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Cuffee Dancing for Eels – Catharine Market (Life in New York)

Publisher Currier & Ives American
1857
Not on view
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.

A satirical New York genre subject on a quay near Catharine Market: eight white men and boys stand around a black man (wearing ragged clothes), who dances. At left, another Black man dangles eels in front of the dancing man. At right, the Bowery B'hoy Mose leans against a barrel.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Cuffee Dancing for Eels – Catharine Market (Life in New York)
  • Artist: Thomas B. Worth (American, New York 1834–1917 Staten Island, New York)
  • Publisher: Currier & Ives (American, active New York, 1857–1907)
  • Date: 1857
  • Medium: Hand-colored lithograph
  • Dimensions: Sheet: 12 7/8 × 16 7/16 in. (32.7 × 41.8 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Adele S. Colgate, 1962
  • Object Number: 63.550.376
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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