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Currier and Ives

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Currier & Ives
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U.S. firm whose lithographs were among the most popular wall hangings in 19th-century America. Nathaniel Currier (b. March 27, 1813, Roxbury, Mass., U.S. — d. Nov. 20, 1888, New York, N.Y.) served apprenticeships in Boston and Philadelphia before he set up in business in New York City in 1835. He hired James Merritt Ives (b. March 5, 1824, New York, N.Y., U.S. — d. Jan. 3, 1895, Rye, N.Y.) as a bookkeeper and made him his partner in 1857. Currier and Ives greatly increased the public demand for graphic images by publishing fine-quality, black-and-white and hand-coloured lithographs (see lithography) depicting disasters, political satire, views of city life, outdoor country scenes, and sentimental domestic scenes. They established outlets across the country and in London. Between 1840 and 1890 they published more than 7,000 titles. The firm continued under their sons until 1907.

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Art Encyclopedia: Currier & Ives
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American firm of printmakers. It was founded in New York in 1835 by Nathaniel T. Currier (1813-88), who had been apprenticed as a youth to the Boston lithographic firm of William S. & John Pendleton. Currier & Ives lithographs initially appeared under Currier's imprint (his earlier lithographs had been issued in 1834 under the name of Stodart & Currier), and the name Currier & Ives first appeared in 1857, when James Merritt Ives (1824-95), the company's bookkeeper and Currier's brother-in-law, was made a partner. Currier supervised production while Ives handled the business and financial side. In 1840 the firm began to shift its focus from job printing to independent print publishing, to which it was exclusively devoted from 1852 to 1880.

See the Abbreviations for further details.


Biography: Currier and Ives
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Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) and James Merritt Ives (1824-1895) were partners in the firm of Currier and Ives, the most important 19th-century lithographiccompany in America. Their prints were widely sold across the nation.

Nathaniel Currier, born in Roxbury, Mass., was apprenticed in his teens to a Boston lithographic firm. He established his own lithography business in New York City in 1835. The lithographer James Ives, born in New York City, entered into partnership with Currier in 1857. Currier retired in 1888, Ives a few years later; but the firm was carried on by their sons and flourished until 1907.

Lithography had begun in America in the 1820s. It was quicker and less expensive than engraving, hence the remarkable success of the firm of Currier and Ives. Soon after setting up business they produced extensive folios, usually based on paintings. Some of the work was crude, but the quality varied considerably. The star artists of the firm were Arthur F. Tait, who specialized in sporting scenes; Louis Maurer, who executed genre scenes; Fanny Palmer, who liked to do picturesque panoramas of the American landscape; and George H. Durrie, who supplied winter scenes.

So well known did Currier and Ives become that it was common to refer to any large mixed batch of prints as Currier and Ives prints. The firm was astoundingly prolific and produced prints on practically every aspect of the American scene. In the 1870s they issued four catalogs featuring 2800 subject titles.

Currier and Ives sometimes focused on current events. (In 1840 Currier produced what may have been the first illustrated "extra" in history when he depicted scenes of the fire that had broken out that year aboard the steamship Lexington in Long Island Sound.) Political cartoons and banners were commonly produced, like the Presidential Fishing Party of 1848, showing the candidates with fishing poles trying to hook fish on which names of various states are inscribed.

Historical prints were another field, and copies from the historical paintings of John Trumbull were especially popular. The Civil War print Battle of Fair Oaks, Va., May 31, 1862 shows the first balloon ever used for warfare observation. Sentimental prints included one showing a married couple walking along a riverbank and another showing a girl taking care of her little sister. There were also prints for children, such as Robinson Crusoe and His Pets and Noah's Ark; country and pioneer home scenes, which included Early Winter, a beautiful scene of people skating on a frozen pond before a snow-covered country cottage; and lithographed sheet music. Still other categories were Mississippi River prints, including On the Mississippi Loading Cotton and Midnight Race on the Mississippi; railroad prints that sometimes featured minute descriptions of trains, as in "Lightning Express" Trains Leaving the Junction; and home prints, which were produced in especially large quantities.

Currier and Ives avoided controversial subjects, although there was at least one print showing the branding of slaves prior to embarkation from Africa. Prints of sporting events focused on prize fights (like the 1835 match between John C. Heeman and the English champion Tom Sayers), boat races, and even, in the early stages of its development, baseball.

As America expanded, so did the demand for Currier and Ives prints. Today they provide a vivid picture of daily life in 19th-century America.

Further Reading

Harry T. Peters, Currier and Ives: Printmakers to the American People (1942), is the authoritative work, containing 192 plates and an excellent introduction. Both Colin Simkin, Currier and Ives' America (1952), and Roy King and Burke Davis, The World of Currier & Ives (1968), contain useful introductions and reproductions. See also Currier's own Currier & Ives Chronicles of America, edited by John Lowell Pratt and with an introduction by A. K. Baragwanath (1968).

