A Swell Smoker -- Getting the Short End

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.　

This urban street scene shows a caricatured pair of Black (African American) pedestrians on a paved sidewalk, with two three-story stone buildings in the background. A dapper man (left) stands with a pop-eyed, surprised expression in front of a school boy (right), who has tricked him out of his cigar after asking the man for a light (depicted in a companion print, "A Swell Smoker-- Giving the Long Odds" -- see Metropolitan Museum of Art accession no. 52.632.69). Instead, the school boy returns his newly lit cigar butt with his upraised right arm, as the man's long cigar is now firmly in the lad's mouth. The man, who sports a mustache and a monocle flying off his shoulder, is fashionably dressed in a dark brimmed hat, a dark jacket with a flower in his left lapel, a light-colored vest over a white shirt (adorned with red dots on its high collar and cuffs), white gloves, light green striped trousers, and spats over his dark shoes; he holds a very thin cane. The boy wears slightly tattered clothes: a visored cap, a red shirt with rolled up sleeves, suspenders holding up his pants with rolled up cuffs, and brown shoes; his left hand holds a strap attached to books resting on his upper back. The title is imprinted in the botom margin.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel included his younger brother Charles in the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907.