American Homestead – Autumn
Publisher Currier & Ives American
Not on view
As a man on a ladder picks apples from a tree, a mother and children are surrounded by fruit on the ground, loading it into a basket. At right, a wooden cottage stands behind a fence next to a dirt road. One of a set of four prints devoted to the seasons.
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.