US History Encyclopedia: Currier and Ives
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Currier and Ives became America's most famous lithographers by perfecting the process of printing with treated stone in the mid-1800s. Currier and Ives prints, widely known and collected in their day, became the ideal art for a democracy, mass produced and affordable, but still of high quality. Over their many years in business Currier and Ives, and the many artists who worked for them, depicted both the mundane and the historic in over 7,000 different prints. Still reproduced today on calendars and cards, the prints have long represented an idealistic vision of the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on distinctly American scenes, both cultural and natural. While the firm produced lithographs of tragic current events, such as fires and war, collectors have paid more attention to their many sentimental representations of everyday life, such as sporting events and westward pioneering.

Nathaniel Currier began his printing career as an apprentice in Boston as a very young man. By 1835, having relocated to New York City, Currier had opened his own business, first in a Wall Street office and later moving to his famous Nassau Street shop. Currier's business included publishing, printing, and engravings, but by the time James M. Ives joined the firm in 1852 Currier had already established a reputation for his popular lithographs. Ives came to the firm first as a bookkeeper, but his responsibilities expanded and in 1857 his name was added to that of the firm. Nathaniel's brother Charles also worked with the firm, in an informal arrangement, and contributed to the business primarily through his invention of a new crayon used to treat the stones before printing.

Currier's first great success came with an 1840 print entitled, "Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat 'Lexington' in Long Island Sound." This timely print was distributed with news of the tragic event, first in New York and then around the country. Its extremely wide distribution insured interest in future Currier works, and helped inaugurate a new era of pictorial journalism. "Rush stock" prints of newsworthy events became an important part of the business, but "stock prints," of city views, baseball games, horse racing, sailing ships, and home-life scenes, among many other everyday portraits, remained the primary topics of the lithographs. Numerous Currier and Ives prints depicted America's natural scenery, especially in tourist areas such as the White Mountains and the Catskills, providing remembrances for tourists or visual access for those who could not afford to travel. While Currier and Ives prints came in different sizes and carried different prices, the firm became most famous for its colored lithographs. Printed first, then hand colored by women working in the Currier and Ives factory, these prints became both beautiful and affordable popular art.

After Nathaniel Currier retired in 1880 his son Edward ran the firm with Ives. By 1907 both families were out of the business, which folded shortly thereafter. Although the lithographs never lost their appeal, and indeed gained in value after the firm closed, improvements in photography doomed lithography as the chief means of illustrating everyday life.

Bibliography

Baragwanath, Albert K. Currier and Ives. New York: Abbeville Press, 1980.

Le Beau, Bryan F. Currier and Ives: America Imagined. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.

—David Stradling

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Currier & Ives
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Currier & Ives, American lithographers and print publishers, who produced highly popular hand-colored prints of contemporary scenes and events in American life. Nathaniel Currier, 1813-88, b. Roxbury, Mass., founded the business in New York City in 1835, and in 1857 formed a partnership with the able artist and businessman James Merritt Ives, 1824-95, b. New York City. The prints, in which were depicted horses, yachts, trains, newsworthy events, and scenes of nature and outdoor recreation, have become prized collectors' items. Both Currier's and Ives's sons followed their fathers in the business, which was eventually liquidated in 1907.

Bibliography

See H. T. Peters, Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the American People (1929, special ed. 1942); J. L. Pratt, ed., Currier & Ives Chronicles of America (1968).

Fine Arts Dictionary: Currier and Ives
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Two business partners, the technician Nathaniel Currier and the artist J. Merritt Ives, who produced colored prints of everyday American life in the nineteenth century.

Wikipedia: Currier and Ives
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"A Brush for the Lead", lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1867.

Currier and Ives was a successful American printmaking firm headed by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) and James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). Based in New York City from 1834-1907, the prolific firm produced prints from paintings by fine artists as black and white lithographs that were hand colored. Lithographic prints could be reproduced quickly and purchased inexpensively, and the firm called itself "the Grand Central Depot for Cheap and Popular Prints" and advertised its lithographs as "colored engravings for the people." [1]

