithograph of ‘Flora Aestiva, Goddess of Summer’ was produced in the United States, most likely in the late nineteenth century, by the Wm. S. Kimball & Co. as a trade card. The image draws on classical allegories of idealized beauty and abundance that were popular in academic painting, yet it does so in the service of branding a commercial product: tobacco. These small cards, collected and traded by consumers, formed a crucial part of the marketing strategies of many companies. We see how cultural references of the elite world were used to build aspirational associations around mass-produced goods. Understanding this image means delving into the history of advertising and consumer culture, using resources like trade journals and company archives to uncover the complex interplay between art, commerce, and society. The politics of imagery were central to how institutions shaped popular taste and reinforced social hierarchies.