The Puritan and Genesta on the Homestretch – In Their Second and Final International Race for "The America's Cup," Sept. 16th, 1885, Won by the Puritan
After painting by Franklyn Bassford American
Publisher Currier & Ives American
Not on view
This nautical print records the final leg of the concluding race in the fifth America's Cup of 1885. The American defender Puritan raced the English cutter yacht Genesta designed by John Beavor-Webb and built for Sir Richard Sutton, 5th Baronet, of the Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes, Isle of Wight.
The New York firm of Currier & Ives (established by Nathaniel Currier, who formed a partnership with James Merritt Ives in 1857), made more than 7,000 lithographs between 1835 and 1907 for distribution across America and Europe. They offered images of almost everything animal, vegetable, or mineral in the United States, and issued landscapes, genre subjects, caricatures, portraits, historical scenes, foreign views and reproductions of art works. One popular sub-category concerned sailboats and racing. The pictures were drawn on lithographic stones, printed in monochrome, then generally hand-colored by women who worked for the firm at home.
