Card Number 215, Daisy Murdoch, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-7) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1880s

This small card, made by W. Duke, Sons & Co., presents an image of Daisy Murdoch, an actress, to promote Duke Cigarettes. Notice how the composition is structured around a vertical axis running through Murdoch, dividing the scene into balanced halves. The sepia tones give a soft, almost dreamlike quality, but also contribute to the flattening of the image. Murdoch, seemingly pausing on a rustic bridge, is rendered in a manner that blends the figure with the background, creating a unified surface effect. The elements—the water, the rough-hewn bridge, and the distant landscape—are organized to draw attention to the actress as an image. This image offers a semiotic interplay between the world of performance and the world of consumer goods, subtly encouraging a particular lifestyle through its representational choices. The flattening of the image acts not just aesthetically but also as part of a larger cultural and philosophical discourse on representation.