Horses at the Ford

In this rural scene, a boy sits bareback on a dark horse, and leads two others, brown and white, into a stream. A colt already standing in the water, turns its neck to look at ducks. There is a cottage on a small hill on the far bank, a clearing beyond a wooden fence and line of trees while, at left, a dirt path leads towards a vista of fields dotted with farm buildings, and distant low mountains.

The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with his brother Charles's brother-in-law, James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, lithographing over 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe with popular categories including landscape, marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company at home.