Pheasant, from the Game Birds series (N40) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes 1888 - 1890

Curator: So, here we have "Pheasant" from the Game Birds series, a cigarette card from Allen & Ginter, dating from around 1888 to 1890. It’s a colored pencil drawing, then printed. Editor: What immediately hits me is this peculiar stillness. It's like a snapshot but imbued with such quiet formality. Curator: Interesting, because as a commercial print it served the very un-still purpose of enticing folks to buy tobacco! Editor: Sure, but observe how the pheasant is staged, almost as if for a formal portrait. The flattened perspective is like Ukiyo-e, while the ornate border further abstracts the figure and suggests refinement. The little birds perched on a twig complete a well-balanced composition. Curator: I see it—like haiku, this artwork speaks quietly of natural beauty and commerce existing in tandem, the simple beauty of a pheasant juxtaposed with a desire to sell us stuff. A contradiction embodied in a single image. It’s pure Japonisme, isn't it? Editor: Precisely. The adoption of Japanese aesthetic principles is evident not only in the composition but also in the simplification of form and decorative flatness. Curator: Knowing it’s a cigarette card, it's crazy to think that art was packaged alongside an addictive habit. Maybe beauty made the smoke more palatable, more enticing. Almost cruel, right? Editor: Perhaps. Or maybe art has always been entwined with commerce and the quotidian in surprising ways. Cigarette cards merely make that relationship explicit, presenting aesthetic contemplation and material consumption as intrinsically linked acts. Curator: Fair point. And isn’t that tension sort of what life’s about, you know? Between beauty and ugliness, stillness and chaos? Maybe these little cards offer more than just an escape—maybe they mirror our own internal wrestling match. Editor: Exactly! It prompts a conversation, if nothing else.