The Cottage Dooryard – Evening
Frances Flora Bond Palmer American, born England
Lithographed and published by Nathaniel Currier American
Not on view
Inside the gated yard of a wooden house, a boy leads a white pony ridden by a younger brother. A dog follows and a younger boy plays with a toy wagon at right near some ducks. The children's mother, holding a baby as she sits at the top of the entrance steps, points out the activity to her husband.
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. She would later work as a staff artist for Currier & Ives and is considered one of the leading women lithographers of the period.
