William Aiken Walker

In 1884, the city of New Orleans held the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition - a World's Fair designed to celebrate the production of cotton in the United States. At the time of the Centennial, nearly one third of all cotton produced in the United States was handled in New Orleans, and the fair attracted more than one million visitors to the city in order to celebrate this achievement. While vendors displayed their product inside the exposition's main structure, artists and other tradesmen set up booths across the two hundred and forty-nine acre property to appeal to the crowds of tourists visiting the fair. William Aiken Walker sold painted bronze and copper plates, similar to the present work, as tourist commodities on the grounds of the Cotton Centennial that year.

The present work is a distinctly New Orleans subject, depicting the bustling levee and commercial activity of the city. In the 1880s, cotton brokers and tradesmen lined the crowded ports in order to load and unload goods onto steamboats. Walker captures a man taking a momentary break from this fast-paced work environment, while steamboats puff smoke along the Mississippi River in the background. This subject characterizes trade and commerce in New Orleans in the late nineteenth century, and would certainly have appealed to the visiting audience at the Cotton Centennial Exposition.