Becker, Boston, National League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This small printed card of Becker from the Boston National League, comes to us from a bygone era, courtesy of the American Tobacco Company. I like to think about how artists and designers can be inspired by all sorts of things. Can you imagine that artist, hunched over their drawing board, trying to capture the dynamism of Becker reaching for that ball? There’s something so earnest about the design: the flat green background, the simplified rendering of Becker’s form. I feel that it’s about movement, about trying to freeze a fleeting moment in time. I wonder if the artist was a baseball fan. Did they feel any pressure knowing that their work would be reproduced on a mass scale? It's interesting to think about how images circulate and how meanings shift as they move through different contexts.