The Darktown Riding Class: The Gallop

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.

This print depicts four caricatured Black (African American) women and a Black (African American) man in elegant attire -- all have lost control of their horses and a donkey. At left, a woman, dressed in a red jacket and blue skirt, has her arms around the neck of her runaway, brown/white spotted horse. Behind her, a woman, dressed in a red/yellow striped dress, clings to the neck of her rearing brown horse. At the center of the image, an alarmed woman in a red dress still holds the reins, although she has been tossed high into the air by her bucking donkey. At the lower right corner, one woman (her yellow jacket and maroon skirt torn in the back), stands watching the chaotic scene, as her riderless horse runs away in the upper left background. In the right background, an alarmed man is still astride the rump (behind the saddle) of his bucking dark horse. The title is imprinted in the bottom margin.

Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888), 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 (1824–1895), the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law, was made a business partner. Subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued via their successors until 1907.