The Cooling Stream
Publisher Currier & Ives American
After painting by Thomas Creswick British
After painting by Thomas Sidney Cooper British
Not on view
This pastoral scene shows four cows standing in a foreground stream, a half-timbered house with a smoking chimney at left, and a church and adjacent cottage in the distance.
The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with brother-in-law James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, made more than 7,000 lithographs for distribution across America and Europe with popular categories including landscape, marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company at home.