George Washington Keefe, Pitcher, Washington Nationals, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1889

Goodwin & Company’s ‘George Washington Keefe, Pitcher, Washington Nationals’ is an evocative photograph printed for Old Judge Cigarettes. Observe Keefe’s clasped hands: a gesture loaded with history. Consider the ‘orant’ pose, hands raised in prayer, ubiquitous in early Christian art. Keefe’s gesture echoes this ancient posture, albeit subtly transformed. No longer directed towards the divine, his clasped hands suggest concentration, focus, and perhaps the pent-up energy of a pitcher ready to unleash. We see a similar motif in Renaissance depictions of scholars, their hands folded in contemplation, bridging worldly knowledge with spiritual insight. Here, the sacred has been secularized, adapted for the modern arena of sport. It speaks to a collective memory, a subconscious recognition of inherited forms, repurposed and reinvested with new meaning. It reveals the power of images to transcend their original contexts, to evolve, and to persist in our cultural consciousness.