"HIGH WATER" IN THE MISSISSIPPI

[Currier & Ives]: [After Palmer, Frances Flora Bond]

Published by Currier & Ives, New York, 1868

About this Item

Handcolored lithograph on wove paper, 21¾ x 32 inches, highlighted in gum arabic. After illustrations by Frances Flora Bond Palmer, drawn on stone by James Merrit Ives ("J.M.I. del." at lower left of image). Toning in the margins from previous matting. Some very light surface wear. Overall very good plus, with excellent visual appeal. An excellent Currier & Ives Mississippi River scene created just a few years after the Civil War, after an original illustration by the important and prolific artist, Frances Palmer. Though ostensibly presented as a nostalgic representation of the South, a modern interpretation might conclude that it demonstrates a new sense of freedom and independence felt by former enslaved people in the first few years of Reconstruction. This image also demonstrates a simple but poignant and even uncomfortable truth about how life on the Mississippi River is contingent upon external circumstances, most notably the whims of the weather. HIGH WATER in the Mississippi presents a scene of a Mississippi River flood in which several former slaves sit atop the roof of a house among the flotsam and jetsam, two of the men with long poles trying to recover furniture floating in the river. One man tries to rescue a mule struggling in the water. A plantation house stands in the background, with two White residents waving at the large steamship Stonewall Jackson, which chugs by in the background. The lithograph is signed "J.M.I. Del." in the image, indicating that James Ives drew the lithograph from Palmer's original artwork. The illustration for this Currier & Ives print was created by the important artist, Frances Flora Bond Palmer. Palmer (1812-76) was the first woman in the United States to work as a professional artist, and to make a living with her art. She produced more Currier and Ives' prints than any other artist. Known as Fanny, she was, according to Gloria Deák, "the foremost woman lithographer of her time." Born and raised in England by a cultivated family, she was already an accomplished painter and lithographer when she came to America in 1844, at which time she exhibited two works at the National Academy of Design. By 1849, she was working for Currier producing landscapes and still lifes, lithographing these prints herself, usually after her own sketches. She worked for Currier & Ives from 1849 into the 1870s, bringing in much needed income for her family, and producing about 200 of the company's best scenes and landscapes. Palmer was one of the most important and prolific artists and lithographers ever employed by Nathaniel Currier, and she gave important assistance to Charles Currier in inventing a superior lithographic crayon. This Mississippi River scene is one the most popular pictures among the thirty-plus Mississippi River lithographs produced by the company. "In 1868, three years after the [Civil War] ended, James Ives, who had found Palmer to be an excellent collaborator on his visions of broad symbolic images of American life, worked with her on eight large, important lithographs.Among them is a pair of lithographs - "High Water" in the Mississippi and Low Water in the Mississippi - this time portraying the mighty river's fickle moods. The subject was particularly timely because Southern levees had been destroyed during the war, and serious flooding had occurred in 1862, 1865, and 1867" - Rubinstein. Rubinstein notes that the Currier & Ives audience had always enjoyed scenes of natural disasters, but goes on to find significant allegorical content in the images depicted in "High Water" and Low Water: "Now in the Reconstruction period, instead of focusing on the North's victory, both black and white Southerners are seen bravely struggling to recover from the aftermath of a great flood (the Civil War?).Abolitionists and Radical Republicans could read "High Water" as a poignant image of newly freed slaves struggling to salvage something for their future (the "forty acres and a mule" promised to them. Seller Inventory # WRCAM62593

Bibliographic Details

Title: "HIGH WATER" IN THE MISSISSIPPI

Publisher: Currier & Ives, New York

Publication Date: 1868