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Lot Essay
One can easily imagine the enthusiastic solicitations shouted by a racetrack tout when looking at this trade figure. Its unidentified maker carved the man with a Cheshire Cat-like grin, large eyes and a prominent well-kept mustache. This tout also remarkably retains much of its original painted surface. His slick character is bolstered by the use of bold paint and detailed carving. The overall effect is one of a slightly arrogant self-confidence. Cigar store figures first appeared in England during the seventeenth century, most popularly in the form of the Native American figure. They started decorating American storefronts in the early nineteenth century. Other tobacconists’ figures soon came to the market reflecting a variety of characters, like the foreigner, seen in the Egyptian, Scotsman and Amazon, and the everyday American folk character, like the baseball player, soldier, jockey, fashionable lady, and racetrack tout.
The racetrack tout, or sporting dude, “stereotyped a slightly disreputable character, thereby creating enormous appeal for tobacco buyers having nonconformist tastes." The figure had reached its peak in popularity in the late nineteenth century, and as explained by a one figure maker, “I have got fully twenty-five dudes planted around in Brooklyn and New York even now, though dudes are on the wane” (“Designed by Whittling Yankees,” Tobacco (May 14 1886)). Although the dude was created en masse at one point, examples of this form are scantly found today and only a handful of closely-related ones have been published. Two similar racetrack touts likely carved by the same maker are in the collections at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (no. 1956.705.3) and the Heritage Museum and Gardens, Sandwich, Massachusetts (no. 1972.7.1). Seen in all three figures is a similar positioning of the legs and arms, matching watch fobs hanging from the hip, and tips of cigar sticks peaking out from the breast pocket. The rendering of the faces are alike and exude a gaudy demeanor. The carving of the hand and fingers seen in the present figure are more naturalistic: they are carefully carved to depict curving fingers holding a bundle of cigar sticks. On its base, lettering remains showing ‘CIGARS / TOBACCO’, confirming that he once stood as an advertisement outside of a cigar shop beckoning a passerby to stop in.
The racetrack tout, or sporting dude, “stereotyped a slightly disreputable character, thereby creating enormous appeal for tobacco buyers having nonconformist tastes." The figure had reached its peak in popularity in the late nineteenth century, and as explained by a one figure maker, “I have got fully twenty-five dudes planted around in Brooklyn and New York even now, though dudes are on the wane” (“Designed by Whittling Yankees,” Tobacco (May 14 1886)). Although the dude was created en masse at one point, examples of this form are scantly found today and only a handful of closely-related ones have been published. Two similar racetrack touts likely carved by the same maker are in the collections at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (no. 1956.705.3) and the Heritage Museum and Gardens, Sandwich, Massachusetts (no. 1972.7.1). Seen in all three figures is a similar positioning of the legs and arms, matching watch fobs hanging from the hip, and tips of cigar sticks peaking out from the breast pocket. The rendering of the faces are alike and exude a gaudy demeanor. The carving of the hand and fingers seen in the present figure are more naturalistic: they are carefully carved to depict curving fingers holding a bundle of cigar sticks. On its base, lettering remains showing ‘CIGARS / TOBACCO’, confirming that he once stood as an advertisement outside of a cigar shop beckoning a passerby to stop in.