View on the Rondout
Frances Flora Bond Palmer American, born England
Lithographed and published by Currier & Ives American
Not on view
In this pastoral landscape, a boy herds cows along the quiet bend of a river. At left, on the far river bank, a cabin is set amidst tall trees. The Rondout is a tributary of the Hudson and runs through Ulster and Sullivan counties in upstate New York.
When Frances "Fanny" Flora Bond Palmer moved to New York from England in 1844 she was thirty-two and an accomplished artist and printmaker. Initially, Fanny and her husband Seymour operated a small print-shop in lower Manhattan, similar to one they had run in Leicester (United Kingdom). In 1849, the couple moved to Brooklyn after the business closed. Nathaniel Currier recognized Palmer’s talent and began to buy her drawings to use as print designs. After Currier & Ives was established in 1857 she became a staff artist. As a designer able to transfer images to lithographic stones for printing, Palmer produced more than 200 prints for the firm and today is regarded as a leading woman lithographer of the period, particularly admired for her evocative landscapes.
