Waking Up the Old Mare
Nicholas Winfield Scott Leighton American
Lithographed and published by Currier & Ives American
Not on view
Currier & Ives, the leading American printer and publisher of lithographs from the mid-1850s to 1907, created thousands of affordable prints that appealed to popular taste, as exemplified by this humorous winter sleigh race on a country road. Scott Leighton was a skilled painter of horses, as well as of landscapes. After Currier & Ives published prints based on a selection of Leighton's art, his popularity increased. In this scene he depicted an elderly couple in a sleigh pulled by an old horse straining to outrun several sleighs behind them. Currier & Ives aggressively marketed such captivating pictures showing amusing aspects of American life as a suitable, inexpensive way to decorate private homes and public buildings.
