"Bustin The Pool"

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 satirizes a chaotic billiard room scene with seven caricatured Black (African-American) men. At left, a player leans way over the pool table awkwardly holding his cue in his right hand; he has just broken the rack ("Bustin the Pool") and sent the balls flying off the billiard table, thereby hitting the heads of four men (at right), who fall backwards contorted with pain. As the player leans, he has also extended his right leg so far back that he has inadvertently kicked the man behind him-- causing that man to let go of his cue as he falls. At the lower center, another man (wearing a bowler hat) is convulsed with laughter.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored 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 (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907. The artist of this print is Thomas Worth, a prolific nineteenth-century illustrator who excelled at drawing horses and other subjects, many of which were made into lithographs published by Currier & Ives.