This article uses genre painting as a data source for investigating the exchange activities of buyers and sellers in nineteenth-century America. Examples of this art are broken down into three subject categories (rural bargaining, itinerant peddlers, and African-American marketing exchange) and are examined in terms of their narrative content and artistic context. To better understand the sociocultural meaning of exchange during this period, four interpretive themes that cross the subject categories—social typing, retrospection, emotion, and morality are also considered.
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