View on Long Island, New York

This captivating rural scene provides a glimpse of ordinary daily life on a small Long Island farm in the mid-nineteenth century. Between a wooden farmhouse with a covered porch (at left) and barns and a pond (at right), five cows walk up a central dirt road towards the viewer, while a man drives away in a two-horse wagon. A small meandering river supplies a nearby watermill in the middle distance; beyond is a vista of rolling fields and hills, dotted by several buildings. The artist Frances Flora (Fanny) Palmer was adept in creating pictures of peaceful, self-sufficient country life based on agriculture.



Nathaniel Currier, who established a successful New York-based lithography firm in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with James Merritt Ives (1824–1895), the brother-in-law of Nathaniel's younger brother and colleague Charles. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes, or rural and city views, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. Although it was unusual for a woman to achieve such prominence in a printing firm, Palmer was one of the most important artists working for Nathaniel Currier, and later Currier and Ives, between 1849 and 1868, when she produced approximately 200 of the firm's best landscapes and most engaging scenes of daily life.