Gray's Elegy – "In a Country Church Yard"

Frances (Fanny) Flora Palmer's lovely picture of a moonlit Gothic church and its graveyard in a rural setting was inspired by Thomas Gray's celebrated poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), which some scholars rank among the greatest poems in the English language. Gray's evocative lines offer a meditation on death, as the narrator muses about the lives of those humble villagers buried in the cemetery; yet the poet also vividly describes the pattern of daily life in the country, represented by a plowman walking home and cows returning from pasture as night falls.

Nathaniel Currier, who established a successful New York-based lithography firm in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with James Merritt Ives (1824–1895), the brother-in-law of Nathaniel's brother Charles; re-named Currier & Ives, the firm flourished until 1907. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring American and English landscapes, rural and city views, marine subjects, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments.



When Palmer moved to New York from England in 1844 at age thirty-two, she was already an accomplished artist and printmaker. Initially, Fanny and her husband Seymour operated a small printshop in lower Manhattan. After their business closed in 1849, Nathaniel Currier began to buy print designs from Palmer, and she became a staff artist for Currier & Ives after 1857. 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. Although it was unusual for a woman to achieve such prominence in a printing firm, Palmer filled an important role for Currier and Ives firm, as she created the firm's best landscapes and most engaging scenes of daily life.