Master George Elliott, from the Actresses series (N245) issued by Kinney Brothers to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes
Medium
Albumen photograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 1/2 × 1 7/16 in. (6.4 × 3.7 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
63.350.220.245.2021
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the vibrant world of 1890s advertising with *Master George Elliott*, a albumen photograph from Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company's Actresses series (N245 Produced to promote their popular Sweet Caporal Cigarettes, tiny card—measuring just 2½ × 1⅞ inches—features a portrait of the young actor "Master George Elliott." Child performers like him were stars of the Victorian stage, captivating audiences with their precocious talents in theater and early vaudeville. Albumen prints, the medium here, were a hallmark of 19th-century photography, created by coating paper with egg whites and ligh...
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...