Mid-Century Cigarette Ad Illustration

Disney Legend Mary Blair was also a commercial illustrator for national brands such as Maxwell House Coffee and Beatrice Foods, and two complete national campaigns for Pall Mall cigarettes. The present work was part of her Pall Mall cigarette campaign "'So friendly to your taste!'". We are unsure whether this work was reproduced, or was only used in a test market, or for a client comp. Nonetheless, as a piece of commercial work-for-hire art, it rises to the realm of fine art. Even though the look of the work has a quick, loose and playful feel to it, each element is carefully placed to strike a perfect balance. In this campaign, the artist created the background, and the art director stripped in the product label. The cigarette to the left is also a cut-out and pasted into position to achieve the ideal look. Commercial art is, in almost all cases, a collaborative effort between the Art Director, the Artist, Account People, and the Client, yet in this case, the Mary Blair signature flat graphic and colorful style is dominant and the packaging is secondary. We have to assume the client, American Tobacco Company's brand Pall Mall, was trying to sell the sizzle and not the steak. Nothing in advertising is done by chance. This Pall Mall campaign was acutely tested, and apparently, the Mary Blair style was the brand identity that the ad agency chose over other submissions. Blair's warm personal feel fits perfectly with the tag line "'So friendly to your taste!'" and connects with the audience. In the 1950s - 1960s, Mary Blair was one of the few women artists to design and execute a major mainstream advertising campaign that was not solely women-oriented subject matter: babies, women's clothes, and household products. Cigarette ads had some of the most significant budgets and visibility. Typically, they were a full page back or inside cover and pervasive billboards. The ad agencies could have called any artist in the world, and they would have jumped at the opportunity for such a sought-after, lucrative
and prestigious job. In the commercial art field, Mary Blair was somewhat like Margaret Burke White in that she was one of the first women to have crossed over into a predominantly male area. In this regard, Blair's commercial work is in no way inferior to her more well-known Disney work. In fact, it should be considered on equal footing.
The work is unsigned . Framed under glass to 20.25" x 23.25"
Provenance: Mary Blair Family Trust.