The Ferry Boat
Frances Flora Bond Palmer American, born England
Lithographed and published by Nathaniel Currier American
Not on view
In this rural river scene a flat-bottomed boat filled with horses and attendants approaches a wooden dock at right, where a man prepares to pull it with a hooked pole. Additional sailboats are seen further down stream, and a man fishes on the left bank. A small house is seen on a hill at right.
When Frances "Fanny" 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 they moved the business to Brooklyn, around the time that Nathaniel Currier recognized Palmer’s talent and began to buy her drawings as print designs. She would later become a staff artist for Currier & Ives and is considered one of the leading women lithographers of the period.