Contents

Currier's early history

Nathaniel T. Currier (1813-88) was born in Roxbury, MA in 1813. As a youth he had been apprenticed to the Boston lithographic firm of William S. & John Pendleton. In 1833 at twenty years of age, he moved to Philadelphia to do contract work for M.E.D. Brown, a noted engraver and printer.[2] Currier's early lithographs were issued under the name of Stodart & Currier, a result of the partnership he created in 1834 with a local New York printmaker named Stodart. The two men specialized in "job" printing and made a variety of print products, including music manuscripts. Dissatisfied with the poor economic return of their business venture, Currier ended the partnership in 1835 and set up shop alone, working as "N. Currier, Lithographer" until 1856. In 1835 he created a lithograph that illustrated a fire sweeping through New York City's business district. The print of the Merchant's Exchange sold thousands of copies in four days. Realizing that there was a market for current news, Currier turned out several more disaster prints and other inexpensive lithographs that illustrated local and national events, such as "Ruins of the Planter's Hotel, New Orleans, which fell at two O’clock on the Morning of the 15th of May 1835, burying 50 persons, 40 of whom Escaped with their Lives."[3] He quickly gained a reputation as an accomplished lithographer.[4]

Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat LEXINGTON in Long Island Sound on Monday Eveg, Jany 13th,(1840)

In 1840, he produced "Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat Lexington", which was so successful that he was given a weekly insert in the New York Sun. In this year, Currier's firm began to shift its focus from job printing to independent print publishing.[5]

The partnership with Ives

The name Currier & Ives first appeared in 1857, when Currier invited James Merritt Ives (1824-95), the company's bookkeeper and accountant, to become his partner. James Merritt Ives, who was born on March 5, 1824 in New York City, married Caroline Clark in 1852. She was the sister-in-law of Nathaniel's brother, Charles Currier, and it was Charles who recommended James Ives to his brother. Nathaniel Currier soon noticed Ives's dedication to his business and his artistic knowledge and insight into what the public wanted. The younger man quickly became the general manager of the firm, handling the financial side of the business by modernizing the bookkeeping, reorganizing inventory, and streamlining the print process.[6] Ives also helped Currier interview potential artists and craftsman. The younger man had a flair for gauging popular interests and aided in selecting the images the firm would publish and expanding the firm's range to include political satire, and sentimental scenes such as sleigh rides in the country and steamboat races. In 1857 Currier made Ives a full partner. [7] [8]

The firm

The firm Currier and Ives described itself as "Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints". At least 7,500 lithographs were published in the firm's 72 years of operation.[9] Artists produced two to three new images every week for 64 years (1834-1895), [10] producing more than a million prints by hand-colored lithography. For the original drawings, Currier & Ives employed or used the work of many celebrated artists of the day including J.F. Butterworth, George Inness, Thomas Nast, C.H. Moore, and Eastman Johnson.[11] The stars of the firm were Arthur F. Tait, who specialized in sporting scenes; Louis Maurer, who executed genre scenes; George H. Durrie, who supplied winter scenes; and Fanny Palmer, who liked to do picturesque panoramas of the American landscape, and who was the first woman in the United States to make her living as a full-time artist.[12] All lithographs were produced on special stones on which the drawing was done by hand. A stone often took over a week to prepare for printing. Each print was pulled by hand. Prints were hand-coloured by a dozen or more women, often immigrants from Germany with an art background, who worked in assembly-line fashion, one colour to a worker, and who were paid $6 for every 100 colored prints. The favored colours were clear and simple, and the drawing was bold and direct. [13][14]

The earliest lithographs were printed in black and then colored by hand. As new techniques were developed, publishers began to produce full-color lithographs that gradually developed softer, more painterly effects. Skilled artist lithographers like John Cameron, Fanny Palmer and others represented in the show became known for their work and signed important pieces. Artists like A. F. Tait became famous when their paintings were reproduced as lithographs.[15]

Currier and Ives was the most prolific and successful company of lithographers in the U.S. Its lithographs represented every phase of American life, and included the themes of hunting, fishing, whaling, city life, rural scenes, historical scenes, clipper ships, yachts, steamships, the Mississippi River, Hudson River scenes, railroads, politics, comedy, gold mining, winter scenes, commentary on life, portraits, and still lifes. [16] From 1866 on, the firm occupied three floors in a building at 33 Spruce Street in Philadelphia:

  • Hand-operated printing presses occupied the third floor.
  • Artists, stone grinders, and lithographers worked on the fourth floor.
  • Colourists worked on the fifth floor.

