Tobacco and art

The motif occurred frequently in painting of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age, in which people of lower social class were often shown smoking pipes.

In European art of the 18th and 19th centuries, the social location of people – largely men – shown as smoking tended to vary, but the stigma attached to women who adopted the habit was reflected in some artworks.

[1] The artwork mostly portrays religious rituals and myths involving gods or lords because ordinary people and actions were considered too unimportant and unworthy for time-consuming art pieces.

[2] Mayas created codices chronicling their history and culture, and they constructed pages from copo – plant fiber on bark or deerskin with lime.

"[4] The Sanctuary of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque (a Maya city in current Mexico) houses a monument called "El Fumador" (Spanish for "The Smoker").

The Temple of the Diving God houses the fresco, and the painting features monsters (perhaps birds) smoking large cigars.

[3] Other artifacts depicting smoking have also been found including a shell carving, which is now housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

[3] The ordinary person in the 17th century Dutch Republic viewed tobacco as a novelty and associated smoking with social deviance.

A divide existed between the medicinal use of tobacco, which was widely accepted, and recreational use, which was seen as low class and inappropriate for more respected citizens including church and government leaders.

[5] Johann Neander's Tabacologia, written in 1622, demonstrates the prevalent belief that tobacco held curative and preventative properties for a wide range of diseases.

[5] However, smoking's prevalence among sailors, soldiers, and the rural poor along with its intoxicating effects led to an association with the lowliest people.

[5] Jan Steen, perhaps the most famous comic painter during the 17th century, often included pipe smoking, which took on sexual connotations in his paintings of brothels and taverns.

Snuff also gained popularity, and depictions of smoking and tobacco in paintings and drawings became more representative of the mundane and everyday than comically absurd situations and social outcasts.

The decline of smoking representations is most likely due to the influence of Rococo age elegance, which made snuff the preferred choice.

Against norms of the time period, French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, who was inspired by Golden Age artwork, occasionally included pipes in his pieces.

During this time period, men were the primary smokers, and smoking was not an acceptable habit for women who were expected to be ideal mothers or mistresses.

[6] The impressionists painted scenes of everyday life that included cigars, cigarettes, or pipes, but they did not put symbolic importance in them.

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen’s The Black Marketeer depicts a boss with a boxful of cigars and a lit one at the edge of his desk.

Claes Oldenburg’s sculpture Giant Fagends depicts how cigarette addiction exemplifies the American's wasteful consumerism.

[6] Duane Hanson’s Supermarket Shopper shows a miserable middle-aged woman to represent how present day Americans view smokers: ruled by the addiction and lack will-power.

Women in these paintings are rarely the ones in possession of the pipe, and the Dutch artists meant to send a moral message that foolish behaviors like smoking will lead people into hardships.

[6] Artwork in the 18th century included pipes to convey an exoticism and eroticism even though depictions of smoking went out of fashion in the Western World.

In Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte, the male in the white suit holds a cigar, and even in this snapshot of everyday life, there is an implicit hierarchy between him and the woman who is with him.

[6] Prostitutes were the first women in this time period to be depicted with pipes, cigars, or cigarettes as seen in artwork from Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Frances Benjamin Johnston was one notable woman who studied illustrating for many years in Paris and then discovered photography.