Huzzar, France, 1853, from the Military Series (N224) issued by Kinney Tobacco Company to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes
Medium
Commercial color lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (7 × 3.8 cm)
Classification
Prints|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
Burdick 218, N224.406
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the vibrant world of 19th-century advertising with *Huzzar, France, 1853*, a petite commercial color lithograph from Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department. Issued in 1888 by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company as of their Military Series (N224), this 2¾ × 1½-inch card promoted Sweet Caporal Cigarettes It depicts a dashing French hussar—a light cavalry soldier from the mid-19th century— with firearms, embodying the era's romanticized view of military prowess. Lithography, a revolutionary printing technique, allowed for bold, colorful reproductions at scale, maki...
About the Artist
Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company · 1869–2011
**Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company (1869–2011)** Founded around 1869 by Francis Sherwood Kinney in New York City, the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company quickly rose to prominence in the burgeoning American cigarette industry. Francis, a pioneering tobacco manufacturer, experimented with hand-rolled cigarettes using blends of Turkish and Virginia tobacco, scaling to mass production by employing Europ...