A Fast Team -- "Taking a Smash!"

Thomas Worth, among America’s prolific nineteenth-century illustrators, excelled at drawing scenes relating to horses and horse racing, many of which were made into popular lithographs published by Currier & Ives.

In this "comic" accident scene, a one-horse drawn carriage has just crashed into a fence at a bend of the road. As a result, two men (the passengers) were thrown face down into a watery ditch (central foreground) startling a nearby duck, while the dazed driver (in a blue suit) has landed on the ground beneath his exhausted horse (center). The now-unhitched horse's breath streams from its nostrils as it stands in front of the wrecked carriage, now missing two of its wheels. Passing behind the horse, a man in another carriage reins in his white horse, as he looks with concern at the accident victims. On the road in the right background, a third carriage approaches; it passes a small white one-story farmhouse nestled between trees and other vegetation.






















Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888), 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 America. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (1824–1895), the accounting-savvy brother-in-law of Nathaniel's brother Charles, was made a business partner. Subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued via their successors until 1907. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes, rural and city views, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life, comic situations and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments.