Rare carved and painted pine newsboy Eastern or midwestern United States, circa 1880

Inscribed front of base, incised: Ossendorf Brand 90; newspaper front, paint: Tobacco/ and cigars; newspaper back: Tobacco and cigars; sides of boxes, paint: 50 1841, 1500 1870, 200 1869.

Gerald Kornblau, New York, 1993

"Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions," New York, The South Street Seaport Museum, June 20-October 7, 2012

American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 358, fig. 323

Losses to the wood, cracks, as they appear in the photo; paint appears to be original and intact.
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During the second half of the nineteenth century, sentimentalized images of urban youth and working-class types were popular in a number of different mediums. Genre painters like John George Brown achieved great success with anecdotal scenes of streetwise children engaged in such pursuits as hawking newspapers and shining shoes to playing rough-and-tumble games.¹ Prints and illustrations of similar subjects frequently appeared in magazines and newspapers, capitalizing on their widespread appeal. Picturesque narratives of modern urban life, they were often imbued with strong moral overtones through allusions to important social issues of the day, such as exploitative child labor practices, neglected children from poor immigrant families, and the plight of homeless orphans.

This engaging figure of a newsboy leaning against a stack of boxes falls squarely within this tradition. His ragged outfit and worldly demeanor capture the image of a tough street kid of humble origins forced to survive by his own wits. Thought to have been used in New Philadelphia, Ohio, the figure was evidently created by an experienced carver who was well versed in his art, probably in an urban workshop setting.

An important distinction between this piece and other newsboy figures is that it was a sign for a tobacco shop, as indicated by the cigar in the boy's mouth and the words "Tobacco and cigars" painted on the newspapers under his left arm. Outside of genre scenes, most representations of newsboys were used by their employers, the newspapers themselves. They adorned mastheads and stationery of newspaper companies, as well as the facades of office buildings as relief sculpture in terra-cotta and stone. A particularly well-known example of a striding wooden newsboy selling the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Record is in the Hall Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum.² -R.S.

¹ For more on John George Brown and contemporary interest in images of street children, see Patricia Hills, "The Painters' America: Rural and Urban Life," The Magazine Antiques 106, no. 4 (October 1974): 646-47, and Martha Hoppin, "The Little White Slaves of New York: Paintings of Child Street Musicians by J.G. Brown," American Art Journal 26 (1994): 4-43.

² Milwaukee Art Museum, Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1993), pp. 130-31, and Jean Lipman, Robert Bishop, Elizabeth V. Warren, and Sharon L. Eisenstat, Five-Star Folk Art: One Hundred American Masterpieces (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with MAFA, 1990), pp. 114-15.