"Wooding Up" on the Mississippi

Currier & Ives issued more than thirty lithographs of the great Mississippi River; those pictures showing steamboats ranked among the most popular. In the nineteenth century, steamboats provided important and practical large-scale transport of passengers and goods both up and down this mighty river; such riverboats navigated the shallow waters, as well as upriver against strong currents, thereby helping to develop trade between America's heartland and the Gulf Coast. Created during the American Civil War, this Mississippi River night scene features a full moon (appearing through a break in the clouds) and two paddlewheeler steamboats, both flying the American (Union) flag. On the shore in the foreground, a crew of about a dozen black men load logs, taken from a large, stacked woodpile, onto the steamboat "Princess;" their work is overseen by two white men standing near a blazing campfire. At left, another steamboat approaches.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography business had thrived since 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life. After1857, when Currier made James Merritt Ives a partner, the renamed Currier & Ives firm continued until 1907. Frances Flora (Fanny) Palmer was one of the most important artists working for Nathaniel Currier, and later Currier & Ives, between 1849 and 1868, when she produced approximately 200 of the firm's best landscapes and most engaging scenes of daily life.