Brouthers, 1st Base, Boston, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1887

This small card featuring Brouthers, 1st Base for Boston, was made by Goodwin & Company around the turn of the century, as part of the Old Judge Cigarettes series. It’s a photograph, printed onto card stock, a relatively new innovation that allowed for mass production. What is interesting about this image, is its direct relationship to industrial capitalism. The card wasn’t conceived as ‘art’ in the traditional sense, it was made as a promotional item. Its value was as a collectible, boosting sales of cigarettes. And the image itself – a baseball player – speaks to the rise of professional sports as a popular spectacle and leisure activity at the time. The scale of production is also worth considering. Thousands of these cards were printed, distributed, and collected. The traces of handling over time are visible. This speaks to the appeal of celebrity culture, then as now. It challenges our sense of what constitutes art, and invites us to consider the broader social and economic context in which images are made and circulated.