Street Advertising (1876–77): Art, History and Details

Street Advertising (1876–77) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Thomson (Scottish, 1837–1921).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The poster being pasted up by the two men in the late 1870s is an ad for Mme. Tussaud’s London, a museum of wax figures that is still in business today. The image was part of John Thomson’s publication Street Life in London, a group of essays and photographsthat was one of the first published compilations of social documentary photographs. It holds a place of honor in the histories of photography, the book, ethnology, and sociology.

Object facts

• Title: Street Advertising
• Date: 1876–77
• Creator attribution: John Thomson (Scottish, 1837–1921)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: woodburytype
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2022.78

A detail from the museum

Mme. Tussaud’s wax museum in London was founded in 1835.

Collection credit

Gift of Sharon & Del Zogg in honor of Wendy Watriss and Frederick C. Baldwin (1929-2021), co-founders of Fotofest, Houston, Texas

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.