Bound To Smash!! or Caught By The Wool

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.

In the background, this print shows a grinning white man (wearing a derby hat) as he races his buggy, drawn by two horses, closely past a one-horse wagon driven by a Black (African-American) couple, who howl in fear as their startled brown horse causes the wagon's left wheels to careen into a grassy ditch (right foreground). The Black man extends his arms pulling the reins to try to jolt the horse back onto the road, while his wife (colorfully dressed in a blue vest, yellow sleeves, and a red skirt) is steadying herself by gripping the wagon with her left hand and grasping her husband's hair with her right hand. At the upper right, the man's white top hat and the woman's parasol are in the air --trailing the wagon.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began 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 and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel included his younger brother Charles Currier in the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907. The artist of this print is Thomas Worth, a prolific nineteenth-century illustrator who excelled at drawing horses and other subjects, many of which were made into lithographs published by Currier & Ives.












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