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

This trade card from 1887, part of the “From the Girls and Children series” by Allen & Ginter, depicts a young child chasing a beetle with a butterfly net. The card was part of a set of collectible cards promoting “Our Little Beauties” Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter’s brand of tobacco products. The illustration features a charming, childlike innocence, typical of Victorian Era advertising. This piece, now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exemplifies the use of sentimental imagery in late 19th-century advertising.