French, Market Girl of Paris, from Types of Nationalities (N240) issued by Kinney Bros. 1890

This small chromolithograph was produced by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company as part of a series called “Types of Nationalities.” It depicts a woman identified as a French “Market Girl of Paris,” but what can this image tell us about the social and institutional context in which it was made? The image presents a stereotype. It's not just a portrait, but a commercial item designed to evoke certain ideas about France and its people. In the late 19th century, the rise of mass media and advertising led to increased circulation of such images and encouraged the reinforcement of national stereotypes in ways that would have been new. To better understand this image, we might look at the history of advertising and the tobacco industry, or at the visual culture of 19th-century France, to see how national identity was constructed and marketed, both in France and abroad. The meaning of such an image is contingent on its historical and social context, and it's up to us as historians to uncover it.