Standard Bearer, Austria, 1853, from the Military Series (N224) issued by Kinney Tobacco Company to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes 1888

Curator: This lithograph, printed in 1888 by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, features a “Standard Bearer, Austria, 1853” and it comes from their Military Series designed to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. Editor: Wow, he looks incredibly serious! Almost… cartoonishly stern, doesn’t he? Like he’s guarding a secret stash of schnitzel, not just a flag. Curator: What intrigues me here is thinking about what purpose images like this fulfilled at the time. We need to remember this was meant for a mass audience, distributed within cigarette packs. How did these kinds of portraits shape ideas around nationality and militarism for consumers? Editor: Good point! Maybe it’s just me, but the stiff posture, the bright colors… it feels like it's selling a fantasy as much as tobacco. Look at the detail in his uniform, versus his… shall we say, "simplified" facial features. It is as if we see him at a sort of a distance. He’s not real. Curator: The “distance” is a really interesting point. There is almost no way someone consuming a product like "Sweet Caporal" cigarettes might ever see someone from the Austrian military at the time. And so it serves as an imagined vision of "Austria", right? Moreover, these images often reinforced existing power dynamics by glamorizing military service. Editor: Absolutely! You almost forget this little guy existed to get people to buy more cigarettes. Now I wonder if there’s something ironic, subversive even, to have serious-looking soldiers shilled in tobacco products like this, I mean it sort of deflates its supposed solemnity... like it's self-aware? Nah, I guess that's wishful thinking! Curator: It’s tempting, I think, to assume complete cynicism, but there could have also been genuine admiration, a different conception of duty, class, gender, empire… The image doesn’t answer that question; instead it poses it to us. And yes, let’s not forget how deeply rooted the whole enterprise was in global systems of extraction, labor and inequality! Editor: Right, the tobacco trade itself, let alone military conflict, never occurs in a vacuum. I came in here expecting some vintage kitsch, but I leave thinking about all sorts of unseen economic dynamics. Amazing how such a tiny image could hold so much... smoke!