Dude swell – Vintage Print
![Dude swell, [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1883. — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/1f/1f203c83d65e-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Few images capture their era like this antique lithograph of Dude swell. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.
Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Dude swell
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Published in New York in 1883, this lithograph belongs to Currier & Ives's Darktown series, a set of racist caricatures of Black Americans. Its title, "Dude Swell," mocks the "dude," a term for a young man overly fastidious about fashionable dress, and recasts that figure as a Black man to ridicule racial and social aspiration. Prints like this drew on minstrel-show stereotypes and were sold widely, helping to spread demeaning images of Black Americans in the decades after emancipation. Today they are best read as evidence of that racism rather than as humor.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1883. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : lithograph. |
| Genre | c1983 |
| Notes | Caricature issued as part of the Darktown comics" series. Currier & Ives : a catalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,172 × 1,536 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174383 |
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