Llama, from Quadrupeds series (N41) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes 1890

Editor: This is “Llama, from Quadrupeds series (N41) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes,” made around 1890, currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a colored-pencil drawing and print combo that seems to compartmentalize the animal. What catches your eye about it? Curator: The separation of the image into distinct panels presents a fascinating exercise in visual hierarchy. Note how the llama is framed against a relatively sparse background, allowing its form and texture, delineated with a pointillist use of coloured pencil, to dominate the composition. Editor: So, the isolation of the llama emphasizes its features? Curator: Precisely. The artist has rendered the llama with considerable detail, employing variations in pressure to model form and create a tactile illusion. Meanwhile, the flanking panels employ differing pictorial devices. We could consider these elements as operating semiotically. How does this articulation, its divisions, operate within the frame? Editor: I see what you mean; the different panels almost seem like studies in contrast: one depicting native hunting practices in the highlands, and one illustrating their local environment. Curator: And it's this contrast, this juxtaposition, that brings out the material facticity of this late 19th-century colour print. It is what the object IS, how its compositional devices call our attention to what is present—and absent. Editor: It's amazing how a seemingly simple print can have such layered meanings hidden within its structure! Curator: Indeed, by focusing on the formal relationships within the work, we are better able to engage with its intellectual and sensory offerings.