The Darktown Hunt--The Meet: "Keep you tempers Ladies de one dat gits tother end fust gits de Brush"

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.

In this rural fox hunt scene, five caricatured Black (African American) people, dressed in hunting attire, gather with their horses amid a pack of dogs (seven beagles, with a terrier [or fox?] at the far right). At left, two women are mounted: one, wearing a green dress and white top hat, is shown in a side view on a brown horse, while behind her, the other woman, wearing a pink-plumed hat and white blouse, is on a mule. At right, two male riders are astride their mounts, A formally dressed bald, bearded man with white hair, who lifts his top hat in greeting to the ladies, is on a brown horse. On a donkey beside him, a huntsman (dressed in a red jacket, red cap, striped pants) blows a horn. Between them, standing beside his gray-white horse, is the hunt master announcing the prize (a brush) as he chomps on a cigar; he is dressed in a red hunting jacket and cap, a yellow vest with green polka dots, a turquoise bow tie, cream pants, and black boots. In the left background, another horse and rider approach at a gallop. Title and caption are imprinted in bottom margin.

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.