Hoyt's A dog in the manger

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Here a dog lies in a manger of hay, keeping it from the ox or horse that needs it, which is the point of the old Aesop fable that gave the picture its title. The print was issued around 1899 by Strobridge Lithographing Company, a Cincinnati firm with a New York office that produced advertising posters, calendars, and trade cards in the late nineteenth century. Such chromolithographs were printed in bright color and often paired a comic or moral scene with a commercial message, so the sponsor's name appears in the title. The image shows how illustrators of the period used familiar stories and animal characters to make advertising easy to remember.

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