A Scene on the Susquehanna

The firm of Currier and Ives described itself as “Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints” and at least 7,500 lithographs were published in their seventy-two years of operation. Affordable and often sold in bulk, they were among the most popular wall hangings of the day. A workshop of women hand-painted each print, but by the latter part of the nineteenth century four-color processes allowed for faster, cheaper production.Subjects ranged from international events, portraits of the famous, landscapes, still lifes, and saccharine images of children and animals. Notable artists including George Inness, James Butterworth, Thomas Nast, and Eastman Johnson contributed some of the original artwork from which the prints were copied. Though mass-produced, each lithographic stone took over a week to prepare and each print, often in editions of one thousand, were pulled by hand. (“Imprint/ In Print,” curated by Nancy E. Green with assistance from Christian Waibel ’17 and presented at the Johnson Museum August 8 – December 20, 2015)