Officer, Gatling Battery, New York State Militia, 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, N224.178
Tags
Art Historical Context
This 1888 color lithograph belongs to Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company’s Military Series (N224), a set of small trading cards inserted into packs of Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. Measuring just 2 ¾ by 1 ½ inches, the card depicts an officer of the New York State Militia’s Gatling Battery, complete with sword and period uniform. Produced through commercial lithography, the image was designed for mass distribution, turning everyday tobacco purchases into opportunities for collectors to assemble visual histories of contemporary military life. In the late nineteenth century, state militias remained im...
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...