Mount Washington and the White Mountains, From the Valley of Conway

In this glorious New Hampshire landscape, Mount Washington appears in the distance rising above a beautiful valley dotted with houses and two churches. The artist Frances Flora (Fanny) Palmer also included such picturesque aspects of rural life as cattle grazing near a pond in the foreground, while a man with a fishing pole approaches from the middle distance.

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 brother Charles. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes like this one, 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.