A Crack Trotter --"Coming Around"

Thomas B. Worth, who was noted for illustrations of horses and horse racing, designed many images for Currier & Ives. This print features a harness racing horse, known as a trotter --so named because it races at that gait pulling a two-wheeled sulky cart driven by a jockey. In this comic stable scene after a race, a blanket-covered horse wildly bucks its hind legs so that five grooms (including a Black man) tumble and go flying, thereby overturning washtubs and upsetting bottles. The horse bites another man on the seat of his pants (left side of image), while yet another (seen from behind at far left) escapes into a cupboard below shelves lined with bottles.


Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888), 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. In 1857, Currier made James Merritt Ives (1824–1895) a business partner. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes, rural and city views, marines, caricatures, portraits, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. The firm operated until 1907. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company; later prints were printed in color.