René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, printer's sample for the World's Inventors souvenir album (A25) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Art Historical Context

This petite chromolithograph, a printer's sample from Allen & Ginter's 1888 *World's Inventors* souvenir album (series A25), captures the of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), the French polymath who devised the Réaumur temperature scale and advanced metallurgy and entomology. Measuring just 2¾ × 1½ inches, it was designed as a collectible insert for cigarette packs, blending portraiture with clever marketing. Allen & Ginter, pioneering tobacco innovators, popularized trading cards in the Gilded Age, enticing smokers with educational vignettes of luminaries. This ephemera exemplifies chromolithography's vibrancy—layered color printing that democratized vivid imagery for mass audiences. Part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, it highlights how 19th-century commerce fused invention celebration with consumer allure, foreshadowing modern baseball cards and collectibles. Though ephemeral by design, such prints preserve cultural memory, honoring Réaumur's legacy amid America's industrial boom. A charming window into Victorian ingenuity!

About the Artist

Allen & Ginter

Allen & Ginter, the pioneering American tobacco firm based in Richmond, Virginia, emerged around 1880 from the partnership of John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter, evolving from Allen's earlier John F. Allen & Company. Allen retired in 1882, succeeded by John Pope, yet the brand endured under Ginter's leadership, employing over 1,100 workers—mostly women—for hand-rolled cigarettes by 1886. Ginter, a Dut...