Volunteer Crossing the Finish Line
After Franklyn Bassford American
Publisher Currier & Ives American
Not on view
In this nautical print, a buoy in the right foreground marks one end of a finish line, and is approached by the single-masted "Volunteer" rigged with four sails and followed by a steamboat.
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, lithographing over 4,000 subjects 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. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Currier & Ives began, as here, to print in color.
