Sadie Wendell Mitchell, "Wee Sma' Hours", 1909
The pattern
This still is filed under Iconic figure claim.
Define
A single figure, drawn, silhouetted, or posed, is the whole claim. You can read it across a street.
Mechanism
Compression into a body. The figure is not decoration. It is the sentence. Distance-legibility is the test.
Verdict
Poster scale, outdoor, packaging at a glance
Why it works
The rule notice on the wall is the entire gag mechanism - the image needs no caption because the contradiction between the sign and the cigarette does the work, and the half-hidden second sign makes the viewer finish the joke. Three figures at three heights, standing, reclining and floor level, build a diagonal that keeps a static interior in motion and gives each girl a different action to read. Flat colour with a uniform outline turns a crowded room into sortable blocks, and the striped and dotted fabrics carry the texture the flat rendering removes. The strip of lit dining room across the top is the time stamp: the world elsewhere is still awake, which is what the title is counting on.
Steal this when
Use this when your audience's pleasure is in recognising themselves misbehaving, and the strongest line in the piece is a rule you show rather than state. The multi-figure, multi-height staging is worth copying whenever one frame has to carry several simultaneous actions without a sequence.