The Coon Club Hunt: "Hot on the Scent"

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.

This rural "fox hunt" print shows a caricatured Black (African-American) couple on horseback, accompanied by three small dogs scampering towards the right of the image. At center, the woman (wearing a red jacket and red-patterned skirt, striped socks, slippers, and a white top hat) awkwardly sits sidesaddle on a galloping brown donkey-like horse; she holds a stick as a whip in her left hand. Her male companion looks back at her as he pulls the reins of his galloping white horse; he wears a straw hat, a red jacket, and boots with spurs. In the left background, a Black girl and boy ride bareback on a galloping donkey. A rail fence is in the right background.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel included his younger brother Charles in the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907.