New England Scenery

Beneath large trees, a boy and girl walk on a dirt path before a winding river. At left, a woman stands in front of a white house with green shutters; and at far left, a white wooden church with a steeple. At center, houses cluster along the river, spanned by a distant bridge, with fields and tree-covered slopes beyond.

When Frances "Fanny" Flora Bond Palmer moved to New York from England in 1844 she was thirty-two and an accomplished artist and printmaker. Initially, Fanny and her husband Seymour operated a small print-shop in lower Manhattan, similar to one they had run in Leicester (United Kingdom). In 1849, the couple moved to Brooklyn after the business closed. Nathaniel Currier recognized Palmer’s talent and began to buy her drawings to use as print designs. After Currier & Ives was established in 1857 she became a staff artist. As a designer able to transfer images to lithographic stones for printing, Palmer produced more than 200 prints for the firm and today is regarded as a leading woman lithographer of the period.