"Taking A Smash"

This print depicts a carriage accident in a rural setting. An exhausted dark brown horse stands --still hitched to a damaged carriage missing its front wheel. In the bottom foreground, two men are on top of each other, having fallen face down into a water-filled ditch after the "smash" impact of their vehicle colliding with a roadside post. A duck flies off at the lower left. Passing on the other side of the wreckage and horse, a gawking man drives his carriage (drawn by a white/gray horse) from right to left. In the upper right background, another one-horse buggy approaches. The title is imprinted in the 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.