From the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 5) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes
ca. 1888
Medium
Albumen photograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 3/4 x 1 3/8 in. (7 x 3.5 cm)
Classification
Photographs|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick
Accession Number
63.350.203.45.880
Tags
Art Historical Context
This petite albumen photograph, part of Allen & Ginter's *Actors and Actresses* series (N45, 5) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes, captures glamour of late 19th-century theater stardom. Produced around 1888, these were innovative marketing tools inserted into cigarette packs, enticing collectors—often men and boys—with vivid portraits of popular actresses. Allen & Ginter, pioneering tobacco lithographers, issued sets like this to boost brand loyalty during the Gilded Age boom in consumer culture and mass production. The albumen process, using egg whites to bind light-sensitive silver salts, yie...
About the Artist
Allen & Ginter
Allen & Ginter, the pioneering American tobacco firm based in Richmond, Virginia, emerged around 1880 from the partnership of John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter, evolving from Allen's earlier John F. Allen & Company. Allen retired in 1882, succeeded by John Pope, yet the brand endured under Ginter's leadership, employing over 1,100 workers—mostly women—for hand-rolled cigarettes by 1886. Ginter, a Dut...