The Coon Club Hunt: "Taking a Header"

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 rural hunt scene disaster: This print shows a caricatured Black (African-American) couple being thrown by their horses over a rail fence; they are mid-flight and about to land in a big muddy puddle (although the woman still clings to the neck of her horse; her white hat is already floating on the water). A Black girl and boy, who accompanied the adult riders (they had been riding bareback in the related print), are already strewn on the banks of the puddle: the donkey has fallen over sideways onto the mud, the boy is about to land on his head, while the girl has landed seated on top of a dog. At the lower left, a seated fox gazes up at the unfortunate group who had been hunting him.

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.