Oporto, from the City Flags series (N6) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1887

Editor: Okay, so this is “Oporto, from the City Flags series (N6) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands," from 1887. It looks like a drawing and a print. It has this fantastic, almost dreamlike quality with that layered flag dominating the city below. It's giving me Ukiyo-e vibes, too, a bit like a Hiroshige print. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Ah, yes, the "City Flags" series. What grabs me is how it marries the commercial with the cultured. Can you imagine flipping through cigarette cards and landing on Oporto, a port city wreathed in history and commerce? Allen & Ginter were really selling a dream, weren't they? A very *smoky* dream! Editor: Selling the world one flag at a time! How much of the place is accurate? Curator: Truth is... Allen & Ginter likely used other prints as a basis, probably filtered through popular imagination. What's captivating here isn't documentary precision. It's that wash of watercolour – blurring boundaries between advertisement, education, and exoticism. You get the sense of Oporto, even if you're not necessarily getting Oporto, *exactly*. See how the flag seems to want to overflow the image, and seems painted loosely in the ukiyo-e or japonisme style with watercolor? Editor: Yes! It’s the vibe of Oporto…distilled. It really makes you consider what images we choose to represent ourselves. Curator: Precisely! It asks: what face do we offer the world? And is that face built on facts or something far more intriguing? The artist really transports the viewer through the perspective of time, cultural association, and geography.