Card Number 95, Clara Ellison, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-6) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Immediately I'm getting sepia tones, the hazy glow of antique portraiture… Editor: Exactly. What we're looking at is “Card Number 95, Clara Ellison” one of the portraits in the Actors and Actresses series (N145-6) created by W. Duke, Sons & Co. in the 1880s to promote Duke Cigarettes. So in addition to the beauty, and celebrity culture aspect it's also fundamentally an advert, created via drawing, printmaking and photography. Curator: The cigarette card size immediately tells a story too, right? Portable, collectible—images circulated widely like this create shared dreams, almost like miniature icons. But more commercial, obviously! It is quite charmingly antiquated… I mean, imagine collecting little portraits to go with your habit, both socially unacceptable now! Editor: True. What I see reflected is an emergent mass culture. Cheap and cheerful images like this allowed people access to the likenesses of famous stars; they were aspirational symbols in everyone's grasp. The portrait also reminds us that celebrity isn't a new phenomenon. Clara Ellison was a well-known actress, whose face boosted the sales of tobacco products. This speaks to our long and continuing fascination with actors, beauty and status! The cigarette companies understood this deeply, harnessing fame for profit… that seems surprisingly contemporary somehow. Curator: Completely. And you think about the choices in crafting the portrait itself! It feels less about capturing ‘Clara Ellison’ the person, and more about building an image of glamour that will seduce the consumer. The way her furs and fabrics are rendered almost dissolve her figure into a mass of fluffy wealth, it almost abstracts her form. I mean she looks like butterscotch, a living sweet! It also somehow obscures identity. And in terms of symbolism, what could be more evocative than a beautifully decorated actress beckoning smokers towards pleasure…albeit a potentially deadly one? Editor: A complicated pleasure, certainly. What this says to me is how portraits, and fame, can function as a hall of mirrors, they reflect back what we desire. In this case it was status, beauty, popularity. This wasn't really Clara Ellison per se, so much as it was her brand. Curator: Yes. It is a ghost of an actress; turned symbol, turned product. Ultimately I find the work beautiful but sad, a shadow of old commercialization. Editor: I agree; the portrait lingers, both for its beauty, and for the dark reminders of its marketing purposes and how they've changed... or not.