Trade Card for Samuel P. Avery--Fine Art Room
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
sheet: 6 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. (15.9 x 24.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Emma Avery Welcher and Amy Ogden Welcher, 1965
Accession Number
65.639.5
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of 19th New York art dealing with George Cruikshank's *Trade Card for Samuel P. Avery— Art Room* (1873), a delightful etching now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department. small-scale print (6 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches) captures an interior scene bustling with men and women, patrons perusing fine artworks in Avery's renowned gallery. Trade cards like this were the era's promotional gems—lavishly illustrated advertisements distributed by merchants to attract elite clientele during the Gilded Age. Cruikshank, the celebrated British caricatur...
About the Artist
George Cruikshank · 1792–1878
George Cruikshank (1792–1878) was born in London on 27 September 1792, the son of Scottish caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank and Mary MacNaughton. His older brother, Isaac Robert Cruikshank, was also a caricaturist and illustrator, while his sister Eliza worked as a designer. From a young age, Cruikshank assisted his father in the studio, contributing titles, backgrounds, and lettering to cartoons by ...