Small works sold for from five to twenty cents each and large works sold for $1 to $3 a piece. The Currier and Ives firm branched out from its central shop in New York City to sell prints via pushcart vendors, peddlers and book stores. The firm sold retail as well as wholesale, establishing outlets in cities across the country and in London. It also sold work through the mail (prepaid orders only), and internationally through a London office and agents in Europe.[17][18]

The 19th-century Victorian public, with its interest in current events and sentimental taste, was receptive to the firm's products. Currier and Ives prints were among the most popular wall hangings of the day.[19] In 1872 the Currier and Ives catalog proudly proclaimed:"... our Prints have become a staple article... in great demand in every part of the country... In fact without exception, all that we have published have met with a quick and ready sale."[20]

Currier & Ives prints were among the household decorations considered appropriate for a proper home by Catharine Esther Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, authors of American Woman's Home (1869): "The great value of pictures for the home would be, after all, in their sentiment. They should express the sincere ideas and tastes of the household and not the tyrannical dicta of some art critic or neighbor."[21]

Currier died in 1888. Ives remained active in the firm until his death in 1895. Both Currier's and Ives's sons followed their fathers in the business, which was eventually liquidated in 1907.[22] Because of improvements in offset printing and photoengraving, the public demand for lithographs had gradually diminished.

The lithographs

"Central Park Winter", lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1862.

The prints depicted a variety of images of American life, including winter scenes; horse-racing images; portraits of people; and pictures of ships, sporting events, patriotic and historical events, including ferocious battles of the American Civil War, the building of cities and railroads, and Lincoln's assassination.

The original lithographs shared similar characteristics in inking and paper, and adhered to folio sizes. Sizes of the images were standard (trade cards, very small folios, small folios, medium folios, large folios), and their measurement did not include the title or borders. These sizes are one of the guides for collectors today in determining if the print is an original or not. "Currier used a cotton based, medium to heavy weight paper depending on the folio size for his prints until the late 1860’s. From about 1870, Currier & Ives used paper mixed with a small amount of wood pulp." In addition, Currier’s inking process resembled a mixture of elongated splotches and dashes of ink with a few spots, a characteristic that modern reproductions would not possess. [23]

"In 1907 when the firm was liquidated most of the lithographic stones had the image removed and were sold by the pound with some stones final home as land fill in Central Park. Those few stones that managed to survive intact were of large folio Clipper Ships, small folio Dark Town Comics, a medium folio "Abraham Lincoln" and a small folio "Washington As A Mason"".[24]

Today, original Currier and Ives prints are much sought by collectors, and modern reproductions of them are popular decorations. Especially popular are the winter scenes, which are commonly used for American Christmas cards.

Bibliography

"The American Fireman", lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1858.
  • LeBeau, Bryan F. Currier and Ives: America Imagined. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.
  • Reilly, Bernard. Currier and Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984.

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Currier and Ives

References

  1. ^ The Henry Ford Collections http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/collections/Collections/library/special/prints/currier.asp
  2. ^ Bob Brooke, The Enduring Appeal of Currier and Ives Prints http://www.howmuchisitworth.com/currier-and-ives.html
  3. ^ Brooke http://www.howmuchisitworth.com/currier-and-ives.html
  4. ^ Currier and Ives: An American Panorama http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa162.htm
  5. ^ Biography http://www.answers.com/topic/currier-and-ives
  6. ^ http://www.answers.com/topic/currier-and-ives
  7. ^ The Old Print Shop http://www.oldprintshop.com/artists/currier-ives-j_m_ives.htm
  8. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1345799/Currier-Ives
  9. ^ Ohio University News and Information http://www.ohio.edu/news/99-00/328.html
  10. ^ http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa436.htm
  11. ^ http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa436.htm
  12. ^ Biography http://www.answers.com/topic/currier-and-ives
  13. ^ The Long Island Museum of American History and Carriages http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa36.htm
  14. ^ Brooke http://www.howmuchisitworth.com/currier-and-ives.html
  15. ^ Currier and Ives: Popular Masters of 19th Century Lithography http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/07/nyregion/currier-ives-popular-masters-of-19th-century-lithography.html
  16. ^ The Long Island Museum of American History and Carriages http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa36.htm
  17. ^ http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa436.htm
  18. ^ Encyclopedia Brittanica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1345799/Currier-Ives
  19. ^ Long Island Museum http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa36.htm
  20. ^ Brooke http://www.howmuchisitworth.com/currier-and-ives.html
  21. ^ http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa162.htm
  22. ^ "Currier & Ives." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Retrieved August 03, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-CurrierN.html
  23. ^ Currier and Ives Lithographic Value Guides http://www.currierprints.com/Reproductions.htm
  24. ^ Currier and Ives Lithographic Value Guides http://www.currierprints.com/Reproductions.htm

Gallery of images

Kiss Me Quick, 1840s

Explosion Aboard the USS Princeton, 1844

Destruction of the Merrimac, May 11, 1862

The Falls of Niagara-From the Canada Side, 1868

The Grecian Bend, 1868

A Home on the Mississippi, 1871

Three Jolly Kittens, 1871

New York City Brooklyn Bridge, 1877

A Black Squall, 1879

A Cup That Cheers, 1884

Christopher Columbus, 1892

Armored Steel Cruiser, 1893

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Fine Arts Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.  Read more
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